Page 7 of Escaped (Snowbound with a Stranger #3)

Aftershock

Erin

The world around me was a bitter cold bubble, my body chilled to the bone as we passed the white branches of the trees, but peering up at the desolate landscape neighboring the bunker, I wasn’t sure if the plummeting temperatures were exclusively linked to the climate.

The terrain was certainly frozen, but it was nothing compared to the shard of ice puncturing my heart.

I shot him! Frigid terror swept over me again as the memory bloomed.

I had shot Hawkins.

I could scarcely reconcile the deed with my personal impression of myself, but I didn’t deny the facts. I’d shot Hawkins and I’d abandoned his body without so much as checking to see if he still had a pulse.

I straightened at that unnerving idea. What if he’s still alive?

My brow creased, although I couldn’t decide if leaving him alive to potentially enact retribution or leaving him dead troubled me the most.

Hawkins was an unpleasant and immoral person, who’d done evil things. I’d seen that for myself, but did that give me the right to shoot the guy and leave him?

It wasn’t the kind of conundrum I’d ever expected to have to deal with, but wrestling with the weight of what I’d done was beginning to inspire hysteria. My racing pulse sent burning tears to my eyes, and I wanted to scream, wanted to shout and tell the world what I’d become. As it was, though, I was forced into an anesthetized silence, compelled to suffer for my crimes as my lover urged me on to something he called safety.

I fought the desire to look back for the hundredth time. What good would it do? Since we’d passed from the path in pursuit of Hawkins’ elusive car, I knew his body was no longer there for me to witness, and I’d never know what had become of him. He could well have been alive—left to painfully bleed to death beside the bodies of the goons he’d paid for protection, and I’d have to live with that uncertainty.

But I can’t. I pulled in a painful breath. What if he’s alive and bleeding?

The question reverberated, as did the notion of what difference it would make to know the answer. I wasn’t proposing to rush back in there and rescue the slimy fool. I was the one who’d bloody shot him. The truth was, men like Hawkins deserved to suffer. I just hadn’t anticipated being the one to offer deliverance.

I’d done that. I shot him…

Somehow, it didn’t make sense. How could someone as ‘normal’ as me be involved? What was I doing, embroiled in madness like that?

Lifting my head, my gaze fell upon the torso of the man who represented the answers to all my dark questions—Eli—the cause of all my madness. He was the reason I was there, but he was also the reason I’d lingered long after Hawkins had left me in his office. I couldn’t conceive the idea of leaving him behind, and as he tugged me over the roots of the latest tree, I acknowledged he was more than only a companion. Eli had become essential to me, like the oxygen I needed to breathe.

He was the lunacy I couldn’t live without.

A part of me might have wanted to hate him, should have resented the things he’d put me through and how he’d inadvertently landed me in so much turmoil, but breathing in his earthy scent, I accepted there was nothing but relief swelling in my heart for the man heaving me onward.

Without Eli, I’d have died in the snow, or I’d have starved to death waiting to freeze. He’d kept me alive, even if his life-saving measures had come with a string of tempting caveats. Without him, I’d have never learned more about the woman I was, about the things I enjoyed, and who I hoped to become. Clasping onto his shirt, the idea of a life without him seemed unthinkable. When our paths had crossed, I’d collided with emotions I had no desire to resist.

“Keep going,”

he murmured, his breath warm on my crown as we trudged on.

“His garage has to be close.”

I risked a glance at the sky to see what time of day it was, regretting the deed immediately when my head started to spin.

“Eli.”

Nausea was still lurking at the back of my throat, but there was nothing left to throw up anymore, only the legacy of dehydration and weariness remaining in its wake.

“I need to stop.”

“Just a bit further, little girl.”

He didn’t pause as he persuaded me on.

“Even if there isn’t a garage, there’ll be somewhere up ahead we can rest, and—”

“No!”

Lurching from his side, I staggered off in the opposite direction, disorientated as I stumbled and collapsed to the frozen ground. As my knees hit the earth, I suddenly remembered why my feet were so wet and cold. “My feet.”

Without boots, my socks had rapidly soaked up the freezing water until I could scarcely even feel my extremities. The cold was biting, numbing my nerves and fibers and making it painful to walk.

He was there with me in an instant, crouching behind me as he tugged my hair away from my face. My instinct was to push him away and stop his fussing, but closing my eyes, I realized his touch was insanely comforting. I wanted him, but I couldn’t bear the sight of him, loathed him, yet needed him in the most fundamental way. The paradox seemed set to suffocate me.

“No boots.”

I pointed to my sodden socks as though he needed clarification. Somehow, in the haze of everything that had transpired, we’d both overlooked my lack of footwear. Crazy really, for a grown woman to run out into the cold without anything except socks on her feet, but that was who I was—a crazy woman.

“Christ.”

He shook his head, furious emotion burning in his eyes.

“I forgot. I’m sorry. Let me carry you.”

He reached for me then, tugging me closer as he prepared to lift me from the ground.

“No!”

Much though I sought the solace of his body, the idea of leaving the ground seemed stifling.

“I can’t… I can’t breathe!”

That was a lie. The air out there was the best I’d tasted for some time, but the weight of everything that had happened was starting to pulverize me, and I needed to stop, needed to think for just a moment longer.

“Let me look at you.”

Tipping my chin in his direction, his concerned gray eyes assessed me as his free hand smoothed back the loose strands of my unruly mane. I tried not to linger on the fact that he’d been shot or the blood stains all over his hands. Hell, maybe I was covered in Hawkins’ blood too and I just hadn’t noticed.

