Tempted by a Dangerous Man Read Online Free

when Rob offered to steal the photos from the office. If only I had gone home.
    But instead I’d insisted on taking care of everything.
    I remembered pushing the man away, and I reflexively tightened my arms across my chest. As if being still now could somehow fix what had happened.  
    Corbin threw some things in the back of the SUV, closed the garage and got into the driver’s seat.
    “Kidnapping is a federal offense,” I said.
    “Add it to my list.”
    He drove out to the main road. Instead of turning right, toward the highway that would lead us to the city, he went left.  
    I stared out the window, watching dark farmhouses become scarcer and trees grow closer together until there was nothing around us but forest. The roads turned into smaller roads. Bumpy. Then it was one lane, and then it wasn’t even paved at all, and the vehicle tilted and swayed. Corbin kept driving, and I hoped we would stop before all the bouncing permanently rearranged my organs.  
    He swerved off to the side, bringing us to an abrupt stop.
    “Uh…” I peered through the dirty windshield. The sun was coming up, spilling enough light over the landscape to illuminate that we really were in the middle of nowhere.
    “Come on.” He opened the door and got out, closed the door behind him. The noise was loud and final in the otherwise silent atmosphere.

    ~~~

    Corbin was heading to my door when I pushed it open. I slid onto the ground and stood there, caught between the vehicle’s comforting warmth and the sharp chill of the winter morning.
    And then Corbin stepped closer, now wearing a black ski jacket, and I felt the heat from him, so much warmer than everything else. He reached over me and closed the door, then looked down at me.  
    His hands wrapped around my shoulders, dropped until my hands were in his. “There’s a good chance you’ll hate the next few hours, but please trust me.” He led me to the back of the truck, where he shrugged into the backpack, four snowshoes now partially wedged under the bungee laces.
    Apparently there was nothing for me to carry. If I’d been feeling myself, I might have protested, but at the moment, fairness and pulling my own weight were low on my list of concerns.
    Corbin picked up two pairs of hiking poles that had sat in a pile on the bumper. He unscrewed the bottom of one and telescoped out the pole, handed it to me, then repeated with the second one. His poles, however, he left collapsed.  
    “Where are we going?”
    Electric blue-green eyes patiently turned my way. “For a walk.” Like it was obvious.
    “To where?”
    Instead of answering, he strode off, following a snowy path that was nearly invisible to me.  
    “You’re right. I do hate this,” I muttered. It didn’t take fifteen steps before I was fucking over the whole thing. I hadn’t eaten enough in the last few days, and I felt as depleted as if I’d just gotten over the flu. And Corbin moved like he intended to shatter a world record.
    “Corbin!” His name flew out of my mouth in a cloudy puff. A crow cawed nearby.
    He kept walking.
    I jammed my hiking poles into a snowdrift and crossed my arms. “Hey!” But Corbin kept going.  
    “Heading back,” I said. When he didn’t even slow down, I abandoned the poles and doubled back to the SUV. It was locked, of course. Because heaven forbid I sit out this pointless excursion.
    I waited a few minutes for Corbin to return for me. When he didn’t, I cursed him loudly and thoroughly. Minutes ticked by, and my light shivering turned to chattering teeth. So those were my choices: freeze or trudge through wilderness.  
    I stomped back onto the trail, snatching up my poles as I passed them.  
    All the fury I’d felt at my situation, at the weight that I now bore, was funneled into Corbin. If I had never met him, none of this would have happened.
    None of the good, either. I would still be working all the time, picking up random guys for a fast, often unsatisfying, screw.