From the impact, he knocked his head on the steering wheel. Thankfully, the air bag didn’t pop. He didn’t really want to deal with trying to shove it back into the wheel.
The SUV was still running. Darien put it in Reverse, but it didn’t budge. The sound coming from the rear indicated that the tires were spinning in place. There was too much ice.
Cursing again, he banged his fist on the steering wheel, and then shifted it into Park. He was going to have to get out and put something behind the tires to give them some traction.
Pulling his hat down over his ears, Darien opened the door and jumped out into the blizzard. As he made his way around to the back, he searched the surroundings for the other vehicle. There was no way that it didn’t also go off the road. Not in this weather, not on this icy stretch of highway. But he couldn’t see anything through the howling, blistering white wall of snow.
Opening the hatch on the SUV, he dug through the equipment and found a short-handled shovel, especially designed to dig out of snow and ice. He slammed the hatch shut and proceeded to dig the back tires out of the snow.
After fifteen minutes of digging, Darien climbed back into the SUV and tried to back out. Still the tires spun in place. He got out again and continued to dig, chipping at the ice underneath the heavy blanket of white.
Once more he tried to move the vehicle, to no avail. He was good and stuck. He wasn’t going anywhere any time soon, not until the blizzard stopped and he could either flag down someone, or find something to jam under the tires to garner some traction.
Luckily he was well-equipped with thermal blankets, a hot plate, bottled water, dried food and a full gas tank. He could wait it out for at least twelve hours if he had to. He just hoped it didn’t come to that.
Darien jumped out into the snow again to go around the back to the hatch. He’d grab some supplies to hunker down for a few hours. As he opened the back, a sound whispered to him on the wind. Shivers, not just from the cold, raced down his spine.
He turned to survey the area. Was there someone there calling to him? Maybe the driver of the other vehicle.
“Darien.” The haunting voice echoed all around him. He stared into the blustering snow, desperate to see something, anything concrete.
Something caught his eye, and he turned toward it. A shape materialized in the blinding white.
“Darien, I’ve been waiting for you.”
Darien wiped at his eyes with the back of his gloved hand. Surely he was seeing things. The combination of the blinding snowscape, the fact that his eyes were watering and the Sapporo beer he had downed had to be playing tricks on his vision. Because there couldn’t possibly be a woman dressed in a blue kimono floating to him on a wisp of cold air.
The old man’s warning sounded in his head. It will be the death of you.
“Darien,” she whispered on a breeze. Her voice was seductive. A sudden urge to go to her rushed over him. He clamped his eyes shut and fought against the ridiculous notion.
When he opened his eyes again, she was still there, floating above the snow. He noticed she was barefoot, her toenails painted a sensual crimson. With a demure smile she beckoned him to her.
Oh, Darien wanted to go to her, to lose himself in the exquisite beauty of her. But he fought against the urge, knowing full well it was a hallucination brought on by the stories he’d heard and his dire situation. It was just that she seemed so real and not a figment of his overactive imagination.
“It’s an illusion,” he chanted to himself, then shook his head trying to shake off the haunting image.
“I am no illusion, Darien. I am your destiny.”
His foot moved forward. It surprised him. It was as if he wasn’t in control of his body. He knew it was a huge mistake to move into the snowstorm away from the safety of his vehicle, but that didn’t stop him from taking another step and another until he was six feet from the bumper of the SUV.
He turned and looked back at the vehicle, stunned that he had moved so far without fully realizing it. He was on autopilot and fueled by the allure of the ice maiden beckoning him to move even farther into the blizzard. Although Darien knew full well that to do so would be his death, he walked even closer toward her.
She smiled at him, and his heart swelled with emotion. She was breathtaking, and he couldn’t stop looking at her. Her pale face and perfect painted cupid-bow of a mouth drew him closer and closer until he was so close he knew if he lifted his hand he’d be able to touch the silk of her kimono. But he feared to do just that. Because what if his touch made her disappear? Where would he be then but alone in a violent snowstorm with no hope of survival?
An ache so raw, so violent, pounded in his heart and in his body. He had to touch her; he had to have her, if only for a moment before he died. Because he knew that death was knocking, no, pounding, on his door. And even though he knew that fundamentally, and had no real desire to die, Darien welcomed it.
He reached for her. “Please,” he begged. Although he had no idea what he was pleading for. Her touch? Her kiss? Release from this mortal coil? At this point, anything would be a relief to the pain hammering inside him.