“You’re in shock.”

That was one way of putting it.

“I’ve never shot anyone before today.”

My tone was almost whimsical as I tried not to dwell on how terrible the thought was.

“But now I’ve shot two men and just left one of them to die.”

“He’d have shot us.”

There was no vindication in his voice as he defended my actions, no signs of triumph at our alleged victory, only a sense of certainty that he was right. If I hadn’t acted, one or both of us would have been dead.

“Well, he’d have shot me, and I hate to think what he’d be doing with you.”

“Don’t.”

I closed my eyes at the awful alternate reality. Hawkins had made his ill intentions clear enough.

“You did what needed to be done.”

His thumb stroked the side of my face.

“What I failed to do. You saved me, little girl.”

“You saved me many times before this.”

I barely even recognized my voice as my eyes flickered open, but my sentiment was real. Eli had come along and changed everything. He had a power over me I couldn’t understand, but I no longer felt the need to fight. I’d seen a horrible glimpse of what the world looked like without him, and I didn’t care to witness it again.

“You got yourself out of his custody, sir, and you got us out of there.”

“Baron.”

His voice was soft as he presumably thought of his friend.

“He was the one who got me out of that cell.”

“He’ll be okay.”

Fresh trepidation twisted at the ambiguity of my statement. I didn’t know if Paul was all right. Neither of us did. For all we knew, he could have fared no better than Hawkins.

“He said he’ll find us.”

A strained quiet stretched out on the icy breeze as it whipped past my shivering body. The lack of certainty seemed suddenly smothering.

“He can follow our tracks in the snow.”

In the end, it was Eli who broke the silence, nodding to the markings our footsteps had left since we’d moved to walk on the grass.

“They’ll guide him to us, but then, they can also show any of Hawkins’ men who are looking for us where we are.”

“We need to keep going.”

I vocalized what I suspected was on his mind, reaching for his forearm to steady me as I climbed unsteadily to my full height. My feet and shins were soaking with cold water from the icy ground, but rather than perturb me the way they should have, the frozen temperature only reminded me how lucky I was. I was alive and able to feel the numbing cold, unlike so many others we’d left inside.

“You read my mind.”

Tugging me closer, he winced, reminding me again that he was also in pain.

“How is it?”

I gestured to his injured shoulder.

“I told you, it’s just a flesh wound.”

He shrugged, suppressing his flinch at the obvious pain.

“I’ll live, but you’re not walking any more without boots.”

“But you can’t carry me if you’ve been shot!”

What the hell was he thinking?

“I shall do just that.”

Pressing himself against me, his eyebrow cocked in that way that begged me to defy him.

“And you, little girl, will do as you’re told.”

He couldn’t be serious, could he? Is he truly playing the ‘Dominant’ card in the middle of this shitshow?

“I’m worried about you.”

Lifting a hand to his injured shoulder, I skimmed the area lightly.

“I’m fine.”

He enunciated the words softly.

“I can’t believe I let you walk this far without boots, though. I just didn’t think.”

Him and me both.

“I guess we had other things on our minds, sir.”

“Yeah.”

His brow rose.

“It’s no excuse, though. I said I’d look after you, and you’ll probably end up with frostbite.”

His tone was wry, but I wriggled my toes regardless, keen to reassure myself on that point.

“I’ll be okay if we can find that car.”

Reaching into my pocket, I tugged out the key fob and tucked it into my palm. For someone who’d never so much as stolen a pen before, I was remarkably thankful for my foresight.

“I hear that.”

Kissing me on the cheek, he lowered to take my weight.

“Ready for me to carry you?”

I had no idea what I was ready for anymore. Up until that day, I’d have sworn that I was incapable of taking another life, yet with enough pressure applied to the appropriate points, I’d folded.

“Erin?”

His deeper octave garnered my attention.

“We don’t know how many of them are left, but when they discover what we’ve done, they’re going to be angry. It’s better that we move now.”

I was sure he was right about the impending threat. It seemed likely that Hawkins had more men working for him than only the ones we’d encountered, although the notion of yet more raging henchmen charging after us did nothing to quell my unease. We had to find a way out of the impending nightmare before anyone else got hurt.

We have to find his car.

“Are you sure I won’t hurt your shoulder too much?”

Reaching around his neck, I leaned into his body heat as he swept me from my frozen feet.

“What was that?”

His impossibly alluring eyebrow arched again as he pressed me closer to his body. He masked whatever pain he experienced well, but the tell-tale signs were there in his expressive eyes.

“Just because you saved my life, don’t think I won’t tan your pretty little backside if you don’t refer to me properly.”

Smirking at his dry tone, I buried my face gently against his uninjured collarbone.

There was something soothing about being so close to him.

Even though I was a murderer with soaking socks, even though we had no idea where we were and our fate was far from certain, he was able to console me in a way no one else could ever have achieved.

“Sorry, sir.”

I mumbled the words against him with a smile. Despite everything he’d been through, he smelt so bloody good.

“You’re forgiven.”

He started to move, holding me close to his body as his long strides cut through the terrain.

“You’re always forgiven, little girl.”

Always forgiven?

After the things I’d done, that sounded like a tempting concept I was hardly worthy of, but nestling against him, I let the idea pacify me, mollified by the man who’d saved me more times than I could remember.

Savior, captor, hero—Eli was all of those to me and more.