be a cold night."
Fuck. Knox rubbed at his temples, wondering how much worse this night could get. Josie was right—even once he nailed plywood over the broken window, the opening would still let in the bitter cold. Josie would freeze if she stayed out here.
"You'll sleep in my bed tonight," he said gruffly.
"No, Knox, I—I don't want to be a bother."
"The only bother is the hole in my window."
He turned away from Josie, unable to bear the trusting, worshipful expression on her face a second longer. "And I wasn't asking what you wanted," he added forcefully. "I was telling you where to go."
"Oh." Out of the corner of his eye, Knox saw Josie swallow, her eyelashes fluttering as she dipped her chin again. Hell, she probably didn't even realize she was doing it, displaying the classic signs of submission. "Where are you going to sleep?"
"On the bedroom floor." He practically roared the words, unable to tear his eyes away from her, wondering if he ought to go lie down in the snow since nothing else seemed to be able to get his raging thoughts under control.
And then Josie wet her bottom lip with the tip of her damn tongue, and Knox wondered what he'd done to deserve this torture.
"Do you promise?"
Why the fuck was she asking that? For an entire week, he hadn't come within ten feet of her until—
Oh.
Knox followed her tremulous gaze down to the huge bulge of his cock, straining the fabric of his shorts.
"Yeah, I promise," he muttered, flattening himself against the wall as he moved past her into the front room. "Now, get in the damn bed before you freeze. It won't take me long to take care of business out here."
Josie didn't need to be asked twice. A second later, Knox heard his bedroom door close.
He swept up the mess, then fetched a board from the scrap pile in his workshop. It took only a few minutes to nail the board in place.
When that was done, Knox stepped outside onto the icy porch to finish taking care of business.
Chapter Eleven
What exactly was the proper etiquette for when an alpha offers you a bed big enough to park a car in and insists on taking the floor for himself?
Josie would definitely have refused if it wasn't for the pesky little fact that she'd freeze to death by morning if she stayed in the other room. Too late, she realized she could just as easily sleep on the bedroom floor—the room was certainly big enough, seeing as it was made for someone nearly twice her size—but she had a feeling Knox wouldn't appreciate the distinction.
He was certainly a man of strong opinions. Or at least one who was used to doing everything his way. For the last week, she'd learned to make coffee in his temperamental percolator, to trim the cotton wicks before lighting the oil lamps in the evening, to follow his huge boot prints in the snow when she went to fetch an onion from the root cellar or a few boar sausage links from the smokehouse. Huddled in a ball up against the carved wooden headboard of Knox's massive bed, Josie tried to distract herself by imagining what her friends would think of her new skills, but for once, it provided her no comfort.
Her current situation was ridiculous, maddening, and terrifying, all at the same time. Playing house in an alpha's cabin all week had its moments, but the angry words they'd spoken hours earlier, combined with the tree crashing through the window, had brought Josie's reality back with a vengeance.
If it wasn't for Knox, she'd be dead, or an omega belonging to another alpha—and Josie wasn't sure which would be worse.
And then there was the matter of…well, the blinding attraction Josie felt for Knox. One that was evidently mutual, given the sight of his enormous erection.
Josie didn't know whether to laugh, scream, or cry.
Instead, she grabbed one of Knox's thick, long pillows and clutched it to her chest, wrapping her arms around it and hugging it like a teddy bear. She needed to get a grip on herself, to gain control of the cascade of conflicting emotions. She had just come within an inch of becoming an omega, for God's sake. If there was a right way to feel after something like that, Josie didn't have a clue what it might be.
What the hell had she been thinking, running straight to Knox when she heard the window shatter?
She hadn't been thinking—and that