Shameless - Sybil Bartel Page 0,33

he took advantage. My stepmother was the opposite. She walked without a footprint, she was so gentle. But Shade, if that was even his real name, he was just… genuine.

“Princess.”

I jumped. “Sorry. Coming.” I opened my door, and he closed his. It felt symbolic in a snowstorm at the top of the mountains.

He met me at the back of the SUV and opened the lift gate. “Grab only essentials. Leave the suitcases here.”

“Okay.” Already wearing the warmest things I had, I rummaged through one of my suitcases and grabbed a couple shirts and pants and underwear and socks. I reached for my sneakers. “How long are we going to be here?” The cold already seeping through his jacket, I started to shiver.

He took my sneakers out of my hand and tossed them back in the suitcase. “Those will be useless up here.” Reaching for my pair of Uggs that I wouldn’t have even considered wearing outside the house in Miami, he grabbed them and shoved them in his bag. “Come on, you’ve got enough. We need to move.” He took the rest of the clothes from me and unceremoniously dumped them in his bag.

I closed the suitcase, and he shut the lift gate.

It dangerously felt like we were a team.

Then he pulled the garage door closed, locked it, and took my hand.

Everything somersaulted—my heart, my stomach, my nerves.

Holding me tight as if he’d done it a thousand times before, he issued instructions. “Walk in the tire tracks, then in my footsteps.”

“Okay.” The tracks and his steps were already disappearing from the heavy snow that kept falling. Balancing on the toes of my boots, I started picking my way across the driveway.

“Kick it up a notch, princess.”

“I’m going as fast as I can.” Walking in heeled boots in the snow was shockingly more difficult than running in them on broken asphalt.

Apparently I wasn’t moving fast enough for him, because in the next instant I was scooped up into a bodyguard’s strong arms.

Air left my lungs in surprise and plumed in the cold air in front of us. I wrapped my arms around his neck and tried to pretend like I wasn’t secretly thrilled. “Let me guess. I wasn’t doing it fast enough for you?”

“That’s a whole lot of sexual innuendo for a small-as-fuck nineteen-year-old, princess.”

A secret thrill chased the already prevalent goose bumps covering my body even though he called me a teenager again. “You know, you kissed me back,” I half teased, half fished to see what he would say.

His arms stiffened, but he didn’t say anything.

Feeling daring, I pushed it. “I can’t mention it now?” Maybe kissing him again wouldn’t be the worst idea I’d ever had.

Trudging through the snow, not breaking pace, he looked down at me. “Woman, don’t test me.”

Even in the nighttime snowfall, I could see his eyes were a lighter brown circled by a darker brown. “I’m not trying to.” Was I? Because I didn’t think you could test a man like him. He didn’t seem like he would even allow it. He was all alpha and completely dominant, and I very much suspected you either committed one hundred percent to taking him on or you’d be left in his wake.

“Yes, you are.” He walked down a couple steps and set me on my feet under an overhang. Punching in a code on a keyless entry, he pushed open a heavy wood door. “In you go.”

I stepped inside and was struck by the view of the mountains in front of me from a two-story-tall wall of windows.

Tossing the bag he’d been carrying on his shoulder onto the floor of the entryway, he reached for a winter parka that was hanging on a peg just inside the door. “Close the door after me. I’ll be right back.” He put the heavy coat on and stepped outside.

Alarm hit. “Where are you going?”

His back to me as he walked off the way he came, he tossed his reply over his shoulder. “Firewood.”

A second later, he disappeared around the side of the cabin. “Be careful,” I called out into the night.

“Shut the door, woman. You’re letting all the heat out.”

His reply carried across the eerily quiet night, like the snow had blanketed all sounds except his footsteps and his voice. I listened for a moment, then closed the door.

Turning, I took everything in.

Small but modern kitchen, huge leather couches, bigger fireplace, area rugs over polished wood floors, wood walls, a staircase on the left going up in one direction,