Shredded (17 page)

“Relax,” he says as he lifts me off my feet in an obscene version of a bear hug. “I’m just playing with you.”

“Then let me go. I don’t want to play.” I jab my elbow back into his ribs, but it doesn’t have much impact. “Please, let me go.”

“Sure, of course.” He puts my feet back on the ground, loosens his grip just enough to slide a hand under my jacket and sweater. His rough palm is on my stomach now, on my skin, and terror is a deadly sharp icicle within me. “I’m not going to hurt you, Ophelia. I just want—”

He goes flying before he can finish his reassurance. I don’t expect it and I’m straining so hard in the other direction that I stumble forward, hard, the second he releases me. A strong arm wraps around my waist right before I slam into the ground, keeps me from falling face-first into the snow. I know it isn’t Harvey this time, can feel the difference in the arm holding me and the spicy cinnamon scent of the man it belongs to, but still I freak out. Start shoving and clawing to get away. I can’t think, can’t breathe. I can’t—

He lets go immediately, takes a couple of steps away. “Hey, Ophelia, are you all right?”

I turn my head to see Z standing there, his hands raised in front of him in a gesture I know he means to be nonthreatening, reassuring. And it is. Somehow I know that the rage burning in his eyes isn’t for me. That he won’t hurt
me
.

Harvey, though, is another matter entirely. Z’s looking at him like he wants to kill him. And maybe it’s wrong of me, but I just can’t work up the will to care. Not right now, when I can still feel Harvey’s hand on my stomach, his fingers creeping toward my bra.

Still, I hate anyone seeing me this vulnerable. I dash a glove across my face, brush at the weak, useless tears I didn’t even know I was crying. But they’re frozen to my cheeks and they don’t budge. Not really.

“Answer me, Ophelia.” Z’s voice is strained, worried. “Are. You. All. Right?”

“I’m fine.” I take a deep breath, tell myself that it’s true. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t look convinced.

“I swear,” I reassure him, making sure my voice doesn’t tremble this time. “I’m okay.”

It must work, because he nods before switching his attention to Harvey, who is just now climbing off the ground where Z threw him. “Hey, man, what the hell was that for?” he complains as he picks his hat out of the snow.

Z doesn’t answer, just plows a fist straight into Harvey’s face. Harvey rears back as blood starts leaking from a cut on his cheekbone. He touches his cheek, looks down at his crimson-streaked
gloves. Then launches himself at Z with a bellow of rage.

He’s bigger than Z—a couple of inches taller and probably fifty pounds heavier—but Z doesn’t so much as flinch. He just meets him head-on, with a fist to the stomach so powerful that it leaves Harvey gasping for air. Then Z really gets to work.

It’s over almost before it starts. A few jabs, an uppercut, and a hard roundhouse to the gut and Harvey is laid out in the snow, groaning. Z stands over him, fists clenched, face livid with rage. “What’s the matter, asshole? You only like to hurt girls? Come on, I’ll give you a free shot. Let you see what it feels like to hit a man this time.”

Harvey doesn’t move, so Z bends down, goes to punch him again. I get in the middle before his fist can land. Defending someone is one thing, but if Z does any more damage, he’s going to end up in jail, and he doesn’t deserve that, not when he’s just trying to help me.

“That’s enough.” I put my hand on his elbow. “Harvey’s had enough.”

Z shrugs me off. “It’s not enough. Someone needs to teach the fucker that he can’t go around putting his hands on women just because he feels like it.” He draws one booted foot back and kicks Harvey in the ribs. Then does it a second and a third time.

Harvey groans, curls up into a little ball to get away from Z’s blows. “Z, stop!” I grab him this time, try to pull him away, but once again, he shakes me off. He doesn’t seem to hear me. All he hears, all he can focus on, is Harvey.

“You don’t look so strong now, Harvey. Rolling around on the ground. Begging like a little bitch. How’s it feel not to be the strong one, huh? How’s it feel not to be the one in control?” He kicks him again.

Shit. If I don’t do something, and quickly, Z’s going to kill him. It’s in every fury-filled line of his body, in every enraged word that comes out of his mouth.

I rush him from the side, shove him as hard as I can just as he raises his leg to kick Harvey again. My attack catches him off balance, and it’s his turn to stumble. He regains his balance, then turns to me with a confused look on his face. “What’d you do that for?”

