iki slowly lifted her head, not quite sure where she was or what had happened. She stared around her, trying to make sense of her surroundings, but the effort was too much and she closed her eyes, let her head rest against something cold and hard. She felt … she felt as if a giant had picked her up and thrown her down on the ground, as if her entire body had been stunned. Had she fallen out of bed? No, she wasn’t in a bedroom, she was in … what was she in? She didn’t know where she was. Nothing looked right.

Then, like a light switch being flipped, her memory clicked and it all came back in a rush. Darwin. The Helton woman and that big dude. The storm, the ice, and the edge of the world.

The dashboard lights glowed softly, even though the engine was dead. One headlight shone, marking her spot in the night. All she could see through the shattered windshield was the tree that had stopped her descent down the mountainside. The entire front end of the Blazer was crumpled, the dash twisted and crushed and caved in on itself. Slowly she turned her head, because she felt as if it wasn’t securely attached to her neck. What a weird feeling; she didn’t like it. But her neck worked, and that was good.

A big limb had crashed through the window, impaling the passenger seat. Broken glass was strewn about the front seat, and cold wind whipped into the cab from all the broken windows.

Niki touched a hand to her head, felt the sticky blood there. Her entire scalp throbbed, and she was shaking from head to foot, one big convulsive shudder. She couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t make her muscles stop quivering. Damn it, she could’ve been killed, she could be dead right now, like Darwin. And it was all their fault!

A part of her wanted to stay right where she was. She was so tired, so cold. Moving would take more energy than she had. After a few minutes, though, her survival instinct kicked in. Ordering her thoughts was difficult, but determinedly she set about getting them all lined up. She couldn’t stay here. Once the battery wore down, she wouldn’t have even the little bit of light she now had. She’d freeze to death here, in the dark and cold, if she didn’t bleed to death first. Again she gingerly touched her head. The cut there was bleeding, but wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Hell, she was alive, and she didn’t seem to be missing any body pieces, so she’d already come out ahead. She listened, wondering if Lorelei and the big guy were working their way down the mountain looking for her, to come help … but there weren’t any voices. There was wind, there was ice, and the creaking of the tree. That was it. Those bastards had left her here to die. What kind of people would do something like that?

She stared at the limb that had come through the windshield, imagined what would’ve happened if it had been just a foot or so to the left, and shuddered.

The driver’s side window had broken out, too, and Niki turned her head in that direction as she attempted to orient herself. Most of the light from the one remaining headlight was blocked by something, maybe the bumper, but some leaked out to show her where she was.

On the side of a freakin’ mountain, perched on an old, creaky, badly damaged tree that was coated with ice. If the tree went, if it snapped and gave way, the Blazer would go the rest of the way down. She doubted she’d be so lucky the next time some obstacle stopped what was left of the truck.

Niki pulled the door handle and pushed. When nothing happened she pushed again, putting all her weight, such as it was, into the task of opening the door. The Blazer creaked and rocked and she stopped for a moment. Anger flared up inside her, making her forget her physical pain. Everything that had happened so far—the storm, Darwin’s death, the destruction of the Blazer, and Niki’s injuries, even the fact that the damn door wouldn’t open—it was all Lorelei Helton’s fault. That bitch, look what she’d done. If she’d just stayed where she’d been told to stay, none of this would’ve happened.

Where was her flashlight? She felt around for it but couldn’t find it, and she didn’t have time to look for it. There was just enough light from the truck to show her the way. The door wasn’t going to open, she finally decided, so she heaved herself up and crawled through the broken window, her movements cautious so as not to rock the Blazer. As she crawled out into the cold wind, she decided the vehicle was pretty firmly caught against the tree.

The slope was so steep she couldn’t stand upright. Clinging to the wrecked truck, Niki looked down at herself. She hadn’t escaped the wreck entirely unscathed. Her head was bleeding, there was a huge rip in the right thigh of her jeans and blood was seeping from it, and her shoulder hurt. It wasn’t broken, but it might’ve been. Still, as she looked up to the top of the slope, she felt pretty damn lucky, and she knew there had to be a reason for her survival.

She had survived so she could take revenge on those who’d done her and Darwin wrong.

She had survived so she could do what was right.

With ice covering everything, the only way up the steep hill before her was to crawl, so that’s what she did. With every inch she moved forward, she was more and more certain of her purpose. She wasn’t going to run. She wasn’t going to find a warm spot and cower until morning. She was going to kill Lorelei Helton and the man who murdered Darwin. After all, it was justice, plain and simple.

“How many damn clothes do you have on?” Gabriel growled, pulling at yet another shirt.

“Enough!” she said, slapping at his hands. “Stop that! I can get my own clothes off.”

