Victoria The Billionaires Maid

Maggie’s [POV]

He gusted out a sigh. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s go inside and get warm. I’ll call the towing company again later.”

“If they’re not answering now,” I shouted over the wind, moving closer when my voice seemed to get sucked away, “what makes you think they will later? It’s a holiday. People are out celebrating.”

“Are you?” He pointed at himself. “Am I? No. Not everyone is in a fucking party mood. Now come on.”

When I didn’t budge, he gave me a stern look that made me half expect him to haul me over his shoulder like a sack of Maggie. Then he let out another of those windy breaths. “Please?”

My frozen face cracked into a smile. “Did that hurt?”

“A little. Not as much as my nuts shriveling up into my spine though.”

I swallowed. Along with not hearing a ton of swear words daily, I also wasn’t privy to men referring to their nuts as if that counted as ordinary conversation.

Hi,

my nuts hurt. Pass the crackers.

“You, um, should go inside then. That sounds painful.”

“It is. Come on. I won’t bite.”

“Are you sure?”

Now he did more than almost smile. He barked out a laugh. “Not unless you want me to, honey, and even then, I’m pretty sure you aren’t my type.” He tilted his head and lifted his voice above the howling wind. “I’m not into church girls. Even the ex-communicated kind, which does sound interesting.”

“It is. No, I’m not telling you.” I rubbed my mittened hand over my stinging cheeks. “What happens between a girl and her priest is private.”

“Wow. Some Thorn Birds shit? Kinky little thing, aren’t you?”

Was that approval I saw in his midnight eyes? They’d warmed. Speaking of kinky…

“Hardly.” I sniffed, and not out of haughtiness.Published by Nôv'elD/rama.Org.

I had to sneeze, and I had to pee. I was also freezing and starving and desperately in need of a long, hot shower.

Then again, did I dare get naked within the same four walls as this guy? Even if I wasn’t his type?

Serial killers had types too. They also didn’t kill everyone they met. I couldn’t be sure this guy was safe, but if I wasn’t in his target victim group, he could be a homicidal lunatic and I wouldn’t necessarily be in danger. Plus, I knew some judo.

Oh, the rationalizations a girl who urgently needs a bathroom will make.

“Okay. I’ll go inside with you. Briefly. Until we can reach the towing company. Otherwise, I will have many people out looking for me, and they will descend on your place like a swarm of locusts if I’m not home in a matter of hours.”

Much to my consternation most of the time. I was well and truly sick of being so overprotective by my family, though I loved them for their concern. It was just hard to have much of a life when you were watched like a rabid animal expected at any moment to go on a rampage through town.

In truth, I just mostly studied and worked, along with spending time with my bestie and my boyfriend.

Yep, not going there.

“Not if I tie you up and make you call them to say you’re okay and not to look for you. Then I might throw your chair in the basement and leave you without food and water.”

His voice was entirely too serious, which was how I guessed he was lying. It was a gamble, but I was going to bet that the usual serial killer didn’t advertise his intentions so brazenly. “You forgot to add that you’d have your way with me first.”

“Hoping, Red?” Before I could stammer out a response, he grabbed my arm and towed me behind him. “Not my type, remember?”

“I didn’t say yes,” I called.

He promptly ignored me.

After dragging me up a short snowy hill, we made our way up a scarcely shoveled path to a short set of rickety steps. He stopped to pick up some wood, then stomped up the steps and pressed his shoulder into the door. “Come on,” he shouted in my general direction before barreling into the dark house.

Hell, I didn’t even know if it was truly his. He could be an illegal squatter there for all I knew.

The fact of the matter was that I knew most of the people in Turnbull. This was on the outskirts, true, and the occasional person came or went without stirring my notice, but we lived in a small, self-contained area. We might be surrounded by trees and hills and blocked in by mountains of snow for almost half the year, due to our proximity to Lake Ontario, but we kept track of our own.

Also, it was hard to make quick getaways when a snowpocalypse wasn’t a disaster so much as a way of life.

Biting my lip, I cast a glance back toward the road. In the time it had taken us to walk up to the house-though calling it that seemed to be an overstatement-my poor car had become even more buried. The snow wasn’t coming down in flakes now. More like pellets.

“Red,” he growled. “Forget the damn bread.”

Something about his irritation made me laugh. I clapped a hand over my mouth, then bent at the waist when more laughter rolled out. I couldn’t catch my breath and what breaths I could take were laced with ice. Crappy time to be on the verge of hysteria.

Guess my accident had shaken me up more than I’d thought. Or else it was due to the man himself.

So I stood up straight, threw back my shoulders, and strutted inside in my giant boots to my beheading.

At least he’d turned on the lights. As I shut the door behind me and shifted to survey my surroundings, from down the hall came a string of curse words shot off in succession like gunfire.

My eyes widened. If he was trying to ease me into feeling comfortable before he struck, he wasn’t too good at it.

“Are you okay?” I asked carefully, darting glances right and left as I crept up the hallway to where his voice was coming from.

And stopped dead at the mouth of the sparse, rustic kitchen.

He was standing at the stove in nothing but a pair of silky black boxers with a spatula in his hand, poking at whatever congealed mess was in his dented pan. It was one like you’d see in a camping kit, meant to be used on nights under the stars and no other time, ever. But that was his home cookware.

Fit him somehow, as did the intricate swirls and lines of dark ink that wrapped around his muscular shoulders and biceps. More ink covered his back and sides. He was a human canvas, tattooed and rippling with muscle.

I didn’t find that arousing. That he was the exact opposite of my lanky, inkless ex was merely something I noted.

“Fucking burner is fucking out.” He stabbed at the red mass in his pan. Without sparing me a glance, he continued. “Why are you still dressed like a damn polar bear? Get out of those wet clothes. You were standing in a snowbank for a good fifteen minutes or more.”

“Polar bears don’t need clothing, as they have fur.”

That he only growled made me laugh. And cautiously unwind my scarf.

While he continued to fiddle with the non-working stove, I cleared my throat. “You have a microwave. Just heat the soup.” Cautiously, I stepped closer and peered at the gross stuff he kept trying to stir. “That is soup, right?”

“Yes. Tomato. I was going to make grilled cheese to go with it. Can’t now, because fucking burner is-”

“Fucking out,” I finished, surprised by how liberating it felt to curse. There weren’t any tip jars here.

No furnace either apparently, as it was nearly as cold inside as it had been out. Or else I’d caught a serious freaking chill.

“Look at you. Your teeth are chattering.” He turned to me and yanked off my fuzzy hat, causing the long hair I’d tucked underneath to come tumbling out. He gazed at it as if he was surprised I had hair at all, then managed to shake off his shock and tugged off my earmuffs too.

Sound rushed into my ears, including the uneven hiss of his breaths through his tightly clenched teeth.

I raised my gaze to his. He was staring at me in a way I wasn’t used to from men. When a girl grew up in a small town with three strapping, overprotective brothers, she got used to guys being too afraid to take their shot. As such, I’d grown accustomed to dating safe, parental-friendly boys. I liked them. They were predictable. No serial killers in the bunch.

None of them made my blood heat the way this one was with merely a heavy-lidded look.

He gripped my hat and earmuffs in his hands, crumpling them. This close to him, without even the buffer of his clothes, he seemed even more huge. Tall, muscled, dangerous.

I didn’t know that kind of male. Had never wanted to.

Until now.

“Keep going,” I said softly, challenging myself as much as I was him. I gestured to the rest of my outerwear. “Lots more clothes to strip off me, Wolf.”