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  Kat worked her mouth into a harsh line and looked him dead in the eye. Who the hell used the term wench anymore anyway? she thought, trying to bolster her sternness. “You are going back to bed, alone, to rest! Doctor’s orders! You’ve lost a lot of blood and—”

  And right on cue he listed dangerously forward, nearly squashing her up against the wall like a bug as all his weight pushed into her. But he recovered quickly and drew away from her, taking a moment to dust her off and check her for signs of life. It was little things like that, little thoughtful kindnesses, that kept her thinking he was not a bad man, whatever his treatment of her thus far.

  “Perhaps you are correct,” he said, still sounding as though he’d lurched out of the Middle Ages. But for all she knew he had. “I’ll be taking a rest, in spite of the insufficiency of your bed.”

  In spite of what now?

  Instantly she became pissed off. “Hey, my bed is just fine. It’s not its fault that you’re abnormally gigantic! Just be glad I didn’t leave you in the brush to die!”

  He frowned then and suddenly there was clarity in his eyes. “Yes.” His hand went to his wounded side, his fingers running over her stitching. “I’ll be thanking you for that,” he said. “I think I’ll be requiring your help further,” he said politely, indicating his unsteadiness. Mollified, she stepped under his arm and, again, despite their disparate heights she managed to help him back into bed. But man, was she going to feel it tomorrow when her muscles began to complain about the serious heavy lifting she’d done in such a short amount of time. And without a sufficient warm-up!

  After she got him in bed, she finally pulled out her phone and called her mother.

  And got her voicemail. Lovely.

  Beep! “Hey Mom. It’s me. It’s really—” Crackle. Crackle. Click. “Important that you call me,” she finished with a sigh even though it was very clear the line had gone dead. “Oh crap!” she exclaimed suddenly, running to the window and, sure enough, there was the reason her cell service sucked. A heavy fall of snow was whooshing around outside. She noticed the creaking of the house for the first time and the wailing of the sudden winds. It had blown up fast and hard, but no one could blame her for not noticing under the circumstances. “Oh crap!” she said again suddenly.

  It was obvious her guest had a fever. His gaping wound had been exposed to God knows what and he could easily go septic if he didn’t get some strong antibiotics.

  Kat ran to the master suite bathroom and started tearing through her medicine cabinet and the under cabinets, even though she knew she was a good girl who always took all her medication right down to the very last pill. But who knew? Maybe she’d been a rebel just once. Of course her rebel days had ended quite abruptly years ago, and any medication from back then would be expired, but it was better than nothing.

  Nothing. She found absolutely nothing. A deep groan wafted into the bathroom from the bedroom, a punctuation to her failure. She hurried into the next room and up to the bed. Sure enough, her bed was creaking as he thrashed about, sweating up a storm. God, it had set in quickly. Or maybe not. Who knew how long he’d been lying out there. She hadn’t brought Karma that far down the drive in days. The only reason she’d even gotten that far today was because her mother’s dismay over a cell tower—one that wasn’t working, by the way—had distracted her.

  Apparently standing there at his bedside thinking was a bad game plan. A tremendous paw of a hand suddenly swiped out for her and yanked her off her feet, her body flying over his and her back hitting the bed. Her breath left her in a hard whoosh of sound.

  “You again?” he growled as he rolled atop her, his hand wrenching her legs apart to make way for himself. He was so strong and she was so taken by surprise she hadn’t had a hope of fighting him. Once again she found his face buried deep at her neck as he took a deep breath in through his nose. “God Almighty in the blue sky above you smell good enough tae eat.”

  “No! No,” she cried. “No eating! There will be no eating!”

  She wriggled under him, trying to push him off her, even though she knew it’d be like a flea bouncing against a dog to try to change his direction.

  “Oh, there will be eating,” he countered, his voice lowering to an even deeper timber than his already rich tones. “And licking and sucking and quite a bit more than that, my bonny lass.”

  This whole time she’d been trying to place his accent. She’d never been very good at that, but in that moment, when he called her a bonny lass, she realized he was a Scot. Ooo, she thought, Scots are sexy. Gerard Butler is a Scot and God he is sexy.

  But Gerard Butler was half this thing’s size and she couldn’t afford to think he was sexy. Even if she kind of did. Maybe he was only part Scottish. His accent wasn’t always so thick, and sometimes, when he was truly lucid, it faded to a much lighter version of itself. Just like his civility seemed to appear in those more lucid moments.

  “No,” she said more firmly this time, “you will not eat me.” Then she realized what she’d said and she colored hotly. “I don’t even know you. And I don’t want you to … to do anything to me. I want you to let me up.”

  “If you dinna want me, lass, then why do you no’ stay away? Why do you keep coming tae my bedroom smelling like sweetness and sex?”

  “I-I don’t … sweetness and sex?” she asked, getting distracted from her goal.

  “Aye,” he rumbled, that low voice trebling into her in a stimulating vibration. “As if you’d poured sugar over your nether bits and are wanting me tae lick it up.”

