Page 19 of An Avalanche Hero Christmas

“You won’t be the first shifter I’ve treated,” she said, cutting him short. “I’ve been tending to our kind for years. Now, let’s go and get you patched up.”

***

It was warmer inside the cave, albeit darker. A consolation to the fact that they’d been knocked off course and would be spending more time out here on the mountain before reaching his cabin. Lance thought it was adequate, at least for now.

“Lie back, please,” Mallory said, although it sounded more like a command than a request. “I need to examine you.”

He could just barely make out her face. He wondered if she could see the look on his.

He lay flat on the hard, bumpy cave floor, flinching as her fingers touched him. She went to work immediately, and he heard a clink as she withdrew something from her bag.

“I’ve got some antiseptic and bandages,” she told him. Then, as if she’d realized he didn’t know what she was talking about, she added, “I’m going to need to clean your injuries before I dress them.”

He was more badly hurt than he’d let on to Mallory and himself, Lance realized, wincing as she tended to him. Between the fight with Boris and the jump, he’d sustained more than enough injuries to kill a weaker man.

Lance felt weak.

Had he been correct about them having all the time they needed? Lance didn’t feel that way anymore. Ever since their interaction with Boris, it seemed like something had begun ticking inside his mind, a reminder that if they didn’t get clear of the Fae Hunter soon, he’d find them and spill their blood onto the snow.

“Sorry,” Mallory said as he winced again.

He lay still, waiting as patiently as he could as she dabbed the cuts Boris had inflicted on him with antiseptic. When she touched his chest, he bit down on his tongue to keep from crying out. Some of the cuts were deeper than he’d thought. Even for a shifter, they would take a while to heal. Mallory was right: Rest was needed.

But even though he commanded his body to relax as she treated him, his mind would not rest. It continued to race with thoughts and possibilities of what could happen to them any second. And so, left with few other options, he decided to distract himself.

“You said you’ve tended to other shifters in the past,” he said, the memory of her words drifting through his mind. “You are a healer?”

She paused, and he figured she was pondering his question. A moment passed between them.

“Something like that,” she replied finally. “I’m a nurse. Or at least, Iwasa nurse until I agreed to take a sabbatical and ended up here.”

He thought he detected a note of bitterness in her tone and let another moment pass. “As a…as a nurse, you helped people?”

“It’s kind of the job description. I’m trained to treat people. Well, humans. But now and then, I bump into some other supernatural. I’ve had this job for at least ten years.”

With every new thing he learned about Mallory, he discovered a new dimension. One, life in her world had not been as easy for her as he first thought. Just because she would have a hard time surviving on Frost Mountain on her own doesn’t mean she hadn’t struggled elsewhere.

Two, this woman wasn’t as helpless as he’d figured. She might not be able to defend herself when the need arose, but she seemed quite resourceful.

Her fingers trailed lower, and he felt his body grow tense. Her touch was gentle. Nearly everything about this woman was. Lance had held her in his arms earlier. She’d been soft against him. He wondered if she would let him hold her again. Maybe if they found another cliff…

The image of her body pressed against his, both of them completely naked, flashed through his mind. He’d never seen her without clothes, but his imagination needed only the smallest details to go wild, drawing up a scene in which this stunning woman sat atop him with her gentle fingers splayed across his chest and her wings fluttering behind her as she rode him to ecstasy.

He cleared his throat, dismissing the thought. “You must have been working a lot.”

“Whenever I could.”

“How did your husband take it?”

An uncomfortable silence filled the cave, sliced only by a tiny croak. “Hus…band?”

“Did you not have one?”

It was almost impossible to read her expression now. “No. I’ve never been married. I’ve…I’ve been single for quite a while, actually.”

“Oh.” Relief swept through Lance’s body. And then it was quickly replaced with embarrassment at the fact that he felt relieved. “I see.”

“What about you?” she asked suddenly.

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