IcySeduction

Shara
Lanel

Christine convinces cabby Jake to
drive her into the Catskills—big mistake, thanks to a slick road and a deep,
snow-filled ditch. In the dark, in the middle of nowhere with no cell service,
they wait until dawn to walk for help. Letting her inhibitions slide is all in
the name of keeping warm and has nothing to do with how hot the cabby is.
Right?

Jake’s “tip” for driving into a
snowstorm is a one-night-stand with someone who doesn’t mind a little spanking.
Though he’d love to explore his Dominant-submissive fantasies with her, he
doesn’t expect to see her again. That is, until he experiences a true psychic
connection with her. According to the lore of his people, she is his mate.

All he has to do is convince a
modern woman from another state that she is meant to be the mate of a man she
barely knows. Oh yeah, right after he convinces her werewolves are real.

Inside Scoop:
Chains, whips and
handcuffs, oh my! Not only does our heroine explore her BDSM side, she does so
with a hot werewolf.

A Romantica®
paranormal erotic romance
from
Ellora’s Cave

Dedication

To Joy

The cab skidded across the yellow line into a snowy ditch
and that’s when Christine realized she’d never noticed what the driver looked
like. She’d need to hone her survival skills if she was going to hang out in
New York City. Unfortunately they weren’t anywhere near a well-populated
metropolis. Instead they were on a deserted road at night in the
Catskills…stuck.

Damn
.

“Are you all right?” The sexy male voice seemed far away,
making her think that perhaps she wasn’t all right. Perhaps she had a
concussion. “Is anything broken? I think I have a first aid kit in the trunk.”

Christine assessed her body. She didn’t hurt anywhere except
for a small spot on her forehead. “I think I bumped the window. I was looking
out at the snow.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

Christine couldn’t see the man or his fingers. She supposed
she needed to open her eyes. Aha! She stared up at the flickering ceiling light
until a couple of digits blocked her view.

“How many?” God, he was persistent.

“Two. And now you added one, so three.”

He grunted and took his fingers away, apparently satisfied. “Radio’s
out. Do you have a cell phone?” Without permission, he snatched up her purse
and started rummaging through its contents. She focused on his hands—nimble
fingers with a light sprinkling of hair on the back of his wrists. He found her
phone, flipped it open, and cursed. “No signal. Damn mountains.”

Christine turned her head slowly, still afraid it might fall
off. A dense layer of snow covered the windshield, probably from the drift they’d
slammed into. Out the side windows, she saw nothing but horizontally blowing
snow. Zero visibility. And it had come on so fast.

“Black ice,” the driver said. “Couldn’t tell it was there
until too late.”

“Can you dig us out?”

“No shovel and it looks hard-packed. I’ll try to back us
out. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” He didn’t seem to think they would and after
revving the engine with the gearshift in reverse the car rocked a bit, but
nothing more.

The two front doors were caught in the drift and wouldn’t
open. Christine finally looked at the driver’s face when he decided to climb
over the backseat. He had a solid square jaw, slightly crooked nose and fierce
blue eyes. Mighty nice. A ball cap covered his brown hair. The Yankees, of
course.

“I think there’s a blanket in the trunk, but not much else,”
he said, shoving open one of the back doors, which let in a flurry of frozen
flakes. Christine shivered and fought back a moment’s panic at the thought he
might take off and leave her there alone. But she heard the trunk open and
things getting tossed around. Then it closed again and the man reappeared at
the side door.

“What’s your name?” Christine asked once the guy had shut
out the frigid wind.

“Jake Bartlet.”

“Hello, Jake. I’m Christine Vanliev. So what are we going to
do?”

They’d left the airport at ten p.m. and had been on the road
for less than an hour. Her parents lived in a small town in the Catskills,
upstate New York, and since she’d missed seeing them for Christmas, she’d been
determined to reach them for New Year’s Eve. Bad weather had delayed her flight,
then her landing, so she’d told her parents she’d take a cab no matter the
expense because she had no idea when she’d get in. Now she was wishing she’d
booked a hotel room and waited until morning.

“Unfortunately, I think we’re going to have to huddle under
this blanket until morning.” Jake tossed the blanket across her legs, then
wiggled toward the front again, messing with the radio. He got static for his
troubles but Christine got a nice view of his ass in the obscenely worn
dungarees. As he repositioned himself on the backseat, he said, “The car’s
jammed deep into the drift with the front wheels in the ditch. There’s no
visibility out there and I’m damn sure we’d freeze to death wandering around
before we’d find help. If the snow stops by morning, we can try then.” He took
off his hat, then finally settled enough to meet her eyes.