Still smiling, she floated down to him. He gasped when at last her hand caressed his cheek. Her touch was like ice, but he didn’t shudder from it, not from the cold of it. It felt like heaven on his skin and a shiver of pleasure rushed down his spine.
When she stood next to him, he realized how petite she was. The top of her head came to his chin, and he wanted to envelop her in his arms and hold her until the summer sun came. Instead, he leaned down to her mouth, eager for her kiss.
With her head tilted up, her lips parted in anticipation, it was all Darien could do to stop from putting his mouth to hers, to take her finally. As she met his gaze, she brushed her lips against his and he was done. Nothing now or ever again could feel as good as the cool press of her frozen lips.
Greedily, he drank her in. Wrapping his arms around her, he deepened the kiss. That was when he felt the air being sucked from his lungs. But he didn’t care. She was his at long last and that was all that mattered.
With his last breath, he whispered against her lips, “I’m yours, forever.”
Chapter 2
A lthough his eyelids were hot, sore and difficult to open, Darien finally forced them apart and looked around. His whole body ached and every move, however small it seemed, caused him blistering agony.
He stared up at the white ceiling and tried to focus on where he was and what had happened. The last thing he could clearly remember was getting stuck in a snowbank on the side of the road to Kushiro. After that, everything was hazy and confusing.
Lifting his head, he gazed down at himself. He was on a platform bed, hard and uncomfortable beneath his back, under a few layers of mocha-colored silk, in a large white room. Except the walls weren’t painted, at least with any paint he’d ever seen. They appeared shiny and wet like melting icicles.
There seemed to be no windows in the room, but there was light radiating from somewhere. Not from lamps or any visible light fixtures but almost as if the walls, floor and ceiling glowed from within.
Shifting his position on the bed, Darien lifted up the cover and saw that he was na**d. Where were his clothes? Craning his neck, he glanced around the odd room searching for anything familiar, anything to indicate to him that he wasn’t going mad. Stacked in one corner appeared to be all the equipment from his SUV. Folded neatly on a chair—also white and glistening like the walls—were his clothes.
He was hoping that it would help to see his things, but it didn’t. He was more confused than before. If this was a dream would he really see concrete items like a hot plate and a jerry can of gasoline? Why not dancing na**d women with insatiable libidos? That would be way more interesting.
Maybe he wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating, but was dead. And this was his purgatory—a pristine white room made out of ice.
Lowering his hands, he ran his fingers over the “mattress” underneath him. The angular lines were smooth and slick to the touch. Curious, he rolled over and looked down the side of his bed. It was completely crafted from ice. The frame, intricately carved with sleek designs, was like crystal and cool to the touch. It seemed impossible, but there it was, and he was lying on top of it. The interesting thing was he wasn’t cold. In fact, he didn’t feel any chill whatsoever. Not from the air and not from the structure he was on, yet there was no mistaking that he was completely surrounded by a frozen landscape.
He tried to sit up, determined to find out exactly what was going on and where he was, but nausea swept over him, and he had to lay back down to catch his breath. His head ached fiercely, and then he remembered hitting it on the steering wheel when he ran into the snowbank.
As he gathered himself, his thoughts strayed toward the impossible. An image of a breathtaking Japanese woman in a blue kimono filled his mind. He had seen her, hadn’t he? She had spoken his name.
He pressed his fingers to his lips. They were cool but dry against his skin. The sensation triggered another thought and image. She had kissed him. As sure as he existed, so had she. He could still feel the tingling of ice on his face from her touch.
He wasn’t going mad, was he? He’d always been sane and rational. Even as a child he’d analyzed everything, including the possibility of there being a closet monster and if Santa Claus could truly exist. He had always been the levelheaded one, the guy others relied on to explain and reason.
But now, he wasn’t too confident. He was completely out of his element, and he hated the lost feeling coming over him.
The sound of a door opening drew his attention to the far corner of the room. Framed in the doorway stood the woman from his dreams, from his vision of a beautiful woman in a sapphire-blue kimono floating to him across the snow. The woman from the myth.
The ice maiden.
Without meeting his gaze, she entered the room and crossed the floor to his bed. She carried a tray in her arms. On it he could see steam rising from a cup and from a plate. The smell of food wafted to his nose and he inhaled deeply, his stomach growling in response.
Avidly, he watched her as she busied herself next to the bed, setting the tray down on a table. She didn’t look at him as she worked. She acted as if he wasn’t even there.