21 #2
His arm tightens and heat floods my lower belly in a sick, humiliating flare of fear and adrenaline – the body’s grotesque confusion when terror comes in the form of someone it already knows.
But there’s something else. It makes my skin feel too tight for my body. It doesn’t carry a yes, it does not mean safe, does not mean wanted. It’s my instincts tangling around him in ways I don’t understand.
‘No!’ I wrench my arm free enough to swing at him again, wilder this time – not thinking, just going for it.
Metal flashes.
His hand snaps around my wrist mid-swing. The force stops me so abruptly my shoulder screams, and the hatchet judders between us before he wrenches it from my grip, taking my glove with it.
Pain streaks up to my elbow.
I gasp, but the moment the weapon is loosen, he hauls me up against the largest tree.
With a grunt, he presses against me and my palm cracks over his face with a force that stings even me. His goggles fly clean off, disappearing into the snow like a thought snapped mid-scream.
A low, brief growl tears from him.
The sound leans far too close to pleasure.
Jesus Christ, who is this man?
I barely have time to scramble before one of his hands catches both my wrists in an iron grip and pins them against the tree.
I’m flattened against the trunk, the taste of metal-cold air filling my mouth as my ribs compress.
He holds me tight, his weight covering me from chest to hips like a living, burning shackle, his breath sawing against my ear, his chest heaving with restraint that feels as if it could break with a single wayward breath.
I feel the hard throb of him through the fabric, the harsh flex of his thighs bracing in the snow, the tremor in his arms as though he’s holding himself back from something worse.
Our eyes lock.
He yanks down his face cover in the next beat.
And his mouth crashes into mine.
Cold lips.
Teeth.
Fear.
Need.
My head knocks back against the tree and the sound I make vanishes into him as his other hand clamps around my jaw, holding me there and drinking panic straight from my mouth.
My mind blanks, then floods as heat rips through me so fiercely I stop feeling the cold altogether. It bites at my knees, at my cheeks, but I barely feel it beneath the weight of him and the wild look in his eyes when he finally tears himself off me.
Our breaths shudder against each other. I drag air into my lungs and hate the sound that escapes with it.
He holds me like that with all the threats of this world at his disposal. As if he’s waiting for me to pick which one I want to be my last.
‘Don’t. Fucking. Move,’ he rasps against my lips.
But he doesn’t kiss me. He just keeps there. Fierce and unbearable, like a possibility that never comes.
‘If you move, I’ll forget every civilised thing I have in me, Leah,’ he breathes, words spilling against my skin. ‘Do you have… any… bloody idea… what you’re doing to me?’
I can’t answer. My tongue doesn’t work. My thoughts don’t connect.
All I can feel is him grinding against me and the way my body wraps around him in a reflex I didn’t give it permission for.
He draws back just enough to look at me. His eyes move over my face, searching, as if whatever he might find there could tip him one way or the other.
‘I love it when you fight.’
It’s worse than a threat because it’s honest.
‘Get off m—’ I start, voice cracking, and then it breaks into a sound I can’t hold back when he pushes slightly harder against me, just enough to make me yelp.
His body locks.
‘Stop talking,’ he rumbles, as if the word costs him effort. ‘Just… stop talking.’
His entire frame vibrates as though he’s fighting himself.
The air between us is but steam and silence, broken only by the violent thud of our heartbeats.
‘Everything you do or say in this moment,’ he whispers, ‘will determine how this unfolds.’
I swallow hard, throat tight, not daring to move. My lips part with a soundless breath. A bead of melted snow slips from my cheek and freezes cold against my jaw.
He swipes it with his free hand and snatches my jaw before he angles my chin up. And my mouth is his for the taking.
I brace.
My whole body quivers.
But it doesn’t come.
‘Where were you heading?’ he asks, voice strained. ‘The mountains? The lake?’
I squeeze my eyes shut.
It’s humiliating.
And true.
He shifts the tiniest bit, and I give a quiet, involuntary moan. Both my body and my mouth seem to have forgotten whose side they’re meant to be on.
He studies me a little too long, gaze moving from where he kissed me to my eyes to the wet streak of my tear and back to my mouth.
