Sinner (The Hades Squad #1) (2 page)

“Do we have a radio connection?”

“Like a CB? Like what the truckers use?” Destiny shrugged. “Heck if I know.”

“You seem remarkably uninformed, ma'am. You don't know if you have a radio?” An edge of irritation slipped into his husky voice.

He showed no awareness of her as a woman. Her boobs always captured a man's attention; if she had a nickel for the number of times a guy spoke to her chest instead of her eyes, well, she'd be writing full time instead of editing. Destiny fought a scowl.

“It's not my cabin. I'm only here for a couple of days.”

“Really?” He wasn't looking at her; his narrowed eyes found the pile of DVDs she'd dumped onto the kitchen table.

Damn it.

There was no way he wouldn't notice the titles.

“I apologize for my manners, ma'am. I'm Sergeant Lincoln Chapman. And you are?”

“Sara Parker.” If he got wind of her real name after seeing the classic collection of seventies porn she'd purchased for research, he'd never believe she wasn't a stripper. She'd bought the porn to set the mood for the sex scenes best-selling author Angel Robinson had to rewrite during the next couple of days.

“Do you have a vehicle? I have to touch base with my troops.”

“I have a rental car.”

Two long strides took him to the picture window. Destiny couldn't tell because his back faced her, but Lincoln Chapman appeared to be studying the falling snow.

“How're you feeling?”

“What?” He glanced over one shoulder; the corners of his lips twitched.

“You were unconscious. You could have a concussion.”

“No concussion,” he quipped. “No wooziness, no dancing black spots. Where's the car?”

“In the driveway.” Destiny's shoulders slumped. He was going to leave and go to his troops. In her car. “Look. I understand you need to make contact with your men. But could you help me start a fire before you go?”

“You're a city girl.” He twisted to look at her. “No. If we don't leave now, we'll both be stuck. This weather isn't going to stop soon. Last report we had, this front's going to last a week. You'll have to come with me.”

And who died and made you king of the mountain?

The thought of being stuck alone in a blizzard didn't make her jump for joy. “Where are you going to go?”

“Healy.”

“There isn't a hotel in Healy. That's why I'm here.” No way in hell she'd stay by herself in this godforsaken cabin. “I'll grab my things.”

“We don't have time for that.” His gaze raked her head to toe, and he added, “Just grab your coat and boots.” Lincoln's lips curled as he stared at her bare toes and sandaled feet.

Destiny stifled a sigh. “This is it.” She waved a hand down her front. “I looked up the temperature. It's
supposed
to be in the seventies.”

“You spent twenty minutes outside wearing that? Have you no sense at all?”

“What was I supposed to do? Leave you in the tree?” Destiny jammed her hands onto her hips. “You know, an ounce of gratefulness wouldn't go amiss.”

He shook his head. “Where are the keys?”

“I'm driving.” She grabbed her Dooney & Bourke oversize tote from the coffee table, slung the straps over one shoulder, fished the key hook out of the purse, and stalked to the door.

Suddenly she was swept off the floor and cradled in his arms.

A waterfall of sensations strummed through every fiber. Her blood heated and jumped Olympic hurdles, and she had a mad desire to lick the cleft in his chin. This near, a hint of his aftershave—sandalwood and patchouli—wafted to her nostrils. Destiny choked back a groan and bit her tongue hard enough to get her dizzy brain cells working again.

“What're you doing? Put me down.”

Think. Think, damn it.

“There's at least three inches of snow on the ground. You'll get frostbite if you walk outside in those shoes.” He shifted her closer, his large palm curving under her ass while the other hand opened the door. “And
I'm
driving.”

When Destiny opened her mouth to argue, a blast of wet snow hit her cheeks and filled her mouth, and she coughed. A fierce
whoosh
tunneled snow and dried leaves into a mini tornado, blinding her sight.

“Where's the car?” He had to roar the words into her ear to be heard above the whistling gusts. A Sahara-desert wind couldn't match the heat of his breath tickling her ear. In the middle of a dangerous snow storm and a crazy situation, Destiny's hormones skyrocketed. She battled the insane urge to nip his earlobe.

He gave her a little shake and shouted, “Car?”

“Over there,” she yelled and snuggled into his chest, burying her nose into the crinkly fabric of his padded uniform. The sun did a vanishing act. Dusk lasted seconds before night's shroud descended.