  Okay, now the heat coming off her face could warm the polar ice cap. It was quickly matched by the heat suddenly radiating from those aforementioned nether bits. Not to mention she’d gone decidedly wet.

  “Come now,” he purred coaxingly, his golden gaze falling to her mouth. “One wee kiss. It canna hurt you.”

  “One wee kiss?” she echoed, flabbergasted that he would think there could be anything “wee” about him.

  “Done!” he said, taking her stunned echo as permission.

  “Oh no, I—”

  He swooped down and caught up her mouth with his, her protestations muffled into silence. His mouth was hot and demanding, just like the rest of him. He commanded the kiss, crushing anything she might do to resist or gainsay him. He pressed the heat of it onto her until she melted and relaxed into it. It’s one kiss, she thought. What harm can one kiss do? He felt the change come over her and pressed his advantage instantly. He thrust his tongue forward against her, licking the trembling seam of her lips. It was a blatant knock at her door and she was torn between instinctively knowing this was a bad idea and instinctively knowing it was going to be the hottest kiss of her life. There was once a time, she thought, when you would have grabbed something like this with both hands and cried Woo-hoo!

  She opened her lips and he dove right in, commanding and fierce. The wet stroke of his tongue in her mouth released an equally wet flood of heat bleeding into her from every which way. His hands came up to bracket her head, only his elbows holding the full press of his weight off her. But that didn’t matter to her right then. Because, right then, she was having her socks blown off by the deepest, hottest, richest kiss of her life.

  When he finally pulled back a minute distance to give her time to catch her breath, she realized she was panting for it. For breath … and for another life-searing kiss. He was so hot along the length of her body, like a furnace turned up high, and he was so … hard.

  Holy crap! He was naked and the sudden hardness pressing against her between her legs was most decidedly the most enormous erection ever known to man. And that’s when reality slammed into her. She was too small and weak to fight him off if he got it in his head that he wanted more than a kiss and was going to just take that as well.

  And you will not think about how much you might enjoy that, she warned herself harshly. You will realize just how scary the concept ought to be and act accordingly terrified. And the other thing, the heat
of his body was deepening and she wasn’t arrogant enough to think that had anything to do with her.

  “Okay, let me up now,” she said. “You’ve had your kiss, now let me up.”

  “Oh, but you’re no’ really wanting me tae go,” he wheedled. “Look at your wee nipples.” He rose up enough to put a hand between them, letting him cup her breast through her cotton shirt, his fingers brushing eagerly over the point of her hardened nipple. “They’re begging for a suckle, now aren’t they?”

  “No!” she said, flustered. “They are begging for nothing of the kind!”

  “Then what are they begging for?” he countered, a sly smile crossing his lips and feverish gold eyes.

  “There’s no begging. No begging at all!”

  “Liar,” he countered, brushing his fingers over her nipple again. “If this isna the prettiest of beggars, I doona know what is. Let me see the wee thing and then we’ll decide.”

  He reached for the bottom hem of her shirt and she squeaked in panic. She grabbed his wrist and tried to stop him, but all she managed was to slow him down to a slow drag as he caught the hem of her shirt and pulled it upward.

  “No. Please don’t.”

  There must have been something in the tremble of her voice that struck him. Or maybe it was another moment of that suddenly rare lucidity. Whatever it was, he looked up into her eyes and read the fear and conflict there and it made him do her bidding. He stopped, releasing his hold on her shirt and moving his hand to the neutral territory of the sheet beside her shoulder.

  “Are ye teasing me, lass?”

  “Not intentionally,” she said meekly. “The kiss wasn’t my idea.”

  He seemed to think about that a moment, then with a scoff of breath he rolled off her. “Go!” he commanded her. “And doona come back until you’re ready tae do something about this!” He grabbed his erection in his hand, running his fist down the length of it. “You’re far too bonny tae resist. Remember that before you come tae tease me again!”

  Katrina scrambled for her freedom, falling to the floor from the bed then struggling up to her feet. She hastened from the bedroom with all speed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  She needed to do something. She couldn’t just leave him in there to fester with fever and then die. Any medical professional past or present and worth their degree would know this.

  Decision made, she grabbed up her car keys and ventured out into the storm. The storm was already brutal and this was an absolute act of suicide. She knew that it was. But desperate times called for desperate measures. Luckily, the nearest doctor was only a mile and a half down the mountain. Equally lucky was that the storm was obliterating daylight.

  Kat was bundled up tight to protect herself, but still it was bitter cold when she stumbled out of her car and banged on the doctor’s door. Michael Sloan opened the door with a harsh yank and looked at her as though she’d lost her ever-lovin’ mind. Which, she figured, she obviously had.

  “Urinary tract infection!” she said by way of greeting. “I’m sorry, but I’m dying and I had no choice. They said the storm was going to last days …”

  “No, I understand,” the man said, ushering her in. Dr. Sloan was in his late forties, but looked incredibly good for his age. So handsome, in fact, that he was thought of as quite a catch by the busybodies in their small town who were forever endeavoring to marry him off. They had focused on Kat more than once as a prospective bride for the single doctor, but she had managed to dodge their efforts thus far. She had squelched them every time as best she could. God knew the last thing she needed was the complication of a man in her life.

