his complete freedom for granted. In a sudden movement he plunged upright.
‘I’ll walk back to the car and collect our phones. Leaving them behind wasn’t such a good idea, Luka,’ he told his friend shortly.
Kat blinked in astonishment at that declaration.
‘You can’t go back out there,’ Luka objected in dismay. ‘There’s a blizzard blowing and the car’s miles away.’
‘I would have returned to it earlier if you hadn’t been hurt,’ Mikhail replied drily.
‘I’d really like my phone back,’ Peter Gregory said cheerfully.
Kat turned her attention to Mikhail for the first time since he had entered the kitchen. It had taken considerable control to stave off her insatiable need to look at him again but genuine concern now gripped her. After an instant of hesitation, which gave him time to don his waterproof jacket in the hall and open the front door, she jumped up and chased after him.
The snow was falling thick and fast, the road beyond her gates so deeply engulfed with furrowed drifts of snow that she could no longer see it. A split second before Mikhail stepped off the doorstep with the casual confidence of a male about to go for a stroll in a sunlit park, she shot out her hand and closed it around his arm to stop him. ‘Don’t be an idiot!’ she exclaimed, shivering violently in the freezing air. ‘Nobody risks their life to go and collect phones—’
‘Don’t call me an idiot,’ Mikhail growled in rampant disbelief at her interference, his handsome features clenched with derisive incredulity. ‘And don’t be a drama queen … I am not risking my life if I choose to take a walk in little more than a foot of snow—’
‘Well, if I didn’t have a conscience I’d be happy to leave you to die of frostbite and exposure in a drift somewhere down the road!’ Kat let fly back at him, her temper breaking through. Of all the stupid male macho idiots she had ever met, he surely took the biscuit.
‘I am not about to die,’ Mikhail fielded with sardonic bite, black eyes full of arrogant scorn. ‘I am wearing protective clothing. I am very fit and I know exactly what I’m doing in such terrain and weather—’
‘I’m afraid that’s not a very convincing claim coming from a guy who had to have me show him where this house was on the map!’ Kat whipped back at him without an ounce of hesitation. ‘Use the landline here and be sensible.’
Mikhail gritted his perfect white teeth, caught out by the reminder of the little game he had played with her. He gazed down at her in furious frustration, her bossiness an unwelcome surprise. She was virtually shouting at him as well and that was a novelty he had never met with before and liked even less in a woman. But her green eyes still gleamed like the richest emeralds in her heart-shaped face while the breeze whipped her torrent of curls round her narrow shoulders and made of skim her pale cheeks. She provided an alluring vision, even for a male who had long since decided that, like children, he pretty much preferred women to be seen and not heard. And that fast Mikhail switched from wanting her silence into an infinitely more intoxicating mood, all conscious thought suspended while his body thrummed taut with powerful sexual need and tension.
Later, Kat would tell herself that he behaved like a caveman and that the way she found herself staring up at him had nothing to do with the manner in which, black predatory eyes glittering, he hauled her up against him with alarmingly strong arms and kissed her. And then the memory of what happened next went completely hazy because she fell into that kiss and almost drowned in the overpowering onslaught of the hungry passion he unleashed. Full of virile masculine power and devouring demand, his hard lips captured hers and thrust them fiercely apart so that he could penetrate the tender interior with his tongue and with a shockingly erotic thoroughness that racked her slender body against his with a helpless shudder of response. All control vanquished, she let the excitement rage over her and through her, tightening her nipples into bullet points, while flashing a jolting sensual wake-up call to her core. She shook in reaction, icy snowflakes melting on her cheeks in contrast to the smoulderingly hot burn of his carnal mouth on hers. It was a connection she had never made before and it was