Christine looked away, wondering if she had good reason to
argue with his plan, and tugged her carry-on bag from the floor to her lap. She
had a sweater, spare underwear, deodorant and a bag of M&Ms inside. She
draped the sweater over her lap and opened the M&Ms, wishing she’d packed a
bottle of wine instead. “Like some?”

Jake slid next to her on the vinyl seat. The car’s interior
temperature was dropping rapidly, so it was nice to catch a bit of radiant heat
from his nearness. He popped a couple of the candies in his mouth. “Thanks, but
I do think we’re going to have to share body heat.” He shrugged out of his dark
leather jacket. “Let’s put the coats behind us and the blanket over us.” He
obviously wasn’t one to waste words.

“Um.” Was there a way to avoid this heat-sharing thing? He
was a total stranger after all, though he did have a nice scent, some sort of
masculine cologne.

He grinned. “I’ll be a gentleman, I promise. This is an
unusual situation for me too, you know.”

He had warned her about the weatherman’s predictions when
she’d told him how far she needed to go. He’d also warned her about the fare.
She’d said she’d pay it, no problem, so this was definitely her fault. She
needed to be reasonable about the situation, though she wanted to run screaming
from the car. “Okay, sounds like a plan.” It was the least she could do since
he probably would’ve been off-shift by now and home in his warm bed if not for
her.

The backseat was spacious but it was hard to find a
comfortable position for the two of them together, even once Jake took off his
ball cap to keep the bill from hitting the back of Christine’s head. She wound
up snugged between his legs with her back to his chest and his arms wrapped
around her. He’d packed the two jackets behind him to insulate the door, then
swung the blanket over top of their legs. Christine added her sweater and
pulled the layers up over their arms. She didn’t like watching her breath
crystallize in front of her face, but she liked it even less when the ceiling
light snuffed out, leaving them in pitch darkness.

“Not the best battery in this old thing,” Jake said, his
voice rumbling through his chest and his breath tickling her ear. “We’ll
probably need a jump in the morning.”

Great, so there was no hope of driving out of here.

After a few moments of silence where Christine listened to
Jake’s breath near her ear and counted the thumps of his heart, Jake said, “So
where are you from?” He’d picked her up in front of Newark airport.

“From here originally but now living near Orlando in
Florida.”

“Better weather.”

“Oh yeah.” She smiled, but she’d missed the turning leaves
in the fall and the snow for Christmas. “Funny how I forget the slush, salt and
rusted cars when I’m down south. I just idealize snow, like a Currier and Ives
painting.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“I guess, but this”—she gestured in the darkness—“should
bring back those repressed memories.”

A short snort came from Jake. A laugh perhaps? Except for
her bared ears and nose, she was feeling downright toasty now in the little
cocoon of body heat. Only problem was something stiff pressed against her
backside and she was pretty sure she knew what it was. Should she say something?
Ignore it? Or snuggle closer? Despite clubbing with her coworkers a couple
times a month, it had been a while since she’d hooked up with anybody for a one-night
stand.

Her body sought to remind her of how sad that was because
she started to feel the little tingle low in her belly and along her nipples.
She tensed. He had to know he had a hard-on, right? Maybe he thought she couldn’t
tell?

“You feel good,” he said. “’S been a while since I’ve had a
lady in my arms.”

“Any particular reason for that?”

“Workin’ all the time. Two jobs to keep my son in private
school and pay the bills.”

“How old’s your son?” And did he have a wife to go with that
son?

“He’s thirteen.”

“Are you married?” If he was, that made what she was feeling—the
first stirrings of desire—all the more wrong.

“Not anymore. I was up until Dean turned three, then she met
someone ‘with more prospects’, as she put it. Luckily, she didn’t even try for
custody.”

“I’m sorry.”

She really wanted him to move against her, to rub his cock
against her back, maybe because that would give her an excuse to do some moving
of her own. He’d been keeping one arm stiff against the backseat while the
other wasn’t touching her at all, but abruptly he circled both arms around her
waist, tucked up under her breasts.

“Much warmer,” he murmured.

Oh yeah. Much. She relaxed her head back to his shoulder and
he balanced his chin atop her hair. The snow muffled any sounds outside the car
and the inside was silent except for their breaths. Christine concentrated on
Jake’s breathing, which she could feel as well as hear. She noticed it caught a
couple of times and when it did, his heart sped up too.