  She might have found the present irony in that funny if she weren’t so bent on her task of the moment.

  “I know all the signs, and the pain is tremendous,” she said, fisting her hand against her innocent bladder and doing the wee-wee dance for effect. “I need some Cipro.”

  “Cipro? Don’t you think that’s a bit strong for—?”

  “Trust me, it’s a bad infection,” she cut him off hastily.

  He stood there and seemed to brood about it for a moment. “Of course I trust you,” he said then. “Of all my self-diagnosing patients, at least I can rest assured you know what you’re talking about.”

  “None of your self-diagnosing patients were a physician’s assistant.”

  “True,” he said with a chuckle. “Let’s do a urinalysis and I can get you the Cipro.”

  “Dr. Sloan.” She cast a meaningful look outside. “I barely made it down here. With my shy bladder a urinary test could take forever. Please, I have to get back.”

  “Right! Of course.” He hurried back to the rear of his house. There was no pharmacy in town, so he kept his own supply of medications on hand. He filled a bottle with the required pills and she paid for them hastily. “I’ll just note your chart and we won’t tell anyone we skipped a few steps. After all, it’s an antibiotic, not an opiate.”

  “That’s right,” she said with a smile. “I better go!”

  “You better be careful. You should never have—”

  “I know! See you, Doc!”

  As she skidded on the steep slope from the doctor’s porch to her car she muttered a constant litany of “This is crazy. This is crazy. This is so crazy!” And even a little of “You could have told him. You just had to open your mouth and say, ‘Hey. There’s this guy at my house who can turn to stone, right? Oh, and he’s wounded and probably going to die of infection. But before that happens he’s probably going to …’ ”

  She couldn’t leap to the word “rape.” He had done nothing to make her think for a minute he was the raping sort. He was just … lusty. Yes, that was a good word for it. He was full of lust. Fevered lust. As if all his barriers and filters had evaporated and this was who he would be if all the clutter and nonsense of life were cleaned away. He was something of a throwback. As though he’d dropped in on her from a different time.

  Oh great. Not enough for you that he’s made of stone half the time, you have to make him a time traveler, too? You’ve been reading far too many trashy romance novels, Kat! After all, a real woman wouldn’t just accept half the shit that goes on in those novels.

  She stopped and thought about that for a moment, applying it to her present circumstances. Well, shoot. Could she help it if she’d seen crazier shit in an ER than a man who could turn to stone? After all, it was rather a benign thing overall …

  Katrina shivered her way into her car and, throwing the truck into four-wheel drive, began the treacherous trip back up the mountain. She was inching along, grateful that the snow had shifted from driving pellets of snow and ice to a thick blanketing fall of soft, fat, white flakes. It made it easier for her to see, although she couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her because it was, after all, still a heavy snowfall.

  The thickened snow also provided a little more traction, which she desperately needed. At the midpoint to her house she was so tight with tension from creeping up the deadly mountain road that her neck, her arms, and her entire back were hurting. She shrugged her shoulders, trying to work it out, trying to alleviate the pain of it, even though she barely noticed it on a conscious level because all her attention was focused forward.

  And at some point she stopped worrying about getting home and started worrying that a man’s life might hang in the balance and she was the only means of swaying the odds in his favor. It was a weighty responsibility, one she realized she was glad to take on. If not, why would she ever have taken part in this madness? She could only suppose that instinctively she knew there was something good about him, something worth saving, worth risking her own life for. Then again, she probably would have done the same for even the lowest of men … only she would have made sure to call in the cavalry.

  Kat didn’t even release a sigh of relief when she turned into her drive. The drive to her house was long and even more treacherous than the roads. The drive was dirt and gravel, which could make for good traction �
� unless it was drenched wet and then frozen. Then it was nothing but ice at an incline. Right then it was a mixture of both. The tires slipped and spun in places, the drive dropping off into a gully on the right side and threatening to skid her right off into it. But eventually she reached the final curve to the house, pulled right into the garage, and then came the well-earned sigh of relief. She didn’t spend more than a moment at it before she was out of the car and bursting into the house.

  Karma was on her like white on rice the next instant. The dog whined and threw her big body into Katrina as if she’d been gone a year. She’d been trained not to jump up only because that kind of love from that big of a dog would most likely kill Katrina. But that didn’t keep Karma from body bumping her like a maniacal kid in the bumper cars.

  “Yes, yes. Hello, hello,” she said, giving the dog a hasty pet or two before plowing past her and heading for her bedroom. She didn’t even bother taking off her coat. She fished the Cipro out of her pocket and headed for the master bath to fetch a glass of water.

  When she entered the bedroom she once again found the bed emptied of her patient and he was nowhere in sight.

  “Damn it to hell and back!” she growled. God only knew what shape he was in and where he was in her house. And so help her, if he went about bleeding on something else she’d kill him herself!

  Thumping the antibiotics onto the bedside she then shimmied out of her coat as she marched through the house in search of him.

  “He can’t have gone far,” she said aloud as she stalked through the rooms of the ground floor.