Lost in His Woods: The Complete Works

By Penelope L'Amoreaux

This is the complete bundle of all five "Lost in His Woods" releases.

She woke alone and cold, close to death in the snow. No memories of how she came to be stranded in the icy Siberian wood. No chance for survival on her own. He saved her and brought her into his secluded sanctuary. When she couldn’t even remember her name, he gave her one: Clare. He gave her food and shelter, but this guarded stranger, her reserved savior, Tolik, wasn’t giving her what she craved: human contact.

Clare’s intrusion into Tolik’s private world forces his dark secrets into the light. He offers to help her remember who she is in a unique... and potentially dangerous way. His mastery of pleasure and pain intrigues Clare, despite his warnings regarding his own sadistic inclinations. His promise of enlightenment is too great to turn down, and she willingly submits.

Now, Tolik risks losing control while Clare is in danger of falling for the man who seems to be pushing her away.

How far would you go to get your memory back? Would you surrender yourself completely into the hands of a seductive sadist, who’s self control balances on a knife’s edge?

Tolik and Clare’s journey take them through dark, sensual depths; heartbreak; and ultimately a thrilling adventure that neither of them were prepared for. As her memories unfold, they discover some things are best left hidden For Clare, remembering could be the thing that brings them together. Or get her killed.

So... how far would you go?

This is a 50,000+ story for mature audiences, 18+, who enjoy a little mystery in their men, a lot of curiosity in their heroines, adventure, mystery, and a dash of pain and kink mixed with their pleasure!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penelope L'Amoreaux
• Release date: May 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310311758

Penelope L'Amoreaux

Penelope L'Amoreaux helps build rocket ships during the day and dreams of naughty adventures at night. When not turning those adventures into stories, she enjoys a tall glass of wine, reading, and the perfectly cooked steak.

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Lost In His Woods: The Complete Works

Penelope L’Amoreaux

Penelope L’Amoreaux

Published by Penelope L’Amoreaux

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Penelope L’Amoreaux

All rights reserved

Cover art by Angie Zambrano of pro_ebookcovers

This is a work of fiction. Please respect the hard work of this author and purchase a copy, if you have not already done so.

CONTENTS

Book One

Book Two

Book Three

Book Four

Book Five

Author Acknowledgements

Also by this author

Book One

Chapter One

It had felt like hell when I woke up freezing in a snow drift, my memory gone.

I had woken up in a cardigan and jeans, near death, covered in snow. When I had opened my eyes, the thing that startled me the most wasn’t the snow or my skin (which had been turning blue); no, it was that I had had no idea how I had got there. Or who I was.

I had felt more than panic. I had felt a bone-deep terror, a gaping hole opening in me that nothing could calm and close. Screaming, I had stumbled through the drifts, searching for shelter, a place to get warm. Searching for something, anything, familiar.

When I had given up hope and was lying down to die in the snow, I had been saved.

This man, this stranger named Tolik, was a knight on a snowmobile, swooping in and rescuing me from almost certain death. At first I hadn’t been sure if he was a friend or a foe. He had pulled up beside my frozen body and looked at me before starting to pull off. To leave me to die.

I must have called out, or maybe he had a change of heart, but I had watched as he turned the mobile around and slung me on a sled attached to the back.

He took me to his cabin, warmed me up, fed me, let me pass out on his guest bed.

I had slept for two days, on and off, with feverish dreams. My dreams haunted me, ribbons of memory floating and tugging at my subconscious. A face or a familiar scene would dash through, but my mind tries too hard to capture them and they escape.

Now when I wake up, I wake up with an ache in my chest—the absence of who I am a gaping hole.

The only thing that keeps me calm was Tolik. If there was a picture dictionary, Tolik’s face would be planted firmly beside mysterious. He doesn’t share much with me. I guess that’s fair, as I can’t share anything with him. When I had first come to, he had been frustrated by my inability to remember anything about myself.

"But how does an American just wake up in the middle of No-Where, Siberia!?" He had yelled in frustration, while I sat and cried and tried desperately to make him believe. My English and accent had tipped him off, though he was American, too. Really, it was a pot calling a kettle black, but I was too upset at the circumstances to point that out.

