Rogue Rider (Lords of Deliverance) (2 page)

“Let’s go, Sammy.” She urged the gelding to move faster than she’d normally like, but nothing about this situation was normal.

She was freezing and exhausted by the time she smelled the smoke from her wood stove, and her eyelashes were crusted with ice by the time she eased Sam up to the rickety porch. The frigid air burned her lungs with each breath as she dragged the man’s dead weight off the sled and then unhitched Sam. She’d remove the harness later. Right now she had to get the man into the house and the horse into the barn.

She ran the thirty yards to the barn and, battling the wind, tugged open the door. Sam trotted inside, but she didn’t bother taking him to his stall. He’d find it on his own.

Too bad getting the man to her bedroom wasn’t nearly as easy as putting up the horse. As a fitness freak who worked a small farm, Jillian wasn’t a wuss, but she thought she might have dislocated something as she dragged Fish Stick across the floor. She spent another ten minutes heaving and straining to lift him onto her bed.

Once he was sprawled out on his back, his broad shoulders taking up an enormous amount of room on the mattress, she cranked the electric blanket to the highest setting and checked his pulse. Still strong. Shouldn’t it be sluggish? She’d taken basic CPR classes as well as Search and Rescue training, and from what she remembered, hypothermia caused a slow, weak pulse. Fish Stick’s couldn’t be more opposite. Steady, surging, and she swore his skin had already pinked up a little.

Leaving the mystery alone for now, she checked the phone, and sure enough, it was dead. Next, she stoked the fire and turned up the electric heat to eighty degrees. She was lucky to have electricity at all, actually. The power kept flickering, and it was probably only a matter of time before it went the way of the phone line.

Ooh, and then she’d be alone, in the dark with no phone, in the middle of nowhere… with a stranger.

This was a horror movie setup. She even had the token small animal to prove the situation was serious and make all the women in the audience worry.

Her Bengal cat, Doodle, watched the activity from his bed in front of the wood stove, unconcerned that there was a strange man in the house. But then, nothing really fazed him. As long as he had food and someone to pet him, he didn’t bother to get excited about much.

“You’re a big help there, buddy.” She shot Doodle a dirty look as she changed into dry sweats and slippers. “I’m going to check on the complete stranger in my bed, but don’t worry about me, okay?”

Doodle blinked his green eyes at her.

Wishing she had a big dog right about now, Jillian slipped into the bedroom. As she entered, Fish Stick sighed and shifted in the bed, just the smallest movement, but enough to give her a bit of hope.

Then his eyes popped open.

Startled, she leaped back, slapping her hand over her mouth. His eyes… God, they were amazing. The lightest shade of blue, and crystal clear, like the edge of a shallow glacier. They bored into her, but there was nothing cold about them. The raw heat in them pierced her all the way to her core.

Feeling silly for her overreaction but with her legs trembling anyway, she returned to the bedside.

“I’m Jillian. I found you in the woods. You’re going to be okay.” She wasn’t sure if he understood or not, but his eyes closed, and his thickly muscled chest began to rise and fall in a deep, regular rhythm. His color was good now, and
his full lips, once pale and chapped, were a smooth, dusky rose.

Remarkable.

What now? Maybe she should get something hot into his stomach. Quietly, she started for the door to put some broth on the stove.

“Hey,” he rasped, his voice a broken whisper. “Did I… hurt you?”

She inhaled sharply and turned, risking a look at him. Once again, his eyes drilled into her, but this time, they seemed to… glow a little.

“No.” She swallowed dryly. “No, you didn’t hurt me.”

His long, golden lashes fluttered down, as if he was satisfied by her answer. But dear God, why would he think he might have hurt her?

Who the hell had she brought into her house?

Fish Stick didn’t wake up again for a full twenty-four hours.

When he did, it was only long enough to drink a cup of hot beef broth. He hadn’t said a word, had merely stared at her with those gorgeous blue eyes and then fallen back into a deep sleep, as if he’d been awake for a year.

