Fated Mate by Jessica Aspen

I’ve been abandoned. Left on the side of a mountain road with a Rocky Mountain storm on the way and the only person I can turn to is a stranger—but Aaron has his own secrets…

Gwynn swallowed hard. “Hey.” She hovered on the side of the road, unsure of what to do, now that she’d gotten his attention.
Gray eyes started at her feet, taking their time as they traced up her body, tracing danger up her spine.

He was bigger than she’d thought. Close up, he looked hard and hungry. Well over six-foot, with slightly curling black hair, a scruffy three-day-old beard, and a silver stud in one ear. But this was no Pirate Jack. This man was all hard, bulging muscle under his tight, white tee-shirt and jeans—definitely more lumberjack than pirate.

He finished his examination and finally met her eyes. Her panting breaths were suddenly shorter. Her gut said ‘back away- danger! Danger!’

But this danger wasn’t the kind she was familiar with, growing up on the edge of the seedier side of town. He wasn’t a street thug or a pimp. She knew what those people looked like, smelled like. She’d seen enough of them, when her dad drove them into the neighborhoods her mom struggled to keep them out of. This man felt like a different kind of threat.

He had a stillness about him. The kind that said he would move in an instant. The kind that would come in handy if Herb’s buddies showed up.
The lethal kind.