Holiday Bound (4 page)

“But you didn’t feel fortunate, did you?”

“I felt fucking miserable.”

The quiver in her lush lips mesmerized him. Warmth spread slowly from his belly down to his cock. He knew he should stand up and walk into the frigid regions of the house to cool down. But the heated firelight and Angeline’s curving, dark pink lips held him hostage.

“But why did you decide on this?” she asked, waving her hand. “Your father implied you made millions on LaSalle Street. Why a ski resort?”

He shrugged. “I grew up with my mom on a wooded estate in Minnesota.”

“Mitchell mentioned he and your mother were never married,” she said delicately.

“Yeah. I was the result of a weekend indiscretion.”

“You say it so…casually,” she murmured, her stare on him intent.

He shrugged. “I’m just stating the truth, not complaining. I had a great childhood. My childhood is one of the main reasons I bought Heavenly View. We lived with my grandparents outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul. My grandfather passed on his love of the outdoors to me—fishing, boating, hiking. I’ve skied and snowboarded for as long as I can remember.” She waited, her large, dark eyes looking soft and warm in the firelight. “When I was in the city, I always wanted to get away to the country for the weekend. I finally realized I didn’t want to be in places like this for a few nights a week and live in a noisy, polluted rat race for the remainder. I wanted
this
…” he waved a hand around the rustic house, “…to be my life, not my hobby.”

“You really love it, don’t you?”

He nodded. Her smile widened. She turned her face back to the fire.

“What about you?” he queried.

“Do I like my work, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

She nodded her head, causing her dark, gleaming hair to slide up and down the ivory sweater. “Maybe not as much as you love this. But I do enjoy it. It’s rewarding at times. And I’m good at it.”

He sensed she was merely stating a fact rather than bragging. One had to be fully invested in something to brag about it, after all. She liked her job all right…

“But it’s not your passion though. Is it?” He finished his thought out loud. He couldn’t help but wonder what Angeline Kastakis’ true passion really was. His father? The thought made him feel like the food he’d just eaten had turned rancid in his gut.

She started to face him again and stopped herself. “No, I guess it isn’t. Is that so bad? Most people aren’t as lucky as you, Alex. Most of us work at something we’re relatively good at in order to pay the mortgage.”

“Sounds depressing.”

She gave a low, throaty laugh that made the base of his spine tingle. “It sounds realistic.” He watched, mesmerized, as her slender ribcage expanded and her breasts thrust forward. “Speaking of realism, I better get cleaned up. I’m an idiot for not bringing my bag with me from my car.”

“I’ll go and get it in the morning, if the snow lets up. In the meantime, use whatever you want in the bathroom. There’s a new toothbrush in the drawer on the right.”

“Thanks.” She grabbed one of the lanterns and started to walk away, but hesitated. “Where am I going to sleep?”

He glanced down pointedly at the space in front of the fire. “I’ll bring out some sleeping bags and pillows for us while you clean up.”

Her expectant expression collapsed.

“Alex, I can’t sleep out here…not…with
you
.”

“Where else? You’ll freeze trying to sleep in one of the bedrooms. With the wind chill factor, it’ll dip far below zero tonight. There’s no
heat
.”

She glanced around, looking panicked.

“I could take the kerosene heater, maybe? And you could stay by the fire?”

He shook his head, holding her skittish gaze.

“That heater isn’t powerful enough. It’s too cold, Angeline.”

Her liquid dark eyes flashed fire and her chin went up. “I don’t care. I’ll be fine if you give me a few extra blankets.”

Just like that, all his former irritation flooded back into him full force…even more potent than before. He flung himself off the couch and grabbed a lantern.

“Fine. If you want to freeze off that gorgeous ass of yours, more power to you, sweetheart,” he muttered thickly as he headed toward the hallway.

Alex would undoubtedly find her body in the morning encased in a huge ice cube.

She longed for the warmth of the fire in the living room. She couldn’t even imagine what it meant to be warm.

But she
couldn’t
go out there. Not with Alex.

The howling wind mocked her.

She jumped in her balled-up position beneath the covers as the door clicked open. Her eyes followed the looming shadow warily until it paused next to the bed.

“Have you had enough yet?” he growled softly.

She didn’t respond for a few seconds as she decided which was more of a threat—the frigid temperature or Alex Carradine. Basic survival took precedence.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Alex,
what
—?”

He ignored her weak protest as he whipped back the covers and slid his arms behind her back and thighs. She clutched his neck in alarm when she felt herself flying up through the air. He lifted her as casually as he might a grocery bag.

“I don’t
believe
you,” he muttered angrily under his breath as he kicked the door wider and threaded her feet through the opening. “You’re half-frozen. You weren’t planning on coming out to the living room on your own, were you?”

Soaking up Alex’s heat made her realize just how cold she’d become. She pressed her cheek against his chest and shivered uncontrollably. Her lips had gone numb. She found she couldn’t respond.