“Then do it.” He couldn’t carry her, but he could bully her and half-drag her and push her up the stairs, with only the bobbing light from one increasingly dim flashlight to show him the way. In a newer house maybe there would be a full bath downstairs, but the only downstairs bathroom in the Helton house was a half bath that had been added on years earlier.

A hot shower would warm Lolly up. Shower, dry clothes, warm food. It was a simple plan, a necessary plan, if she’d just cooperate.

“I can walk, you know,” she said, sounding grumpy but also more tired than he was comfortable with. He didn’t think she was so far gone that she needed hospitalization—not that he could’ve gotten her to a hospital if she did—but she was on the edge. Another half hour outside, and a hot shower wouldn’t have been such a great idea.

“Yeah, sure. If you can walk, then do it. You need to get in the shower as fast as you can.”

“All right, all right.” She began struggling up the stairs, so he didn’t have to do all the work. “When I’m warm,” she added with a sigh, “I’m going to wrap myself in the comforter and sleep for days.” She stopped abruptly. “Wait. Did you lock the front door?”

“Yes.” He had, out of sheer reflex. On the very slim chance that Niki had survived the crash and somehow managed to make it back to the house, a locked door wasn’t a bad idea. It was unlikely that anyone could’ve been mobile after a crash like that one, but stranger things had happened. Why was it a drunk always walked away from a bad accident, leaving his victims dead while he shook his head and wondered what had happened? It was much the same for people strung out on drugs; he’d seen it many times over the years. God watched over fools and drunks, he’d heard. Didn’t make much sense to him, but some days it proved to be true.

“Bathroom?” he asked as he reached the top of the stairs.

“This way.” Lolly pointed, and he followed her lead to a door that opened onto a long, narrow bathroom that contained both a tub—standard issue, not a whirlpool—and a separate shower. These days it would be considered crowded and on the small side, but for its time this bath was quite a luxury. Gabriel didn’t care how small or large the room was, he only cared that there was a shower and plenty of hot water—as well as, hallelujah, a radiant gas heater built into the wall. He couldn’t think of many things that would be more welcome right now than that heater.

“We’re going to get you warm,” he said as he closed the toilet lid and sat Lolly on it. He placed the flashlight on the back of the toilet tank, standing it up so the light would reflect off the white ceiling. He reached into the shower to turn on the water and let it get warm. He just hoped he didn’t get the temperature too hot, because even though he’d been wearing gloves his hands were so cold he couldn’t really judge how warm the water was.

He turned around and saw that Lolly had closed her eyes again. “Wake up!” he snapped. “Lolly! Get your clothes off!”

She jumped like a startled deer, her eyes popping open. “Jeez,” she muttered. “All right. All I did was close my eyes for a second.”

“You can close them later, after you’re warm.” As she struggled out of her clothes he turned and lit the gas heater, turned it on as high as it would go, then held his hands before the flames to soak up the heat. Ah, God, that felt so good it hurt. He held them there for just a minute before turning his efforts to stripping out of his own clothes. “Stripping” was the wrong word, because it implied speed. He struggled out of them, just as Lolly was doing. The fabric was cold and uncooperative, his hands were cold and uncooperative, and his jeans were cold, uncooperative, and wet, which greatly upped the uncooperative factor. He could barely keep his balance, and finally he propped himself against the sink so he could finish. He’d have liked to sit down and close his eyes, too, but he was afraid if he did he wouldn’t be able to start moving again.

He half-expected Lolly to protest but she didn’t, either at taking her clothes off in front of him or him getting naked, too. He was trying to keep her alive and stay alive himself, and she was either practical enough to shove other concerns to the side, or she knew how close she was to being in real trouble. She was also human enough to dart a quick, troubled glance at his genitals.

“Don’t worry,” he reassured her in a growl. “It’s drawn up so far I couldn’t find it with both hands and a flashlight.”

“Then I hope you don’t need to pee any time soon,” she retorted, and if he hadn’t been so cold he would have laughed at that. As it was, he couldn’t even manage a smile.

Before they got in the shower he checked out her fingers, stooped to look at her toes. They were blue with cold, but didn’t yet show any signs of the white that signaled frostbite. Then he pulled her from her seat on the toilet, clamped his arm around her waist again, and hauled her into the shower.

Lolly whimpered as the warm water sluiced over her. He couldn’t tell if the whimper was from pain or pleasure; she was so cold, either was possible.

Thank God the showerhead was set high on the wall, so he could get completely under the spray. He stepped under it, letting the water beat down on his head and melt the ice that crusted his hair. The water hit his cold skin like pellets; it was both pleasure and pain, and he all but whimpered, too.

“You’re hogging the water,” Lolly complained, and he solved that problem by wrapping his arms around her and pulling her against him, so the warm shower rained down on both of them. With a shuddering little sigh, Lolly put her arms around his waist, nestled her head on his chest, and closed her eyes again.