Jillian had tried to call Stacey, a local sheriff’s deputy and her best friend of twenty years, but the phone lines were still down. Figured. The storm seemed to have stalled, and Jillian decided she was going to hunt down that meteorologist and beat him with his own anemometer.

Doodle had taken to the stranger, and if the cat wasn’t eating or chasing one of his toys, he was curled up on the bed. The little traitor.

At the forty-six-hour mark, Jillian went to check on Fish Stick, her heart doing a crazy little skip when she saw him sprawled in her queen-sized bed, taking up the
whole thing. For some reason, her thoughts went to what he’d do with a woman in it. Someone his size needed a king mattress, especially if he had… company.

Stop it
. Why in the world was she thinking like that about a total stranger whose name she didn’t even know? Maybe because, even in his sleep, he exuded power, an off-the-charts masculinity that made every female hormone quiver.

Stop. It
.

The covers had slipped low on his hips, revealing hard-cut lower abs and sinewy obliques that disappeared under the sheet. Just one inch lower, and there would be nothing left to the imagination. She’d gotten a good look when she’d brought him in, but now that his skin had color in it again, he was a totally different man. Before, he’d been like a marble statue, weak as a baby. Now… oh, boy.

His hair, a thick, long mane of white gold, had been hopelessly matted. A couple of times she caught him growling in his sleep and tearing at it, so she hoped he wouldn’t mind that she’d sort of… cut it.

She’d left it as long as she could, but the shoulder-length cut was still a good twelve inches shorter than it had been.

Now it spilled over the red flannel pillowcase like spun silk, and really, it was so not fair that a man had better hair than she did. Better hair
and
eyelashes. Dammit, women
paid
to get lashes as long and thick as his.

“This is getting ridiculous,” she muttered, as she sank onto the mattress beside him.
He’s just a man
. A man who appeared to be in his late twenties and gifted with a freakishly perfect body.

She palmed his forehead, relieved to find that he was neither feverish nor cold.

She reached for the covers to tug them up when suddenly, in an impossibly fast movement, he grabbed her, whipped her roughly beneath him, and slammed his forearm across her throat. Fear spiked, sharp and biting. Under his weight, she could barely move, and with his arm on her windpipe, she could barely breathe.

His eyes were shards of winter ice as they bored into her, and she immediately reevaluated her estimate of his age. He might look to be no more than twenty-eight, but his eyes… they were ancient.

“Who are you?” he growled. “Where am I?”

“I—” She coughed, trying to suck air into her burning lungs. He let up on her throat. A little. “I’m Jillian.” She gulped a breath. “You’re in my house.”

His gaze narrowed, and she felt like a deer pinned by a wolf. “Why?”

“I found you,” she rasped. “In the snow. You were almost dead.”

He frowned. “That’s impossible.”

“That you were almost dead or that you were in the snow?”

Confusion flashed in his eyes, and he let up on the pressure a little more. “I’m not sure.”

“Okay,” she said slowly, not wanting to agitate him again. “Let’s start with something simple. What’s your name?”

“I think… I think it’s Reseph.”

“You
think
?”

The pressure on her throat lessened to almost nothing, but each breath still burned. “Reseph is the only name that comes to me.”

He wasn’t sure about his own name? And what an odd
name it was. His deep, resonant voice did have the slightest accent, though. Not that she could identify it. “Do you know where you’re from?”

“No idea. I can’t remember… anything.” He pushed up, his shoulders and biceps flexing with power, and looked down at his naked body. “Did we fuck?”

She nearly choked. “No.”

“Why not?” He eased back down on top of her and buried his face in her neck, inhaling deeply. This time she felt the distinct presence of an erection settling against her pelvis. The buzz in the very air around him shifted suddenly from menacing to blatantly erotic, but no less dangerous.

