The same rope? She wants me to use the rope that I already picked out for her. How the hell could she know that? Is she that perceptive, that she’d clocked my peculiarities already? Or was it a lucky guess?
What a woman she is. I’d been sure she was going to tell me to hurry back, or that she was too cold, or that she couldn’t last out there much longer, but hell, if she hadn’t surprised me again. She’s so tiny, so delicate, I often forget her looks are misleading. My woman has a spine of steel. She’s a survivor. She’s had to be, to have gotten this far on her own. But never again, will she need to do everything on her own. At least, for as long as I am with her, I am going to make sure she never has to do anything by herself. She’ll have me as her back up and…
Hold on a bloody second. What the hell am I doing, building these plans with her…knowing that…she isn’t being honest with me, that she is hiding her true identity? I shake my head. There are too many conflicting threads of thought here. I need to prioritize. Focus on one thing at a time. And for now, that is getting her back to safety.
I reach the chalet, tear open the door, then pound through the living room and into the bedroom. I open the closet, grab the rope that I had set aside for her, then snatch up two more of my strongest ones, just in case.
I am out and racing up the hill in minutes. The wind slams into me, pushing me back, and I have to double over to make progress. By the time I reach the top of the slope, I am panting. I loop the ropes around my arm, then drop down and crawl to the edge on my stomach.
"Karina?" I call out, and the wind once more tears the words out of my mouth. "Babe, you there?"
No reply.
Shit, shit, shit.Am I too late? Where the hell is she? "Sparks, where the fuck are you? If you don’t reply in another second, I swear, I am coming down there, and when I do, I am going to spank your arse so hard that—"
"Yeah, yeah." Her voice reaches me. She coughs, then seems to gather herself together. "I know how much you like my ass, but if you don’t pull me up first, I’m afraid it’s going to have frozen and fallen off."
My shoulders slump. Whew, she’s still there. Of course, she is. Where the hell would she have gone?
"Watch out for the rope, okay?"
I pull out the first coil of rope, make a lasso out of it, then throw it in her direction.
"Did you get it?"
"What?"
"The rope."
"Did you throw it?"
Fuck.I retrieve the rope, then aim the lasso in the direction of her voice and spring it at her.
"Did you see that?"
"Nope."
"Bloody fuck."
"Don’t you know any other swear words? The F bomb is sooo passé."
"Ah, but nothing else quite encapsulates how I am feeling right now."
She chuckles, "Don’t tell me that Arpad Alphahole is short of swear words?"
I pull back the rope, wipe my face on my sleeve.Focus, focus."Sure, if swear words are what you want to hear right now, then how about... Wanker, twat, bollocks, arsebadger, jizzcock,"
She laughs, "You’re taking the piss now."
"That too."
I throw the lasso at her, and feel it tauten. "Did you catch it?"
"Yes," she gasps, "OMG, I have it."
"Hold onto it, walk toward my voice."
There’s a pause before I hear her swear loudly.
