Designing Berlin by Shara Azod Page B

guessed she was a long way from home. He’d been gathering firewood for the coming blizzard when he heard the unmistakable sound of a car skidding into a ditch. Seeing as he had the only cabin this far up the mountain, well, the only cabin anyone would dare to visit, Matty had figured whoever had driven into a ditch was coming to see him. He’d waited for a few minutes, to see if the person could make his way out of his predicament. But when the person didn’t, Matty had headed out to search. The last thing he’d expected was a woman, obviously from big city somewhere, half frozen to death.
    “Well, hell,” Matty muttered, shifting his burden and plodding back to his truck. There was no help for it; he was stuck with her, whoever she was. Somehow that knowledge didn’t annoy him as much as he thought it should.
    Carefully placing her in the passenger seat, he took his time buckling the seatbelt across her breasts. He tried to steady his gaze on inserting the metal buckle, but he couldn’t resist looking at her. Her head lolled to the side and luxuriant hair brushed across her face, making her look all the more tousled and all the more alluring. He wanted to kiss her lips, lick the melting snow from their plumpness. Instead, he ran a gloved thumb across them.
    I’m shouldn’t be thinking thoughts about fallen angels like this.
    A slip of melted snow shot down his back, reminding him a blizzard was building around him. Cold urgency shoved his heated thoughts to the side and he zipped around to the driver’s side. Stealing one more delicious glance at his passenger, Matty shifted the truck into drive and made his way back to his cabin. The radio had warned the blizzard would last at least a day, maybe two. It would take at least a week to get the road clear. He was stuck with an unwanted guest for at least a week, perhaps two. Something stirred from deep within him, a rattling of untruth. Beside him, the woman wasn’t unwanted—perhaps uninvited, but not unwanted. He knew it. Oh, yes, he definitively wanted the woman beside him; and if his swelling phallus were any indication, it wasn’t just for chatting and socializing.
    Matty had to be honest with himself, though. From the looks of her, she wasn’t used to roughing it, as it were. Luckily, his cabin was large—it was actually a two-story log house—but the electricity was bound to go out, and his generator would warm no more than his bathroom and bedroom. He didn’t dare tax it more than that. There was a fireplace in the den; he never used the living room; and the kitchen was equipped with both a modern range and a wood-burning stove for times such as these.
    Upon reaching his spread, he lifted his unconscious guest from the truck and carried her inside. His hands seemed to have a mind of their own as they drew to her round buttocks as if her behind were a magnet. He fought the impulse to stroke and cup her cheeks, rubbing across their plumpness until she moaned awake.
    But the reality was his body heat wasn’t going to be enough to save her.
    Setting her on the settee in front of the massive fireplace in the den, Matty stood back to look at her. She had a beautiful face. Flawless, smooth sepia-colored skin had begun to take on an unhealthy pallor; and lips that at any other time probably could have been described as sensuous were taking on a decidedly blue tinge. He could see by the muscle movement in her cheeks that her teeth were starting to chatter. He had to get the sodden clothes off her now. Grabbing a thick blanket from the couch behind the settee, he bent down and peeled her boots and socks off her feet.
    “Sorry, lady,” he muttered as he began to strip her as quickly as he could.
    Matty would probably burn in hell for the thoughts about the fallen angel that rushed his brain while revealing each inch of flesh to his gaze as he went about his task. He tried not to notice, but how was a healthy, heterosexual adult male not supposed to notice the