“Your hair smells good,” he said after they’d sat in silence
for several moments. “Fruity.”

“Kiwi shampoo.”

“Nice.”

His thighs, wrapped around hers, felt very solid, muscular.
His stomach and chest seemed quite trim too, from what she could tell, and his
arms were very definitely strong, sturdy. A tickling sensation on the back of
her ear alerted her to the fact that he’d lightly licked her. She gasped but
didn’t draw away. The lick turned into a nibble on her lobe. Then a quick lick
behind her ear and down her neck. Wow. Beams of pleasure shot through her body.
Her breathing changed at the same time his did, perhaps because he realized she
wasn’t saying “no”. He gently sucked the back of her neck, which was the most
sensitive spot on her entire body, she decided. His lips were warm, his tongue
wet and circling, and around them was a cocoon of snowy silence. Christine didn’t
want to break the spell. It was rare for a guy to spend time on foreplay before
rushing to the main event but Jake seemed quite content tasting the top of her
shoulder, her cheek and her jaw.

“I think I’m forgetting my gentleman promise,” he murmured.

“Me too.”

And finally, she felt his hips move just a bit, bucking his
cock against her back. When he did so, he barely stifled a moan. He palmed both
of her breasts as he traced his tongue along the back of her neck to the other
side. “I like your short hair,” he said. “Easy access.”

“Mmm. Some guys complain. They want long hair, like a cover
model.”

“Gets in the way.” He slid his hands from her breasts, down
her stomach, to the hem of her shirt. Sneaking beneath the fabric, his fingers
brushed against her stomach. “Lean your head more.” She did, feeling as if she
was baring her neck to the fangs of a vampire, but Jake didn’t bite her. He
pressed his lips firmly to her skin and sucked, a favored method for making
hickeys. When was the last time she’d had a hickey? High school? She should
tell him to stop. A hickey would be visible in the morning. All the world would
know she’d made out with someone between the airport and her parents’ house.
But God, it felt so erotic. She closed her eyes and lowered her palms to his
thighs to stroke.

He stopped the suction with a nibble. His fingers discovered
her bra and explored a bit until they found the front clasp. Pop and the bra
was unhooked. Palms quickly brushed the satin aside and he once again cupped
her breasts but this time skin to skin.

Whoa! This was happening too fast…wasn’t it? Christine
stiffened and Jake, as if sensing this, slid his palms to her stomach. She hadn’t
protested or told him to stop, but he seemed willing to let her be. Despite his
chivalry, his dick pressed against her, harder than ever, and his breath
shuddered against her neck. And just listening to the rough breathing sent a
bead of wetness into her panties and stoked her nipples to attention. She was
kidding herself if she didn’t admit to being massively turned-on.

“Go slow,” she murmured.

“Are you sure?”

She leaned her head back in the nook under his chin. His
stubble grazed along the outer rim of her ear with the movement. “I’m sure.”
But what was she giving permission to? How far did she plan to go with this
stranger? She didn’t want to think that far ahead. She just wanted to feel
scintillated and alive.

The rough pads of his fingers slid along her skin underneath
the layers of fabric, from her stomach, higher to the bottom curves of her
breasts. His thumbs lifted, his fingers molded. Hands cupped her breasts while
her taut nipples rubbed against her shirt fabric, hypersensitive. The seat
creaked as he pushed his hips upward and the second after that thrust, he
gasped.

“Damn, this feels too good.”

“Too good?”

“It’s gotta be wrong, doesn’t it? To get pleasure out of
being stranded?”

“Not if we both want it.” And she wanted it more and more
because his thumbs stroked back and forth across her nipples, just the lightest
of touches, torturous and unsatisfying, stimulating and crazy. She bit her
bottom lip, holding back a sound. What sound? A moan maybe, a cry, a demand for
more? She was afraid to let him know how needy he was making her.

His right hand left the program, started a lazy trek down
her stomach and lower still. She heard the snap of her pants and the rasp of
the zipper going down. His palm pressed one side of her pelvis, lower to that
ticklish spot by her leg joint. His fingers crooked down along her inner thigh
and then cupped her center shockingly hard. She bucked against his palm,
wanting more pressure, wanting him to search inside her pants since he’d
already unzipped them. His chuckle against her ear told her he was teasing her.

She released her lower lip and moaned, “Oh God.”