“Look at him.” I point at Harvey, who’s whimpering as he curls himself into the fetal position and waits for more blows to rain down on him.

But there aren’t going to be any more. My shove was the wake-up call Z needed. He’s finished. I can see it from the look in his eyes, like he’s just waking up from a particularly realistic nightmare.

Like he can’t believe what he’s done.

I don’t know why, but I reach for him. I should be terrified by his display of violence, by the way he lost himself in his own head. But I’m not. There’s something about the way he touched me, the way he came to my rescue, that tells me he won’t hurt me. At least not with his fists. Besides, if he’d wanted anything from me, he could have had it four nights ago.

It only takes Harvey a couple of seconds to figure out the attack has stopped. Once he glances at Z and realizes he’s not going to get hit again, he unrolls himself and climbs laboriously to his feet. “I was just having some fun, man,” he says in a whiny, high-pitched voice that makes me wish Z
would
hit him again. “I wasn’t going to hurt her.”

I think about the bruises on my arms, the pain in my back and shoulders. He’s already done damage and he doesn’t even know. Or, more likely, it’s that he doesn’t care.

“Get the fuck out of my face, asshole.” Z glares at him, takes a menacing step forward. “And if I ever catch you near Ophelia again, I’ll kill you.”

Ice runs down my spine. Not at the threat, but at the deadly soft conviction behind the words. A part of me thinks they aren’t for show, that Z really means them.

Harvey must think so, too, because he goes deathly white before spinning around and fleeing in the direction of the lodge as fast as his injured body can carry him.

After he disappears into the trees, I turn to Z. “Are you okay?” He’s stretching out his hand like it really hurts. Which, of course, it must. It’s bruised and swollen, the knuckles split open from the force with which his fist connected with Harvey’s face. The fact that he wasn’t wearing gloves, that his hands are ice cold, has only aided in the damage.

He’s also trembling, whether with cold or reaction I’m not sure. But I can’t leave him out here. Not when he just saved me from a fate I don’t even want to think about. Damn Harvey and his hey-can-I-hitch-a-ride approach. And damn me for being stupid enough to fall for it. I’m turning into one of those too-stupid-to-live heroines from horror movies and I don’t like it, at all.

“Where did you even come from?” I ask, looking around. Until we get to the employee lodge, there’s nothing out here at all. Just snow and trees and rocky cliffs.

“I’ve been hiking.” He walks about fifty feet away and picks up the snowboard he obviously dropped on his rush to rescue me.

“With a snowboard?” I ask, incredulously.

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like you’ve got time to tell it to me.” I take the board from him. “Come on. Let’s go back to my room so I can clean you up.”

“You don’t have to do that.” He doesn’t move. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine. You’re the one who looks half frozen.” I glance down at his clothes, realize they’re wet and covered in ice in a bunch of places. “Hey, what happened to you anyway?”

Those wild sapphire eyes of his jump to mine. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re soaking wet. Did you fall?”

The left corner of his mouth lifts up in that crooked smile I can’t help appreciating. “Something like that.”

“Well, hurry up then. You’re going to freeze to death out here.” Even snowboarding
pants can’t protect him completely from all that ice.

“It’s fine. I’m cool.”

“No shit you’re cool. That’s why your teeth are chattering.”

The crooked smile becomes a full-blown grin. “You think you’re pretty smart, huh, Ophelia?”

I think of Harvey. Of the mess I helped make back in New Orleans. Of the way standing too close to Z makes my breath catch even though I know better. “
Smart
’s not the first adjective that comes to mind. Now, let’s get going before you turn into a Popsicle.”

When he still makes no move to follow me, I move closer. Wrap an arm around his waist. God, he really is freezing.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” His way-too-cold hands reach up to cup my face in a way-too-familiar gesture. After the way we left things Friday night, it should piss me off—I don’t like being touched at the best of times—but somehow it doesn’t. The concern I can see in his eyes makes me feel good. Safe, even, and I haven’t felt like that in more months than I can count.

“I’m fine,” I tell him one more time, and this time it feels like the truth. “You got here before he could do anything but annoy me.” I push against Z’s waist to propel him forward, and this time he actually moves with me. “Thanks for the rescue, by the way.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a rescue.”

