Survival on the Summit by Nichole Severn

Author:Nichole Severn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-10-06T13:21:13+00:00

Chapter 3

Keira couldn’t open her eyes. She had no idea if minutes had passed or if had been hours. She only knew that she was cold. Frozen right through her secondhand, designer sweater and her teeny-tiny dress to the bare skin beneath. A little pseudodrunkenly, she wondered why she hadn’t dressed for the weather.

She should probably move. Try to get warm. But the chill was the bone-freezing kind that makes it impossible to move anything but chattering teeth.

Sleep threatened to take her, and though she knew instinctively that she should fight it, she was really struggling to find a good reason to stay awake.

The click of a seat belt drew her attention.

A car.

Her car. She was driving. Then falling.

Now she was being lifted.

Good.

But her relief was short-lived.

Next came the ripping, and the tearing off, of her clothes.

I’m being attacked.

The assumption slammed home fear and brought with it a burst of furious energy. Keira’s arms came up defensively while her feet lashed out with as much aggression as she could muster. She wasn’t going down without a fight.

Her knee connected with something solid, and for a moment she was triumphant.

Her eyes flew open, and this time when she froze, it was from something other than cold.

A pair of dark-lashed eyes, so gray they were almost see-through, stared back at her. They were set in a fully bearded face, partially obscured by a knitted hat, and they were pained. And angry. Furious, even.

Keira tried to shy back from their icy rage, but she was positioned in a deep dip in the frozen ground, and the hard-packed snow all around her was as unyielding as the man above her.

Roll over! Roll away!

Except she couldn’t. Because the man had one hand over her collarbone. His palm was just shy of the base of her throat.

“Please,” she gasped around the pressure he was exerting just below her trachea. “Please don’t hurt me.”

His eyes widened in surprise. Then very, very slowly, he shook his head. Then he let go of her neck. Cold air whipped across the exposed skin, making her shiver uncontrollably.

The man pulled away and disappeared from view. And the r-r-r-rip of fabric started up again immediately.

Oh, God.

In spite of the way Keira’s body was shaking, she attempted to sit up. But in less than the time it took to draw in one ice-tinged breath, the man’s hand shot out once more, closing over the same spot he’d released just moments earlier. He pursed his lips, and in spite of the cover of the beard, Keira could see the frustrated set of his jaw. He shook his head again.

What did he mean? Did he want her to just lie there while he stripped her down?

Keira didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until he nodded.

She tried to tell him she wouldn’t do it—that she couldn’t do it—but when she opened her mouth, the wind swept in and cut the words away.

She thought he must’ve taken her silence as acquiescence, because he disappeared again, and suddenly Keira was stripped almost completely bare.

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