Now that they were actually in the shower, closing their eyes seemed like a damn good idea, so he propped his chin on top of her head and let his own eyelids drift down.

“God, this feels so good,” she whispered.

He wasn’t sure if she was talking about the heat or him, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask. He didn’t care. He could feel the cold leaving him, draining away under the driving water pressure. He could feel his head warming, feel the pain receding.

A part of his brain—a dangerously small part—remained on alert, listening for anything he might hear over the sound of the shower. He hadn’t been able to go down the mountain and make certain Niki was dead, and as long as that uncertainty remained he couldn’t completely relax. He and Lolly were vulnerable here in the shower, but they had to get warm, and when he weighed the two factors against each other getting warm trumped everything else. He’d been so cold he was almost beyond functioning, beyond helping either Lolly or himself, and if Niki had come at them again he wasn’t certain he could have managed much in the way of a reaction.

Two things weighed in their favor. One, even if Niki was still alive he saw no way she wouldn’t be injured, probably too severely to be able to move. Two, if by some perverse miracle she was able to move, she had to be as cold as they were—unless she’d been using meth for so long she’d gone into hyperthermia, which would be doubly dangerous in this weather because she wouldn’t feel the cold, wouldn’t properly protect herself from it.

When he was recovered and dry, he’d bundle up and go back outside, check out the crash scene again. From a different angle he might be able to see if Niki was still in the mangled Blazer. Until then, all he could do was handle one problem at a time and stay alert for any strange sounds.

Then another problem presented itself.

As he’d gotten warmer he’d become aware of how good Lolly felt pressed against him, soft and shapely, with very nice curves that had been hidden beneath all those layers of clothes she’d been wearing. The spray of water hit her and ran down perfect, smooth flesh. She was wet and soft and naked …

Gabriel ran his hands up and down Lolly’s back, trying to create heat with friction as well as with the hot water. He could feel the change in her as she warmed; she relaxed, her breathing became more normal and her stance became stronger, steadier. She was going to be okay. They’d made it, survived a hellish situation, and for the first time in hours he let himself relax from a state of high alert.

He almost went to sleep there, standing in the hot shower with Lolly wrapped in his arms. Maybe he did doze, for just a second. Maybe she did, too, because other than the rise and fall of her chest she didn’t move.

Gradually he surfaced from that almost-sleep. The ice storm continued its deadly accumulation outside, but he and Lolly were safe inside, warm, protected, free to simply feel and react. As his body absorbed the heat of the water he felt as if he, too, were melting, until there was nothing left in the world but his body and hers.

It was easy to stand beneath the spray and hold on to Gabriel and let everything else go. No more fear, no more cold. Just this.

Gradually she became aware that he no longer had any problem finding his penis. It swelled between them, long and thick and rock hard. Vaguely startled—Gabriel McQueen was turned on by her?—and yet completely accepting, Lolly opened her eyes and looked up to find him staring down at her with the set, intent expression of a man who wanted sex and knew he was about to get it. Even in the dim, fading light of the flashlight, she could see the glitter in his eyes.

He smoothed her wet hair back from her face, cupped her bruised cheek with one big hand, then his mouth was on hers.

His hand was gentle. His mouth wasn’t. He kissed like a marauder, hungry and fierce, demanding and taking surrender. Without thought or hesitation she gave him what he wanted. Nothing mattered beyond this moment, beyond the sudden reckless fever that flared to life between them. They could both be dead, so easily. They weren’t; they were here, alive, warm, and they came together in a frenzy.

He lifted her, crushed her against the tiled wall under the showerhead so the water continued to beat down on them. Instinctively she wound her legs around his hips, the position opening her to him. Reaching down, he positioned his penis; the thick head brushed against her soft flesh, barely entered, and that was enough to make her whimper in need. She writhed, searching for more, and he gave it to her. With a groan he pushed deep, stealing her breath, both easing and increasing the sharp need. She groaned, too, at the taking of him, at the sensation of being stretched by the heavy fullness already pumping back and forth inside her. Lolly closed her eyes and tightened the grip of her legs around him, riding out the storm.

She came hard and fast, crying out, trembling and arching under the onslaught of sheer pleasure. He gripped her ass and moved her back and forth on him, short, fast strokes that intensified her orgasm and was almost too much to bear. Moaning, she dug her fingernails into his shoulders as the sensation peaked, subsided, then abruptly peaked again. She couldn’t bear it, couldn’t stand any more, and tears suddenly flooded her eyes. “Please,” she said, and with a shudder and a deep groan he buried himself to the hilt and came, too, pumping hard and fast and gradually changing his rhythm to slow and rolling as he drew out his own pleasure.