He knelt before the fireplace and placed her in an opened sleeping bag. The warmth of the fire surrounded her like a blessing. She was distantly surprised when he pushed back the sleeves of her sweater and began rubbing her forearms and numb hands, chafing the blood back into her frigid flesh. After a moment, her skin began to prickle painfully and she pulled back, resisting his firm hold.

“Is it tingling?” he barked.

She nodded. She was glad when he let go of her arm, but then he reached for a sock-covered foot. Her voice returned when he whipped off the sock and pushed up her jeans to her knees.

“No, Alex!” she protested as she yanked at her captive foot. He scowled and firmed his hold on her before he began chafing her foot and leg briskly. She sat up on her elbows, trying desperately to recall if she’d shaved her legs. A small measure of relief penetrated her anxiety at having his big, warm hands moving rapidly over her skin. The frictionless glide of flesh against flesh reassured her that she was stubble-free.

She’d shaved this morning because she’d prepared for sharing a bed tonight with Mitchell.

The thought made her sit up further and pull back on her leg.

“Sit still.”

She froze at the sound of his low command. She held her tongue for the next few minutes while he rubbed her leg and foot.

“I don’t see why you’re so pissed off at me.
I’m
the one who is half-frozen,” she muttered peevishly after he tossed off her other sock and lifted her foot into his hands.

He just threw her a dark glance before he began chafing her calf. Just like it had for her other limbs, her leg tingled and prickled uncomfortably as normal blood flow resumed.

“Ow,” she mumbled when he turned his attention exclusively to her foot. It felt like it was being stabbed by tiny little darts.

“You deserve it. Stubborn, that’s what you are.”

“I didn’t ask your opinion,” she told him between clenched teeth as he surrounded her foot with both of his large hands. He abruptly pulled her closer to the fire, making her yelp in surprise as she slid across the sleeping bag. Once he’d gotten her nearer to the flames, however, he changed his method, rhythmically massaging the captive foot instead of trying to rub her skin off. Heat penetrated and the tingling slowly faded. She became hyper-focused on his hands working her muscles with firm, yet gentle strokes.

It felt wonderful.

“That’s enough,” she declared gruffly.

He held her when she tried once again to pull her foot free. “I’ll say when it’s enough.”

Angeline opened her mouth to protest, but either his fierce glare or his continued ministrations on her foot stilled her tongue.

Thankfully, he looked away after a tense moment, directing his gaze back to her foot. She sagged on her elbows as heat and a delicious heaviness weighted her muscles.

And her eyelids.

A moment later, her head fell on the soft sleeping bag. She lost track of time as Alex’s hands continued to move over her hypnotically. She existed inside a globe of sensual heat.

“You were nearly frostbitten.”

Angeline’s eyelids blinked open heavily. He massaged her calf muscle once again. One hand completely surrounded her ankle, making her aware of how small she was in comparison to him. It was nice. She could feel slight calluses running over her smooth skin, the contrast in their textures making her shiver slightly…and not with cold.

She brought her eyes into focus when she realized he stared down at her, his facial muscles rigid.

“You should stop now,” she said feebly. Her lips felt as rubbery and ineffective as the rest of her muscles. He palmed her calf and massaged it with slow, circular movements that made her want to close her thighs to alleviate the sudden ache at the juncture.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to rub the rest of your muscles?”

“Uh…no. I think I’m fine.”

Her mouth fell open when she realized that his fire-lit eyes were on her breasts and his lips were curved in amusement. He’d been teasing her, and she’d been so enraptured by his touch, she hadn’t even noticed.

She sat up abruptly. Her foot thumped to the carpet. She scooted back to the sleeping bag like a frightened crab, regretting the loss of heat as she distanced herself from the fire.

Regretting the lack of his touch.

She shoved her now toasty feet into the sleeping bag and threw the insulated cover over her body.

How long had she lain there and let him touch her so intimately? It stunned her. She’d literally lost track of time.

She’d never experienced anything like it in her life.

And it felt damp and warm between her thighs.

“I’ll go and get the heater,” she heard him say gruffly.

She flipped over while he was gone, turning her back to his sleeping bag. Her cheeks flamed hot and her heart thudded erratically in her ears as she recalled what had just occurred.

How humiliating. What had she been thinking, letting Mitchell’s son put his hands on her that way…letting him stroke and caress her.

Excite her.

She’d never had this profound of a physical reaction to a man in her life. She certainly had never responded this way to Alex’s father.

Her breathing came choppily when she sensed Alex returning with the heater. She held it until it burned in her lungs as she listened to him moving about in the fire-lit room. Her eyelids cracked open warily when she heard his jeans sliding against the slick outer fabric of his sleeping bag. He was just feet away from her. The back of her neck tingled with awareness.

She saw something fall in the space between the bottoms of their sleeping bags and realized it was the flannel shirt Alex had been wearing. The memory of how he’d looked, naked to the waist, flared in her mind’s eye. All those lean, defined muscles covered by smooth skin. So powerful.

