Page 9 of Rescued By the Great Grim

“I’ve got the snot-stains on my shirt to prove it.” Her blush deepens, and she looks away. I regret my glib words and approach the bed. She scoots away from me and I stop. Raising my palms, I say, “I’ll never hurt you, I promise.” Something in my tone must convince her, because she nods and her shoulders relax. Walking more slowly, I take the last few steps across the small cabin and crouch by the bed. “You’re safe here.”

She nods again. “How long have I’ve been here?”

“I found you last night.” She has large bruises on her arms. With careful movements, I pick up her hand and pull to straighten her arm. Blemishes cover her skin. “Who hurt you?” My voice sounds like a growl.

She flinches and pulls her hand out of my grip. “Where exactly am I? I mean, where is this cabin?”

I want to grab her hand again. The skin-to-skin contact calmed me. But I don’t want to scare her any more than she already is. “You’re about six miles away from Sunrise, as the crow flies.”

She smiles. “And if I can’t fly?”

“Depending on how strong of a hiker you are, anything from a few hours to most of the day.” Considering how pale she still is and how little she’s eaten in the last twenty-four hours, I doubtshe’d make it more than a few steps down the trail. But there’s no reason to make her feel worse about the situation than she already does. And she’s alone in a cabin with a male stranger. It doesn’t take a genius to understand her discomfort.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to do much hiking today. Do you have an ATV?” She avoids my gaze. Who is she running from? This Johnny character? Is he the one who hurt her?

I stand and sit down in the chair across the room from the bed so I don’t crowd her anymore. “I don’t,” I say in answer to her question. “The trail to this cabin is a single track for most of the way. ATVs are too wide to fit.” A dirt bike could make it, but I don’t feel like discussing how much I hate the sound and smell of gasoline engines in my forest. Rae says you can get electric bikes now that are much quieter, but I still prefer hiking up and down my mountain. Maybe I’m too set in my way, but I already feel like I have too much technology around my cabin with the solar panels, the radio, and now my satellite communications device. “Why the urgent need to get off this mountain? You need to give yourself some time to recover. Who are you running from,Min Skatt?” The endearment slips out before I can stop it.

“What language is that?”

I pretend I don’t notice her avoiding my question. “Norwegian.” I also pretend I don’t notice her flinching as I get out of the chair and go into the kitchen to get her some fresh water. At six feet four, I’m used to taking up a lot of space and the small cabin probably makes me look even bigger than I am. I’m not used to women flinching from me, though, and I try to not let it get to me. The woman has experienced something bad, and it is only right that she’s cautious of a stranger, smart even. But I don’t have to like that she flinches away from me when something inside me calls so strongly to her. And the thought of someonehurting her awakes a rage I’ve never experienced before. It’s even bigger than what I experienced when the nixie first cursed me.

When I return with the water, the woman sits straighter in the bed, further up against the headboard. And she’s done something to her hair. It’s smoother, not so messy, and tucked behind her ears. I liked how she looked before, like she’d just woken up in my bed, but she’s still beautiful, breathtakingly so.

She thanks me for the water and then asks, “What’s your name?”

“You can call me Nick.”

That earns me a small smile. “Is that your name, or just what you want to be called?” She tilts her head.

“My name is Nickur, but my friends call me Nick.” She doesn’t need to know that I only have one friend. “For someone who avoids answering questions, you ask a lot of them yourself.” I smile to take the sting out of my words.

She blushes again and looks away, but then meets my gaze with her own hazel one. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know who to trust. And you seem like a good guy, so I don’t want to get you dragged into my mess.”

A stray hair caresses her cheek and without thinking, I reach over and tuck it behind her ear again. Something sizzles between us as my fingers touches her skin. This time she doesn’t flinch, but her pupils dilate. “I’m sorry,” blurt out, taking a step back. “I shouldn’t touch you without permission.”

“It’s okay.”

The silence stretches between us. “May I know your name?” I finally ask.

“Oh my goddess, how rude of me.” She covers her mouth and drops her hand again. “Of course. My name is Hailey.”

“Hailey,” I repeat, savoring the taste of it on my tongue. It suits her. “Rest now, Hailey. Tomorrow we’ll speak more about what troubles you. I’ll keep you safe from anything or anyone hunting you.”

She studies me for a moment, her eyes large in her pale face. “Okay,” she finally whispers and slips under the covers again.

I return to the chair, listening until her breathing evens out, and she’s asleep again. This woman, Hailey, makes me feel things I have not experienced in a hundred and fifty years. I’m not sure I know how to process what that means.

CHAPTER 8 (HAILEY)

After forty-eight hours of lingering in bed—half of those apparently completely passed out—I’m finally strong enough to walk upright again. Which is an immense relief because having to ask a drop-dead gorgeous Viking to take you to the bathroom every time you need to pee is not at all enjoyable. And Nick kept feeding me broth and had me drink tea and water while I couldn’t leave the bed, so the bladder needed to be emptied more often than normal. He says you get dehydrated faster at higher altitudes and I needed the liquids to get better.

He has an enormous bathtub inside the cabin, but the toilet is in a small outhouse a little way away. It’s some sort of fancy composting contraption. He explained it, but I stopped listening when he described the process of how worms speed up the mulching of feces. I’m not a fan of worms or feces and I don’t like thinking about little squiggly creatures waiting for my number two while I sit on the ring.

Nick suggested he’d bring a bucket into the room with the bathtub. But I said nope to that immediately. The only thingworse than having a hot Viking helping you to the outhouse is asking said hot Viking to empty your waste bucket in said outhouse. Nobody needs that.

Especially not since there’s this crackling, sizzling electric tension I feel whenever he’s near. I mean, his long blond hair and piercing blue eyes make him look like a Norse warrior descended from the gods.

And blond stubble covers his rugged face. Stubble that I’m itching to touch to see if it’s soft or rough. I’d be attracted to him no matter where I met him, but to see him wandering around in nature like he belongs here is even more hot, somehow. He’s built the cabin himself and has a completely off-the-grid sustainable lifestyle. It’s as if a super tall Hemsworth brother went a little feral and moved to this mountaintop.

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