“Oh, yeah? What would you call it, then?”

“A helping hand. You were holding your own pretty damn well. Besides, I’m not exactly the type to rescue damsels in distress.”

I’m not so sure about that.

He stopped for me at the bus stop, then drove all the way up to the employee housing, out of his way, just to make sure I was safe.

He stopped when we were going at it, when no other guy would have, just because he realized I wasn’t into what we were doing.

And now this. He pulled Harvey off me. He stood between us. He made sure, before he did anything, that I was okay. Much as I’d like to agree with his assessment of himself, much as it would make things easier, I have to admit he feels a little bit like a hero to me. Which only makes all the shit that’s gone down between us seem even stranger.

We don’t say anything else until we get back to the lodge. I don’t know what to say, and I guess Z doesn’t, either. Nothing that’s happened in our messed-up relationship so far could have prepared me for the fact that he’d be the guy stepping up to stop me from being raped.

“Take your pants off,” I say as the door to my room closes behind us.

He turns to me with a teasing look. “Aren’t you at least going to buy me dinner first? I’m not the kind of guy to just get naked.”

I roll my eyes even as I reach for an extra blanket from the cupboard next to my bed and toss it to him. “You’re exactly that kind of guy, as Friday night proved. And as charming as the thought of you naked is, I was thinking more along the lines of preventing hypothermia rather than having my wicked way with you.”

“So you say, but we both know the truth.” He snaps the blanket in the air a couple of times to unfold it. “Not that I mind.”

“And here I was afraid of offending your delicate sensibilities.”

He laughs, loud and long. As he does, the sensitive, worried guy from earlier fades away, only to be replaced by the cocky bastard that most of the world sees when they look at him. The transformation should annoy me, but strangely it doesn’t. Not when he smiles at me and says, “I like you.”

“I like you, too,” I answer brusquely, determined not to let him see how off-kilter being around him makes me feel. “Now get changed.”

“If you insist.” He reaches for the tie at the top of his pants and undoes it.

“Stop!” I screech, whirling around to face the wall away from him. “What is it with you and taking your clothes off in front of people? There’s a bathroom right through that door.” I point blindly.

He chuckles. “What’s the big deal? It’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Besides, nothing’s showing. It’s way too cold for me to go commando.”

I don’t answer him, just groan and cover my eyes with my hands. Now that I’m not trying to have sex with him to get rid of him, I can’t believe he’s stripping in my room. Right in front of me. This is what I get for trying to return the favor he did me.

A half-naked Z in my bedroom.

My stomach flips a couple of hundred times at the thought, and unlike outside with Harvey, it’s not such a terrible feeling. Which just makes the whole situation feel worse. Remi hasn’t been dead quite a year yet, and here I am thinking about Z naked. Not just about having sex with him for expediency’s sake, but about kissing him, touching him, letting him touch me.

He’s everything I don’t want in a guy, everything I know to stay away from, and yet I’m standing here wondering what I’m missing by staring at the wall and not at him.

Just goes to show how screwed up my judgment really is.

“You can look now. The wet clothes are off.”

I realize my mistake as soon as I turn around. Z didn’t tell me that he was covered, only that the wet clothes were gone. And they are. But the blanket I gave him is crumpled on the floor at his feet and he’s standing there, watching me, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs and gray socks with a small hole over his right baby toe.

For long seconds I can do nothing but stare. He should look ridiculous with his socks all
slumped down like that and his toe poking through, but he doesn’t. Instead, he’s gorgeous. All long and lean and bronzed and muscled. And hot. So fucking hot I can feel my entire body catching fire at the sight of him. The quivering in my stomach moves lower and it takes every ounce of willpower I have not to touch him. Or, better yet, lick him.

He’s got his snakebites in this afternoon, and suddenly I want to know what the little silver balls will feel like against my lips when I kiss him.
If
I kiss him. Which I won’t. I’m done with adrenaline junkies just asking to get killed. And even if I wasn’t, the glimpses I’ve seen of him—of the scars on his body and the ones that lurk beneath his pretty-boy facade—scare the hell out of me. So that’s it. I’m grateful for what he did, but I’m done. Finished. I’ll dry his clothes, but then he has to go.