So beautiful.

Her pussy tingled. She clamped her thighs tighter, trying to alleviate the pressure that grew there.

What in God’s name was wrong with her?

She clenched her eyelids shut again, but she couldn’t block out his low, rough voice.

“Are you warm enough?”

“Yes,” she replied stiffly.

She wondered if his gaze was on her in the tense silence that followed. It certainly
seemed
like she felt the weight of it. He must have given up that she’d say anything else, because she heard him exhale and then the sounds of him settling in the sleeping bag.

She prayed for sleep to come. But she remained hyper-alert…hyper-aware of the man behind her. The fire crackled cozily and she felt warmer than she had since she’d entered this house. Yet she was even more rigid and tense than she’d been as she slowly froze in that back bedroom earlier.

She jumped slightly when, after several moments, he spoke.

“Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.”

For a few cowardly seconds, Angeline considered pretending she was asleep. But Alex was nothing if he wasn’t honest. She found she had no interest in playing games with him.

“Yeah,” she murmured, unmoving.

“I don’t have a Christmas tree here. There’s a big one up at Heavenly View.”

Angeline opened her eyes and stared as snowflakes danced around the dark window, their frantic movement calling to mind her rapidly skipping heart.

“A real one?”

“Yeah. A fifteen-foot Douglass Fir. I cut it down myself. Put it up in the Great Room of the Lodge. Macy—she’s the manager of the hotel—complained that she found a couple birds’ nests in it when she was decorating.”

Angeline imagined his shapely lips, set off to perfection by the short, dark goatee, tilting into a small smile. She recalled how she’d wondered if he could keep an employee, his manner was so surly.

But he sounded like he was fond of Macy the Manager. Maybe it was just Angeline who brought out the worst in him? Wasn’t that all the more reason for her to enjoy a casual conversation with him?

Only it wasn’t casual. Nothing about her interaction with Alex Carradine had been casual since he’d first barked at her while she sat in the SUV. Angeline knew all that, but she couldn’t stop herself from trying to make a connection with him, no matter how tenuous that connection was.

“My mom and dad put a real one up every year. They smell so good. I went with my dad every year to cut it down until I went to college,” she said in a hushed voice.

“What about your place in the city?”

“I put up a small one. Fake. I still like it, though. My mother gives me an ornament on Christmas Day. It’s a tradition. So I like to put them up every year. This will be the first year I’m not spending Christmas with my parents.”

“You were going to spend it with my dad, instead.”

The flames crackled in the taut silence that followed. If she’d let herself think about what she said next, she’d never have done it in a million years. But she wasn’t thinking. As she lay there in front of that fire with Alex, she was just feeling. And she was doing it more than she’d ever done in her thirty years of existence.

“Alex?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never slept with your father.”

Sweat popped on her brow in the strained silence that followed. She felt a drop of it run between her breasts. How could she possibly have been nearly frozen less than an hour ago when her flesh now throbbed with heat? She closed her eyes when she felt his hand on her shoulder.

He rolled her onto her back. She opened her eyes. He’d scooted over in his sleeping bag and leaned down over her, bracing himself on his elbow. She stared, mesmerized, at flame-gilded muscle. His face looked rigid and stark as he stared down at her.

Something fell into place deep inside her, like the last tumbler turning to spring a lock.

“Angeline?”

“Yes.”

She groaned at the impact of his mouth taking possession of her own. She’d thought she was hot, but Alex was fire itself, his sleek tongue a fierce, demanding flame. A fever possessed her, burning away rational thought.

He cupped her jaw and drank from her thirstily…wildly. When his taste registered in her awareness, a primal wave of lust surged up from her belly. Her vagina contracted in painful need. She kissed him like she was deprived of air and he could supply her with his breath…with life itself. She hadn’t realized she was struggling to feel his long, hard body pressed next to her own until he roughly broke their kiss. She blinked her eyelids open, registering the small snarl twisting his handsome mouth. When she craned up for him, desperate for more of his taste, he hissed a curse and whipped back the cover of her sleeping bag.

“Get out of there.” His low growl made her nipples pinch with excitement. She’d never imagined lust so powerful or raw in her life, let alone experienced it.

She scurried out of the sleeping bag. He pushed his bag down over his hips and pulled his legs free. She groaned when he pressed the front of his body to her side. She could feel his cock—long, thick and straining—against his jeans.

He grabbed the hem of her sweater and lifted it over her head.

“I’ve been wanting to do that all night. For years,” he said thickly as he tossed the ivory sweater aside. His eyes gleamed as he stared at her breasts covered in an ivory silk bra. She’d wished she’d worn a bra with some padding earlier, when her nipples kept tightening under Alex’s bold stare.

Now she was glad he saw her desire unmasked. Her nipples pebbled beneath the thin, clinging fabric. She held her breath when he slowly raised his hand and traced the upper swell of one breast with a long finger. His cock lurched against her leg.