She had no entanglements in London. Or New York. Or wherever it was she was heading back to once we left my cabin. As primitive as it sounded, I wanted to be the only man occupying her thoughts while she was with me.
And when she left? What then?
I clenched my fist at the hollow in my belly at the thought of it.
Yeah, I was dangerously straying into obsession. Had probably done so already. Yet the thought didn’t terrify me as much as it would’ve a handful of days ago. My gaze fell back on her pictures. Maybe we could make this work outside this wilderness bubble.
Shit, I was licked if I was already factoring her into my future.
Would that be so bad?
The answer never formed, the door creaking open redirecting my thoughts to the present.
She stood in the doorway, a blanket drawn around her body, her hair sexily dishevelled. Lips I’d feasted on repeatedly last night were still swollen and the sight of her bare feet curling into the wooden floor was seriously arousing.
Fuck me, but she was breathtaking.
‘I don’t remember giving you permission to leave me alone in bed.’
The firm, hot dominating voice immediately triggered a fever inside me, fire licking through my blood. Before I took my next breath, my cock was hardening, my fingers tingling with the need to submit, to please, to hand over my surrender to her.
‘I would be very happy to return there if that’s what you wish, min elskerinde.’
She started to answer but then her gaze fell on the pictures. Eyes widening, she stepped into the room. ‘What is this?’
The stiff note in her voice made me tense. ‘I was going through the images on my camera and—’
‘And you decided to print out pictures of me?’ Her voice was hushed but stiffer with growing wariness.
I spread my hands to lighten the mood. ‘Hey, it’s no big deal. I just wanted to see the images in different lights.’
She turned from the one propped up on the shelf, her eyes suspicious. ‘Why? Your project isn’t about me, remember?’
I bit the inside of my cheek, reluctant to share my idea with her just yet. In this mood, I suspected she’d say no out of ingrained habit.
Once I presented the full picture, she’d know my intentions were honourable. I took the most direct cop-out. ‘I’m aware of what my brief is. This is the way I work, Graciela.’
A trace of suspicion receded from her eyes, but she remained wary as she glanced at the pictures. It was part of the set I’d taken outside the tent as she’d stared up at the aurora borealis. The naked awe on her stunning face had needed memorialising. The instinct that few people, if any, were granted the privilege of seeing this powerful woman overcome with childlike wonder compelling me to take the photos.
I wasn’t about to tell her any of that, of course.
While the past few days had revealed she’d push for the personal on occasion, she wasn’t one for prolonged introspection or subjects that dwelled on her or her family for too long.
The snippets I’d gleaned formed their own story.
She wasn’t exactly estranged from her brothers or the rest of the family, but her interactions with them were few and far between, instigated by both sides in equal measures. It was a situation that hurt her, regardless of how much she tried to deny it.
I started to gather the pictures, intending to put them away. But a wild urge stopped me.
Besides the wariness and suspicion, there’d been something else in her expression when she’d looked at her pictures just now.
An expression of...surprise.
As if she was seeing herself in this light for the first time. I wasn’t letting the opportunity slip me by. I wanted her to rediscover whatever she’d had taken from her by her family or the world at large. And hell, I was playing with fire, risking whatever time we had left with this impromptu experiment that could blow up in my face.
But wasn’t taking risks part of my life? My soul?
Her voice certainly called into question my sanity as she trailed me out of the office. ‘What the hell are you doing, Jensen?’
She could stop me at any time, command me to destroy the pictures, and I would do it. I was still hers to command; had a feeling I would be far longer than the snowstorm lasted.
But even that disturbing admission didn’t stop me from walking across the room to place one picture over the fireplace. The second one I attached to the fridge door, the next on the fourth step.
The fourth I pinned to the front door, the fifth on the coffee table next to the sofa, where she tended to place her wineglass. The last one I was saving for the bedroom.
‘Jensen.’ Her voice shook with warning as she watched me.
Hands empty, I faced her. ‘I want you to see yourself the way I see you.’
She refused to look at the pictures. ‘And how’s that?’ she sneered.
‘Beautiful. Breathtaking. Full of wonder.’
Her hands bunched tightly over the blanket until her knuckles turned white. ‘Instead of? Just how do you think I see myself?’
Crap, this had turned way heavier than I’d anticipated, but I didn’t back away from it. ‘The labels you call yourself are other people’s opinion of you. And yet I think deep down you believe them, don’t you?’
Her lips firmed, mutiny in her silence.
‘You’re not spoilt. If you were, you wouldn’t have sent your team away and braved the elements with me with nothing but a phone and a change of clothes. You hate sitting back and being waited on hand and foot even though it’s my privilege to serve you like that.’
Her hazel eyes darkened. ‘I like control. That’s all this is, nothing more.’
I shook my head. ‘No, it’s not. Control is one thing. Consideration is another. Beneath all that bristling you’re a good person, Graciela. I just wish you would see that yourself.’
‘I’m not.