“Shit.” A thick white blanket covered the Ford Focus. “Pop the lock.”

She pressed the button on the car's key. Within seconds Lincoln had her bundled into the passenger seat, and then he dashed around to the driver's side. He slammed the door shut. “Key.”

Mood souring, she deposited the key into his open palm. He snapped his seat belt locked, then thrust the key into the ignition and turned it quarter way. The engine clanked and wheezed. He cursed and twisted the key again. One single feeble
whir.

Lincoln let out a string of foul words.

Ten minutes later they were back in the cabin.

He strode through the main chamber, which housed the kitchen, a two-seater round table, one extra-large tweed couch, and a low hutch bearing dishes, glasses, and cutlery. Destiny didn't realize until he halted that Lincoln had carried her into the bedroom.

“I take it we're here for the duration,” she more stated than asked. “You can put me down.”

“Shit.”

“What?”

Forehead wrinkled, he crossed his eyes. “I think we lost the juice while we were in the car.”

Sergeant Lincoln Chapman belonged in an asylum. “Juice?”

“Listen. You don't hear the refrigerator humming anymore, do you?”

“We've no electricity?” She hadn't meant it to come out as a whine.

“Tell me you bought supplies.” His half-hooded eyes studied her face, and warmth crept across her cheeks. “You didn't, did you?”

He automatically assumed she had no brains whatsoever. Fine. A big-city girl wouldn't know anything about supplies, of course. Uneducated twit. Tolstoy had probably been a once-in-a-lifetime guess.

“I have a couple bottles of wine and some bread and cheese.”

Thunder rumbled across his features; fine lines creased his broad brow. “I counted three vibrators on that kitchen counter, one
Deep Throat
DVD, the whole
Debbie Does Dallas
collection, and
Candy Stripers
. Tell me, Ms. Parker, exactly what were your plans for this cabin?”

“It's not what you think,” she answered as a noonday-desert heat climbed from neck to forehead. “I'm an editor, and I'm here to help one of my writers fix her sex scenes.”

One brow lifted. “And I'm President Obama.”

“It's true.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “Put me down.”

“And vibrators and porn will help how?”

“I thought between the wine and the toys and the DVDs I could get my author to loosen up.” Destiny wriggled, but that only made his arms tighten. “For God's sake, why won't you put me down?”

“You feel good, and you weigh nothing,” he replied, hefting her in his arms as if to prove his words. “You do realize the only way we're going to stay warm is body heat.”

His mouth quirked up, and the harsh expression he'd worn since opening his eyes vanished. A satanic gleam lit his hazel eyes, more emerald than honey. “There's a shed adjacent to the car. I'm going to search it and see what I can find. You go through every cabinet in this cabin. Make a list of everything you find. Got that?”

Her mind hadn't gone further than the words
body heat.

When he dumped Destiny on the mattress and left the cabin in a blur of long legs, wide shoulders, and taut ass cheeks, she let out a long, warbled moan and covered her face with damp palms.

No electricity meant no hot water, but that might turn out to be the least of her problems.

Get off the bed. Make a list. Try not to think about if he had hair on his chest. Don't think about the size of his feet. Or his palms. Or his penis.

He'd probably call it a cock. Didn't army guys do that all the time?

Destiny hopped off the bed. She stuck all the sex toys and DVDs into her carry-on and unpacked the rest of her stuff into a dresser drawer. A quick check of the bathroom revealed a footed bathtub, a pedestal sink, and a brass-framed mirror. She sent a fast Hail Mary to God when she found the toilet tucked away in what looked to be a linen cupboard. It even flushed. And there was toilet paper, at least a dozen rolls.

She found several woolen blankets above the toilet paper, shook one out, and tied the fabric sarong-style over one shoulder and fastened the soft material around two jeans belt loops.

The first kitchen cabinet she opened yielded ten packs of candles. By the time Lincoln returned, Destiny had finished her list, and a dozen flickering candles imbued a soft golden glow to the main cabin.

Surveying the room, she sighed.

Wasn't this every woman's fantasy?

Stuck in a warm cabin in the mountains with a hunk who looked like he knew more about sex than Antonio Banderas. So he thought she was easy. It wasn't as if they'd ever meet again in real life. And he didn't seem to have any problem with her being ten pounds overweight. Okay, okay, maybe fifteen. But who would know? In four months she turned twenty-seven, and she'd never had torrid sex, never had a hot affair.

