“Oh,” he said, his chiseled lips turning into a wry smile, “the dog that was just merrily licking my face?”

Crap. Damn it, Karma, she thought with heat.

“W-well … I-I’ll scream or call for help.”

“Thanks for the warning. Once we’re inside I’ll snap your neck to shut you up.” She gasped as he gave her another wry smile. “Doona tell the villain what you’re planning tae do when you doona know what he’s capable of. I willna hurt you. I need your help. And fast. I’m getting weaker by the second and you willna be able tae move me if I become dead weight. You’re far too small.”

He mentioned her smallness almost as if it were a terrible failing on her part and that got her back up. People had treated her like this tiny little missish thing all of her life and frankly it just served to piss her off. She was small, no doubt about that, but she could pack a punch if necessary. And after his warning about keeping her plans secret, she bit her lip to keep herself from saying as much.

Instead she reached out to help him up. It was clearly all he could do to gain his feet, and she realized just how critically wounded he was. But she couldn’t see the damage just yet with all that blood obscuring her ability to determine the worst of it. Despite his concerns over her diminutive shortcomings, he leaned heavily into her all the same, making the disparateness of their heights seem suddenly more obvious. As they trudged up the sloping drive she began to fear her ability to get him to safety. Her muscles began to burn under the strain of climbing with his significant weight against her just as the house came into view through the thickness of the pines.

“How much …”

Farther, he wanted to know. The blood coming from him was soaking the left side of her clothing and she knew why he couldn’t speak. He was using all of his focus to stay on his feet.

“It’s here. Right here. Not much farther. You can do it,” she encouraged him. It seemed to give him strength and he lifted his weight further onto his own feet and propelled them forward quickly. At the walk of the house, however, he stumbled and went down, staining her stone walkway with his blood. “Come on,” she said, fearing he couldn’t go farther and, like he had said, she wouldn’t be strong enough to get him into the house. She glanced up at the sky, the dawn doing nothing to lighten it because of the bitter cloud cover heavy with snow. Worse still, the wind was picking up, promising a blustering and brutal blizzard.

But the weather was a ways off and it was the least of her worries. Except, a storm could cut her off from any help, and she would be helpless to him …

But right then it was he who was helpless to her, and that galvanized her into action.

“Up!” she commanded, yanking at the arm he’d lain across her shoulders. “Get up. Only a little farther. The dawn is coming,” she warned him, not knowing why that should trouble him so much. Maybe it was the coming storm that worried him. Rightly so. Washington was known for some mighty mean snowstorms. Especially at this altitude.

She pulled him up and he got his feet under himself in what she suspected was his final act of strength. They stumbled to the door and she hastily juggled him and the doorknob, his weight on her making her fumble at it. Finally it gave way and they staggered into the house.

“Somewhere dark. No light. Protected.” His words jolted out of him on groans of obvious pain. Far be it from her to argue.

“I know the feeling,” she muttered.

She went for the nearest bedroom, which turned out to be the master suite. All the other rooms were on the second floor and she knew navigating stairs was out of the question for them both. Even without his weight, the burning muscles of her legs couldn’t possibly have gotten her up them.

“That’s it,” she said with a grunt, “I’m getting my fat ass in gear and getting on the treadmill. In the spring it’ll be better … A few treks up and down the mountain, right?”

After much grunting and bumping into walls, they made it into her bedroom and fell into the bed together, his weight flattening her until she could barely breathe. She shoved at him, but he was barely conscious and she realized that the weird stone thing was once again shifting in and out of being on his body … if that were even possible. Hell, it had to be possible. She was watching it with her own eyes. Feeling it against her own skin. Before he turned to stone completely and she found herself trapped under a ten-ton statue, she strained to push him off her with what remained of her strength. But as much as she shoved at him, she knew it was his help alone that allowed him roll to off her.

She wriggled out from under him and gained her feet by the bed, panting hard for breath. Damn it, she thought inanely as she saw him lying big and bleeding in her bed, she really loved that quilt set and she was never going to be able to get that blood out.

Thinking he was unconscious, she reached out and poked a finger against the stone-looking skin on his arm. She couldn’t believe it, but it really was stone! A rough stone like that of an unpolished statue. How in the hell was that possible? It couldn’t be … but it was. She was feeling it right under her fingertips.

“No outside light. Please,” he said, startling her. Begging her. “The daylight will make it impossible for you to help me, and I will die. I promise you, I will die.”

She nodded hastily, reaching out to give him an awkward pat of reassurance on the large, curving muscle of his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ve already closed the storm shutters.” And started a fire in the fireplace that warmed both the master bedroom and the living room with shared sides, its warm light dancing over them both. That and the bedside light was enough.

He exhaled then, a long shuddering breath of his final strength bleeding out of him, and suddenly she remembered what all of that blood meant and forgot about her damaged clothes and quilts. She ran for her bathroom, yanking out the supplies she had squirreled away in dribs and drabs over the years just in case … well, just in case. And now, it was in case. She found a basin and loaded it up with gauze, iodine, and 2-0 vicryl sutures. She belatedly washed her hands and snapped on a pair of purple nitrile gloves, even though she was already drenched in his blood. She would work better with clean hands and the traction of the gloves.

She hastened to the bed, moving up to him and hitting both of the bedside lights. She turned him and realized there was no more stone skin on him. He was entirely a flesh-and-blood man. For some reason that comforted her a little. But the idea that that could change at any moment sat heavy on her thoughts. Suddenly she felt the burning presence of her phone in her back pocket. She should call for help, never mind his protestations. He was out like a light and there was nothing he could do about it, he was just that weak. But he had surprised her thus far with his ability to power through his weakness, and even if she called for help, it could take anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour before anyone would make it up the mountain to her. This was what she had feared, and the only thing she had feared, about living alone so remotely. She had imagined things like this, evil men stumbling upon her house and she alone and helpless.