His gaze shifted to the mangled SUV and he let out a low whistle. “I heard the impact from down at my cabin. I figured you would have rolled all the way to the bottom of the mountain. I was planning on finding a body.”
I lifted an eyebrow and winced as it made my whole head throb. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
He smirked and lifted the rifle he was carrying to his shoulder so he could stroke a hand through his beard. “Can you walk? I’ll call the accident in to the sheriff but the roads are bad so I doubt anyone will be able to get up here until sometime tomorrow or the next day. They’re shutting the highway down, no way in, no way out for the next few days. You must have been on the road right when they made the call.”
I groaned and put a shaking hand to my head as the rough noise made everything throb. “Lucky me.”
He took a few steps closer and I squinted up in the darkness so I could really see him. He was alarmingly attractive in a surprisingly polished way. The dark hair led me to believe he would have dark eyes as well, but they weren’t. They were a clear and stunning shade of gray. I also had dark hair and light-colored eyes, so I knew how striking the combination could be. People, mostly men trying to get in my pants, complimented my coloring all the time.
He took my breath away. In my pain-addled haze, I also noticed he had a scar that bisected one of his eyebrows, another one off center on his bottom lip, and one that made me gasp because it started below his ear, ran all the way down the side of his neck and across until it disappeared into the collar of his coat. It was raised, still pinkish in color, and brutal looking. It also looked very, very recent. It looked like someone had tried to slit the man’s throat and that meant he was more than likely not a man I wanted to be alone in the middle of the woods with, especially if the roads were closing and there was no way for help to get to me. Being isolated with a man that someone hated enough that they tried to kill him was not a wonderful option. Too bad I didn’t have many others to choose from at the moment.
“So, can you?” Now he sounded impatient and his thick eyebrows pulled into a frown over those amazing eyes.
“Can I what?”
“Walk? We need to get you out of here and someplace warm. My cabin is a few hundred yards south, so I’ll take you there until I can get someone from Surrender up the mountain to collect you.”
My trepidation must have shown on my face because his scowl deepened as he growled, “What are your other options, Snow White? You gonna stay out here and freeze to death?”
I lifted a hand to my forehead, where blood continued to trickle over my brow. “I might bleed to death before that.”
With a resigned sigh, I did my best to climb to my feet. He didn’t offer to help, which annoyed me, even though I wouldn’t have taken him up on it. Once I had my feet under me, I lifted my chin so I could look at him with pride and defiance…only as soon as I was upright, everything began to swim and blur together in a nauseating swirl. I gasped, putting my hand out to catch myself as I pitched forward, everything fading to black and slipping away.
The last things I remember were rough hands wrapping around my upper arms and the bite of that big-ass ring as the cold of the metal seeped through the wet fabric of my shirt and into my skin.
He didn’t offer to help me up…but he refused to let me fall.
Chapter 2
Ben
I called her Snow White and I wasn’t far off the mark.
Hair, almost as dark as my own, trapped innocent snowflakes as her head dangled over my arm where I held her unresponsive body clasped to my chest. Her eyelashes were an obsidian fan that cast a shadow on her milky cheeks. I would bet good money that her lips were normally a ruby red, but at the moment they were tinged blue and tinted red with streaks of blood. Her eyes, when they narrowed and challenged me, were the clearest, deepest blue I had ever seen. I thought nothing on Earth could rival the massive, untouched Montana sky in blueness, but this injured woman’s gaze won the prize hands down. Even though she was currently covered in blood and badly shaken from the accident, I could tell she was attractive in a way that might prove to be distracting. When she fell into my arms, literally, I got a handful of soft curves and toned flesh that let me know everything she was working with under her layers of clothing was just as nice as what I could see in the dense darkness surrounding us.
She was a looker, one that had no business being out in the middle of nowhere with a guy like me. One would think she was lucky to have survived such a horrific crash. They wouldn’t be saying that if they knew I was the only person available to ride to her rescue.
She might be Snow White, but there was no way in hell I was anything close to Prince Charming, or any fairytale prince, for that matter. Hell, I wasn’t even the Huntsman that showed mercy and refused to end an innocent life. I was more along the lines of the Big Bad Wolf. I lay in wait for my prey, ready to pounce, all while wearing a civilized front that very few could see through. I had sharp teeth and even sharper claws and I’d been using both for as long as I could remember.
The old me would eat this girl up without a second thought. I would have left her to her fate in the snow. I was impressed as hell with the way she popped up to her feet, with all types of adorable indignation and sexy pride radiating off of her, even though she was obviously hurting and about to fall over.
I was the old me as recently as this morning.
I was the old me until I looked in the mirror after my shower and finally took the time to examine the still-healing slice across my throat. In a rare moment of clarity, I realized how close I had come to meeting my maker. The wound had been there, healing for months, but today was the day I really saw it and realized I no longer wanted to be the kind of man that deserved to have his throat slit open every time he was distracted and not on the defense. There was no way I would have a halo waiting for me on the other side; I had known that for a long time. It was always bound to be horns and a tail for me because I’d been actively courting my own corner in hell for as long as I could remember. I was the guy that had waterfront property on the lake of fire but I no longer wanted to watch the world burn. Those flames got too close and they were leaving scars on more places than my neck.
I wasn’t a guy that deserved a second chance.
I wasn’t a guy that deserved redemption.
I wasn’t a guy that deserved forgiveness.
I wasn’t a guy that deserved compassion or pity.