Polar Bared Read Online Free PDF Page B

inability to ditch her or wring her neck to quickly put her out of her misery—and solve his problem.
    “Fuck me to hell and back,” a place he’d visited during the war and never intended to return. Why couldn’t he just leave her there? She wasn’t his responsibility. She meant nothing to him.
    Yet, that didn’t stop him from swapping forms, and by holding the hood of her parka to keep her head from bumping on the ground, he part dragged her then carried her until the cold got too much before dragging her again until he reached the place he called home, which luckily for them both wasn’t too far from where he’d passed out the night before.
    More good news? There wasn’t anybody waiting for him. No one took a shot. And all his shit was intact. The bad news? The inside wasn’t much warmer than the outside.
    Depositing Vicky on the cot he kept, he went over to the qulliq in the corner of his hut. An Inuit version of a stove and lamp, the qulliq was made of carved soapstone, it resembled a basin. From a box he kept outside, he grabbed some chunks of frozen seal oil and put it in the hollow of his qulliq and lit it. It smoked a bit, but it couldn’t be helped. He’d run out of Beluga blubber, which was the best fuel, burning hot and practically smokeless.
    A fire lit, though, didn’t mean an immediately warm home. Vicky lay still on his cot, past the point of shivering, her skin pale, too pale and cold.
    There was no getting around it. If he wanted to warm her up, he’d have to resort to old-fashioned methods. Good thing he hadn’t gotten dressed yet.

Chapter Six
    What a strange dream .
    One moment, Vicky was on the icy ledge, certain she’d freeze to death, and the next, a giant polar bear appeared, the same as before she was certain given she doubted many of them shared the same distinctive bisecting scar down its face.
    For the second time that day, she fainted. Forget adversity turning her into some super-duper woman capable of incredible adrenalized feats. She didn’t have time for conscious thought, although if she had, it might have veered along the lines of, Oh my god, he’s coming back to eat me. She hit the ice faster than she could blink.
    Turned out she would have been totally wrong about the whole eating thing. Nope, instead, according to her foggy recollection, things got weird. Dazed and confused, she vaguely seemed to remember the bear attempting to drag her up the hill. Which made no sense. If it was going to eat her, why not tear into her while she lay practically comatose?
    But no. Bouncing her off the humps and bumps, the polar bear tried to haul her upward. It didn’t work. The darned hill just wouldn’t cooperate.
    The bear gave up. And this was where the real hallucination began. Suddenly, the bear was gone, and a naked man took its place. As naked men went, holy smokes!
    Even with no glasses, she had no problem seeing the guy was built like some kind of body builder. Or wrestler. His muscles had muscles, and she got to touch them. Kind of.
    First, her imaginary naked hero attempted to pick her up princess style, which was utterly cool. She’d never had a guy do that before, dream or not. However, that didn’t last because he also couldn’t maneuver the blasted slippery slope.
    Kudos to him, he didn’t give up. Her chivalrous naked knight had her piggyback him. Even for a dream, the whole string of events was odd, but oddest of all was the desire she had to straddle his front and not his back. Such a naughty thing for her to think. Brazen too, as brazen as what she did next.
    I can’t believe dream-me had the nerve to give him a kiss. On the cheek, but still, that was bold by her standards.
    Her dead husband wasn’t one to enjoy emotional displays. They rarely did more than peck, and when he did his husbandly duty, in the dark, every few weeks, there was little touching of any body parts. But it had always been that way since they first started dating when she was seventeen