In the aftermath there was silence, but a silence in which they clung together, gulping in air and trying to regain some strength in legs that had none. His heavy weight crushed her into the wall; if it hadn’t been for the support of that wall, she suspected they would be on the floor of the shower. Her arms were wound around him, and absently she stroked the back of his neck, absorbing the feel of him naked against her. He was all hard muscle, every inch of him, and everything in her that was woman delighted in being pinned there with his penis still heavy inside her.

He roused up enough to reach out and turn off the shower with a snap of his wrist. The water was cooling anyway, and the efficient gas heater had already warmed the bathroom to pleasantly toasty.

Neither of them said anything. There would be a time for talking, but that time wasn’t now. For now, they just were, adrift in the moment.

Gently he cupped one breast with his big, hard hand. His rough thumb brushed back and forth over her nipple and she felt that touch everywhere, tingling along nerve endings that hadn’t yet quieted. She pressed her lips to his wet shoulder, then with a soft sigh let her head rest there.

Her thoughts drifted as relaxation spread through her bones. She loved this house, she thought drowsily, always had: the smells, the large rooms, the old furniture. Until tonight, all her memories in this place had been good ones. She didn’t want her last memory made in this house to have anything to do with Darwin and Niki. When she walked away, when she said good-bye, she wanted her final memories to be good ones. Gabriel had given her that, replaced horror with pleasure, bad with good.

Lolly moved her mouth, tasted the wet skin of his neck and inhaled his heat. His breathing changed; his body shifted, but not away from her. He moved closer, deeper into her, and nothing had ever felt so right.

“How do you feel?” he asked, his voice gruff and steady and soothing.

“Better.” She was wonderfully warm, wonderfully lethargic. They did need to get dried and dressed, but not just yet. She kissed his neck again. “You?”

“Yeah. Better.” He paused. “Uh—Lollipop …”

She smiled, hidden against his shoulder. “I’m on to you, now. You’re just trying to make me mad, calling me that,” she said without heat.

“Well, yeah. That was always the point,” he said, as if that were obvious.

“I had a terrible crush on you.” She would never have admitted that before, she would have been mortified if he’d ever suspected … and now it didn’t matter.

He pulled his head back a little, looking down at her. “No shit?” He sounded pleased. “You didn’t act like it.”

“Of course not. I was a teenage girl. I’d have died rather than let you know.” Thank God those years were behind her; no way would she ever want to relive the angst and raging hormones, the excruciating insecurity.

“I liked fighting with you,” he admitted, his own mouth quirking in a little smile. “It got me going.”

Men, she thought. They couldn’t be the same species. She sighed, so content she could barely move. In that moment, everything was all right; with Gabriel inside her, with the flush of pleasure still fresh, she was content.

He stirred, reluctantly separating their bodies, and she let him. Her legs unlocked from around him, her thighs sliding down his until her feet once more touched the floor. He tilted her chin up so their eyes met. “Are you on the pill?” His voice rumbled in his chest, deep and gruff.

She couldn’t help smiling. “It’s a little late for that question, isn’t it? But the answer is, yes, I am.”

“That’s good.” He rubbed his thumb over her lower lip. “We can do this again.”

“Right now?” she asked, startled, and he laughed.

“Fifteen years ago, yeah, but now it’ll take me a couple of hours to recover. Come on, let’s get dry.”

Her legs weren’t quite steady, but she felt much better, almost normal. She felt a bit self-conscious at being naked in front of him, which was a little silly at this point, but her cheeks heated as she stepped out of the shower and quickly headed for the linen closet, where she grabbed two towels. She tossed one to him and briskly began drying herself, standing close by the wall heater.

“I have a few cans of soup in the kitchen,” she said, trying to sound as normal as possible.

“Sounds good to me.” Gabriel scrubbed the towel over his hair, then paused to glance at the cold, wet clothes on the floor. “I don’t suppose your dad left any clothes behind.”

“No,” she said. “They cleared all their personal items out a couple of years ago.” Then she laughed. “He’s six inches shorter than you, and his waist is probably ten inches thicker. I don’t think any of his clothes would have fit you, anyway. We’ll hang your clothes in front of one of the fireplaces; they should be dry by morning.”

“Great.” His voice rumbled. “Guess I’ll be bare-assed naked until then.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, and smiled at him. “But we have blankets, several wall heaters, a couple of gas fireplaces, plenty of candles, and those cans of soup I told you about. I have some instant coffee, too.”

His eyes lit at the mention of coffee, even instant coffee. “That’ll do.”

“I’m starving,” Lolly said, realizing as she spoke how true those words were. She also realized that she wouldn’t mind if she and Gabriel were stuck here for a few days. After what had just happened in the shower, so quickly and naturally that she’d barely had time to think, she didn’t wonder at all how they’d pass the time.

Life took some astonishing turns, she thought. She never could have anticipated this, never thought she’d be so comfortable with him, or that making love with him, of all people, would feel so right.

Good Lord.!!!Gabriel McQueen.