The freezing cold air burned his throat with every inhalation, but he forced himself on. He was no way near working off the intense need racking his body. All night long he’d had dreams of Freya, born from the past, tainted by the present. He was no stranger to frustration and was more than capable of handling it himself. But it was different now that she was in his cabin. Before, he’d been able to tell himself he’d imagined how perfect her skin was, how his skin felt on fire when she looked at him, that the heat of her body made his heart feel as if it were clawing out of his chest to get to her.
‘Please don’t,’ she begged him, turning away.
‘Don’t what?’ he asked, pulling her back to him, needing to see what hurt she was trying to hide.
‘Look at me like you want to kiss me when you clearly don’t.’
Everything in him turned to stone. He couldn’t move, because if he did it would be to give her the one thing she clearly wanted...and the one thing he had no right to give.
A blush rose to her cheeks under his gaze and, before he could react, she rose on her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his.
For all their softness, they struck him with the weight of an anvil. Shockwaves rippled out over his body, down his legs, to his toes and into the floor.
But when he still didn’t move Freya pulled back and looked up at him with such hurt that it blasted the final brick in his determination to stay away from his charge.
She went to pull back, but instead he drew her to him, his lips found hers and his heart found home.
That memory twisted in his chest and spurred him onwards faster and faster until his focus was solely survival—his body’s needs reduced to breath, balance and determination. He added another circuit to an already punishing regimen before returning to the cabin, telling himself it was for his own good and not because she was there, waiting for him.
He took the steps, ignoring the twitches in his thigh muscles, and stripped off all layers, refusing to let his awareness go beyond the boot room. His skin was already on fire, the sweat pouring from his body from the exertion despite the minus temperature, cooling and raising the hairs on his arms. But in his mind’s eye he saw Freya in the boot room yesterday, peeling off her clothes and, just like that, he was rock-hard and furious.
He threw on fresh clothes just to get to the bathroom and, taking a deep breath, pulled open the door to the cabin, scanning the space for signs of Freya. A coffee mug was missing and the dishes he’d washed up last night had been put away. She was awake but back in the room then. He frowned. When he finished with the shower they’d have to sit and talk. But first he needed hot water to soothe the muscles he felt already tensing up from the punishing morning run. Imagining the blessed relief of the powerful shower, he cut the distance to the bathroom in long strides.
He noticed that the shower had been used and a vague warning sounded in the back of his mind but, desperate to feel the heat of the pounding water on his skin, he ignored it. Turning on the shower, he stripped, stepped in and...leapt back from the frigid icy shards of water. Grabbing the rail to stop himself from slipping, his heart rate sky-rocketed and it hadnothingto do with desire.
‘Freya!’ he howled before turning the air blue with more expletives than he’d uttered in the last two years.
She had used up all the hot water. Hot water that, without the solar panels in play to heat the large tank, was reliant on the much smaller wood burner. A supply really only enough for one shower a day. He cursed again. He heard bare feet skittering across the floor outside the bathroom and hoped she’d have enough sense to keep herself out of his line of sight until he’d calmed down—which would probably be just in time for Gunnar to return to pick her up.
Gritting his teeth, he rubbed himself viciously with the towel before getting dressed. He had what he needed in the boot room, and he had what he wanted in the garage. Warm clothes and a damn good distraction.
He prayed to whatever gods of old were listening to give him patience as he stalked towards the outbuilding, not realising that it had been the first time he’d not thought of Enzo or the mission in months.
Freya had returned to the room after the most amazing shower she’d ever had. The power and heat of the spray blasted away the fog from the night before and she’d emerged pink-skinned, refreshed and determined.
Until she’d sorted through the clothes she’d worn last night, finding her underwear scrunched into the pocket of the joggers, and clenched her teeth together. Having not hung it out as Kjell had ordered her to do, they still held the damp sweat from yesterday’s exertion running back and forth between the cabin and helicopter in the snow. She’d thought he’d been punishing her, which was why she’d ignored him, but now she was very much regretting it. Contemplating confronting him without underwear—again—made her feel vulnerable but she would...
Kjell’s yell shook the walls of the cabin.
Her head snapped round and she ran into the living area and stared at the bathroom door, her eyes growing rounder with each expletive. Only when she caught the Swedish word for cold did she realise what had happened and ran back to the room and just about resisted the urge to hide under the bed. She heard the bathroom door slam back into its frame and the stamp of heavy feet stalking towards the boot room.
‘Freya—’ his voice all growl ‘—keep the wood burner fuelled or there really will be trouble.’
The cabin door slammed, flinging another open in her mind.
Trouble, Freya. I’m nothing but trouble.
She walked out into the living area, desperately throwing up mental blocks against the memory pushing at her mind. Her heart trembled.
I don’t want to remember. I don’t.
She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists as if the physicality of it would hold her in the present. But instead of the frigid dry cold, she inhaled the damp scent of wet leaves, pumpkin spice and autumn.
She pulled at the neck of the T-shirt, feeling the warmth of the knitted scarf she’d thrown about her neck before leaving her dorm room to find him. To find Kjell.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she ran down the path she’d seen him on just seconds earlier. She swept around the corner and came to an abrupt stop at the sight of his back. The tension cording his neck and shoulders told her that he knew she was there.
‘Kjell, please stop,’ she begged, her breath frosting the night air and catching the light from the lamppost.