The wind howled and lifted the top of a snowdrift into the air when Lincoln, carrying a bundle of logs, kicked the door open. An icy finger sailed on the gust, trailing a chill around Destiny's neck. She wished she'd packed a scarf, and tugged the blanket over one ear.

Lincoln used his boot to slam the door shut.

“Why didn't you start a fire?”

“With what?” She'd held a dozen lit matches to one log, and the wood didn't even catch a spark.

He looked to the ceiling.

“The normal tools—paper, logs.”

“Bite me,” Destiny snapped. All dreams of a romantic snowed-in couple of days went poof.
What a bully.

He stacked the logs on the other side of the fireplace and, in less time than it took her to inhale, or so it seemed, had a blazing fire crackling and spewing sparks. The scent of pine infused the air.

“I will.” He stood and unzipped his parka. “You like it rough, I take it?”

Lincoln shrugged out of his jacket, stowed the garment on the three-hook wooden coat stand to the right of the door, turned to face her, and smiled.

She shivered. The man had a bone-melting, devil-may-care grin.

“What?” He couldn’t mean….

“You like to be bitten?” A forefinger stroked the cleft of his chin.

“None of your business. What are you? Into kink?”

“Depends on the kink. I'm not into pain, but I'm not averse to a love bite here and there. Or a few spanks.”

Spanks? She was in over her head. Cripes, she'd always wondered about that. Pervasive guilt from Sunday school lessons and spending three hours in a porn superstore made her blurt, “Look, let's get a few points cleared up. Those toys and DVDs weren't for me. I don't do that kind of stuff.” She paused, trying to erase the image from her pupils of her over his knees.

“And here I was hoping that deep throat was your specialty.” He started unbuttoning his shirt. “Do we have food?”

“I made the list as you ordered.” She pointed to the sheet of paper on the kitchen counter. “We have a ton of dried beans, onions, potatoes, apples, garlic, pears, cereal. Not to mention a freezer full of meat—most of it venison. We won't starve. What
are
you doing?”

He'd shed his uniform jacket to reveal a black T-shirt. The thin cotton material slipped and slid around the cut of his biceps. Destiny's mouth went dry, and all the moisture in her body zipped to her labia.

“Did you find towels? Soap?”

He pulled his undershirt over his head.

Those ripped pecs, that ridged stomach, sucked all the oxygen out of the air. A swirl of chest hair, a tad darker than the sand of his brows, kissed milk-chocolate areolae, drifted and thinned like an arrowhead directing Destiny's attention to the—
gulp
—taut, swollen sex organ straining his tight trousers and a-begging for a viewing.

“I'm flattered, baby, but you don't wear the jaw-dropped look well.” Amusement curved his lips, and flames licked his irises, making them the color of melting brown sugar.

An inferno galloped across her body, humiliation and chagrin battling a rising fury.

“Sara? Soap? Towels?”

“Bathroom,” she growled.

“I'm starved. Did you start dinner?” He draped the shirt over his shoulders and in three strides disappeared into the bedroom.

Destiny collapsed onto the sofa. “Irritating, egotistical, conceited, pompous ass. Am I his personal servant? Did I start dinner? I should stew
him
.”

Addicted to the Culinary Institute of America's cooking classes, she could've whipped up a three-course gourmet feast without working up a bead of sweat in less time than it had taken Lincoln to crash into the pear tree. The gremlin responsible for too many just-missed promotions fueled her narrow-eyed squint at the open bedroom door, and the temptation to play the big-city-woman, didn't-know-how-to-boil-water role he'd lumped her into soared and beckoned. She almost submitted.

Then Lincoln broke into song, humming at first, and then singing a carol-like version of “We Three Kings of Orient Are” in a voice so low, so full of depth and richness, all thought of petty revenge took flight. Arrested, she sat up and stared at the flickering candle flames licking supple shadows through the main cabin.

As his voice soared on the words “field and fountain,” she succumbed to the beauty of his singing, closing her eyes and swaying in time to the rhythm. The moment hung and hung, then ebbed and rose on an incredible free fall, suspended, time seeming to stop as the strength and power of his song shattered all links to modern-day civilization, the image of the kings' pilgrimage on a van Gogh starry, starry night almost too beautiful to bear.