Oh, God. “Because we’re complete strangers.”

He lifted his head. “So?”

So
? This was not going well. “Look, maybe you should, ah, get off me, and we’ll discuss everything over dinner.”

“Dinner?” He grinned, and good Lord, he was stunning when he wasn’t scaring her half to death. “Totally on board with that. I’m starving. Maybe we could fuck first?”

This time she did choke. “Sex is not on the table. But chili is.”

“You can have sex on tables,” he said, and great, she was now picturing doing things in the kitchen that had nothing to do with eating. At least, not eating food.

“Chili,” she croaked. “No sex.”

He appeared to consider that, and she nearly passed out from relief when he rolled off her. “Okay, so where’s the food?”

“Kitchen.” She leaped off the bed, ignoring his amused grin and trying not to look at his erection… his
very
nice erection… which he wasn’t making any effort to cover up.

Nope, he lay on his back, legs spread, one arm behind his head as if he was in his house, in his bed, and she was merely the date he’d invited home last night.

Again, she wondered just who she’d brought into her house, because this guy was not flying with a full crew. Definitely not right in the head.

Averting her gaze, she backed toward the door. “I’m going to see if I can find you something to wear. Feel free to use the shower—”

He was already halfway to the tiny master bathroom. Despite her annoyance, she couldn’t peel her eyes away from his body as he strode across the wood floor. Every muscle was a fluid work of art as they powered his strides, bunching and rippling. And that ass… sweet Jesus, he had the nicest set of glutes she’d ever seen.

He disappeared into the bathroom, and she swore the last flex of his butt muscles was just for her. Oh, this guy had to go.

While he showered, she headed to the kitchen to stir the Crock-Pot of chili before taking the stairs down to the cellar. Half of the underground space was dedicated to food storage, but the other half was piled high with the remnants of her life in Florida, and with huge Rubbermaid containers of Christmas ornaments and things that had belonged to her parents.

She hadn’t been through any of this stuff since she moved here, and she cursed her misty eyes as she pawed through one of the plastic tubs of her parents’ clothing. Every shirt brought back a memory, every pair of shoes a story.

Just grab something and get it over with
.

Jillian wasn’t sure “grabbing something” would be
adequate. Although her father had been a tall man, there was nothing of his that would fit Reseph well. She supposed he’d have to make do with the forest green flannel pajama bottoms and the oversized black sweatshirt.

Glad to be done digging through memories, she trudged back up the stairs and nearly swallowed her tongue when she stepped into the kitchen at the same time that Reseph sauntered in.

Completely naked.

“Um… you couldn’t find a towel?”

He looked down at himself. “I found a towel. I’m dry.”

The man apparently had absolutely no inhibitions. “Right. Silly me.” She shoved the clothes at him. “Do you think you hit your head?”

“Might be why my memory is gone,” he said, and okay, sure, that might explain the amnesia, but that wasn’t what she’d been getting at.

While he dressed… reluctantly, it seemed… she spooned chili into bowls. As she reached into a drawer for spoons, she sensed a presence behind her. Reseph’s warmth engulfed her as he peered over her shoulder.

“Looks good.”

So Reseph had no inhibitions
and
no concept of personal space. At least he’d put the clothes on.

“It
is
good,” she said, scooting out from under his shadow. “It’s my mom’s recipe.” She placed the bowls on the table—opposite ends.

“I wonder if I have a mom.” There was a thread of… sadness?… fear?… worry?… in his voice. Maybe it was a mix of all three.

She could only guess at how she’d feel if she woke up in a strange place with no memory of how she got there or
who she was. The idea that there was a family out there who might be looking for him—including, maybe, a wife—had to be unsettling.

Especially since he’d wanted sex from a complete stranger. Jillian hoped to hell he wasn’t married.

“Let’s get some food in you, and we’ll see what we can figure out.” She opened the fridge. “I have milk, water, orange juice, Sprite—”