cabin and hurried back inside before I ended up with frostbite on my damn nipples.
I could feel her eyes on me as I kicked my boots off again and headed over to the fire, dropping the logs before it. I spent a little longer than necessary stirring up the embers and stacking the fresh logs on it to get the fire blazing again, giving Winter the chance to get over the shock of being woken by a fucking idiot and scared shitless for good measure.
Once it was done, I padded over to the kitchenette and set the coffee pot up before slicing some bread to make toast and whipping up a batch of scrambled eggs.
I was pretty sure Winter’s eyes never left me but I kept my focus on the food, letting her find her own way back to trusting me. At least a little.
When the food was ready, I placed it all on the small table to the side of the room, clearing a stack of books off of the second chair so that she could sit too before taking my own seat.
“C’mon, baby doll, you’ve gotta be hungry,” I said casually, pointing to the seat opposite me.
She leapt up and raced across the room, her eyes on the plate of food with a ravenous set to her gaze. A moment before she tried to snatch the plate away, I realised what she was going to do and grabbed the other side of it.
Her eyes widened with hurt and betrayal, like she thought this was some trick and I didn’t mean to let her eat it at all. A knot of rage tightened in my gut at the thought of that.
“It’s all yours,” I promised her. “I was just hoping you’d sit with me to eat it.” I pointed at the chair again and her gaze dropped to it like the idea of that was a totally foreign concept.
I released my hold on the plate and she lifted it into her arms, clutching it close to her chest and eyeing me cautiously. I decided to leave it at that and picked up my knife and fork, cutting into my own toast and filling my mouth with a low sigh of pleasure as I started chewing. I kept my gaze on my food and had to suppress a smirk as she slowly lowered herself into the chair like I’d asked.
She placed her plate down so close to her that it hung over the edge of the table and I glanced up at her just as she grabbed a handful of creamy eggs and stuffed it into her mouth.
After that first mouthful, she gave up any pretence of being civilised and stuffed food into her mouth fist after fist, demolishing her meal as I fought the urge to laugh. Although if I really thought about it, it wasn’t fucking funny. This girl had been too hungry for too fucking long. She ate with wild abandon in a way that said she wasn’t used to regular meals and feared when she’d get another.
I’d only made it half way through my own meal when she finished, licking the actual plate to chase down any last crumbs.
I chuckled beneath my breath and she shot me a death glare over the plate she was licking.
“No need to try and kill me with your eyes, baby doll. Do you want some more?” I pushed my plate towards her and she actually gasped.
I gave her an encouraging nod, leaning back in my chair to watch as she fell on that too. It was totally fucked up. But there was also something wildly captivating about my little savage girl which had my gaze fixed on her irrevocably.
I ran a hand over my beard, wondering exactly how long it had been since I’d seen a woman. And Winter wasn’t just any woman, even with that hollowness to her cheeks and the cutting sharp lines of her bones pressing through her skin, her beauty shone bright enough to light up the whole fucking forest.
She would have been impossible to miss in a crowded room, but here, in the middle of nowhere, she was like a motherfucking siren luring me in.
I cleared my throat as I got to my feet, trying to banish the thoughts from my mind before they took hold. Winter had just escaped from a bunch of assholes, the last thing she needed was a piece of shit like me staring at her like some horny teenager who’d