Then he leans in and his words drag over my cheek. ‘I see. You liked the chase, didn’t you?’
A sob catches in my chest. My fingers curl in his snowsuit until my nails ache.
‘Please…’ I whisper, but I don’t even know what I’m asking for. More space. Less space. Anything that would make my body and my mind agree again.
His breath stutters as he presses his cheek into the hollow where my shoulder meets my neck.
‘Don’t beg,’ he rasps. His fingers tighten once against me, then loose as if by force. ‘Please don’t beg. Please don’t beg.’
Our bodies remain suspended in whatever this is.
We both know it’s not right. But there’s something sickly sweet in how wrong it is, and it leaves me unable to tell whether I’d pull away if he actually gave me the chance.
‘Where were you going, Leah?’ he repeats when he looks at me again, still gasping, voice rough from exertion.
‘Away,’ I whimper, the word cracking.
He gives a sound that almost sounds like a laugh, but it’s too broken and intimate to be humour.
‘This is away, sweetheart,’ he says, and the softness of it feels like the most truthful thing he’s ever said to me. ‘No getting further away than we are.’
Sweetheart.
As he pulls away, his eyes drop to my mouth.
They part.
My pulse flutters painfully beneath my jaw.
Something in him snaps.
He surges towards me as though the sight of it had broken the last of his restraint.
His mouth is almost on mine when—
‘You found her?’ Another voice, older, travels from behind me.
Elias stops inches from me. A second passes. Two.
He pulls us both off the tree so smoothly that, by the time I make the turn, the violence has already been rearranged into concern.
My chest hurts from the cold air. My body is shaking from the rush.
He winds himself around me, one arm locking across my back as he pulls me tight. Close. Closer.
‘Play the part, Leah,’ he murmurs dangerously into my ear. ‘She’s alright,’ he says, louder, already moulding himself for appearance’s sake in front of the man approaching us.
I turn towards the voice as Elias reaches for the hatchet and hooks it to the belt of his suit.
A large man stands a few paces away in a bright winter coat. He must be in his sixties, with a thick white beard and long white hair spilling from beneath his beanie, his weathered face creased by the cold.
His gaze moves from Elias to me, stops on the arm around my waist. Drops to my shaking hands. Returns to my face.
But then his expression settles as though it’s not his story to enter.
Is it him? Is this the hand that helped Elias get me all the way here?
I nearly scream.
‘You must be Leandra,’ he says with a gritty voice, but a gentle tone. ‘Anders Nielsen. Nice to meet you.’
When he reaches to shake my hand, Elias steps aside just enough for me to greet the man.
‘Leah,’ I murmur, but it barely comes out of me.
Elias’ arm holds me firmly at the waist as he points ahead. ‘The snowmobile and the sledge are that way. We need to hurry because of the chickens.’ He gives me a harsh look through a thin smile. ‘You look like an icicle. What did I tell you about walks in the woods during weather like this?’
My lips press together at the soft notes in his voice. Perhaps because a part of me wishes they were real.
When I don’t respond right away, Elias takes my hand in his. Gently.
‘Right,’ Anders concludes, glancing between us. ‘Shall we, then?’
The snow starts creaking beneath his boots.
We follow. Anders is ahead of us with the heavy tread of a man who knows this land well.
Elias keeps me tucked against his side, his hand fixed at my waist to make it seem as if I were something fragile, beloved and recently recovered from the edge of disaster.
But his fingers are too tight.
Every step draws another thread of fear through me.
The phantom sting of the tree still presses against my spine. The bite of his kiss is still raw on my mouth. The edge in his voice when he told me not to move is still scraping along my nerves.
The cold should be the only thing making me shake, but it isn’t.
My mind keeps tripping over possibilities, each one worse than the last.
Will he punish me when we get back?
Lock me up for real this time?
Stop giving me choices?
I shudder at that one.
Beside me, Elias slows.
At first, I think it’s from the thickening layers of snow, but then I realise his steps are deliberately softening, forcing me to match his stride, and allowing Anders to move further ahead.
The distance between him and us stretches by a few paces. Then several more.