I recognized Siberia. I knew the trees, the tundra. I just didn’t know how I knew and I sure as hell didn’t know how I ended up there.

Eventually he did believe me and said I could stay with him for a while, until my memory comes back. I couldn’t decide which fear was bigger: that I wouldn’t be able to remember and he would kick me out, or that I would remember and hate who I turned out to be. After all, people don’t simply forget everything they know for no reason.

Fortunately, we weren’t there yet. I didn’t remember my name. He decided on calling me Clare, based on a book he was reading. I liked it, but maybe I liked it because he chose it. I thought it meant he might be warming to me being there the way that I was warming up to, well, him. In every way.

Instead, every day was spent with Tolik avoiding me. It was disheartening. As far as I was concerned, he wasn’t just the hero who had saved my life. He was also my only friend. An incredibly sexy, good-looking friend who made my heart beat faster whenever he was in the room.

Tolik was tall, several inches over six feet. His hair was deep-brown and unkempt, shagging into his eyes. Those eyes. They were the color of dark amber honey or milk chocolate, and could be so warm. That warmth only came through occasionally.

Most of the time he looked at me with something like distrust. It was easy to understand. Tolik had a hint of a Russian accent, but he explained later why he was there. Unlike me, he was in the middle of Siberia on purpose.

"I wanted to be alone, so I picked a place where I could be just that."

"Why do you need to be this alone, this isolated? Surely someone out there cares about you."

"No, he had muttered as he stormed out of the room. There is no one."

He wouldn’t say anymore about it. I knew I should take a hint from his closed-off nature, but instead I found myself even more entranced with him. He was a tough nut and I yearned to crack him open.

One thing was for sure. I knew what he meant about having no one who cared about you. The difference was that while he rejected society and people, I craved the connections and bonds found in those things.

* * * * *

I had three problems while living with Tolik. One was obviously my amnesia. Two was a lack of passport or identification. We had searched the area where he had found me, but there was nothing to give us a clue about my identity. No documentation meant I couldn’t leave Tolik’s cabin safely. Three, though, was what I was currently wrestling with: boredom.

His cabin was in the middle of the woods, or what passed for woods in this godforsaken land. Siberian larches surrounded us, their rough bark occasionally glistening with ice melting in the sun. Tolik had explained they were some of the only trees that could survive in such a cold and unforgiving climate. They had adapted with shallower roots, allowing them to keep above the permafrost and soak up any snow that melted.

My handsome housemate had also adapted. Wandering around his house had been a wonder, particularly when he had told me that he had built it himself. There were two small bedrooms (though his guest bedroom was bare of anything but a bed), a full kitchen, bathrooms, and a small living room. I asked him why, if he wanted to be alone, he had an extra bed. Like most questions I asked him, he refused to answer and walked away.

What was most impressive, though, was what was near the house—a full greenhouse and a sturdy barn. The greenhouse was how he kept himself fed. He almost never had to drive hours into town for supplies. The barn housed a small herd of goats.

Tolik was that quintessential mountain man. Compared to him, I was the most useless person on the planet. I couldn’t build things, or hunt my own food, start a fire… I couldn’t even remember my name. He did all of those things and more. Furniture around the cabin? He made some of it. The meat we ate? He hunted it. It amazed me that someone could be so suited for survival yet so closed off to emotions.

Exploring his cabin and barn had broken my boredom for a few days. If I wasn’t cleaning or trying to cook, I often wandered from room to room while Tolik was out hunting or chopping firewood. I had seen every square foot, I thought, but it was something to do.

Even now I wandered outside, one of Tolik’s old coats swallowing me whole but protecting me from the bitter cold. I knew I wouldn’t stay out for long; the cold brought back the terror I had felt waking in the snow bank.

As I paced around his cabin I heard a crack nearby, followed by a crash. Startled, I fell to my knees and covered my head. When nothing happened, I slowly uncovered my eyes. I wasn’t sure where the instinct or fear I felt came from. It was unsettling, the itch of a memory I wasn’t sure I wanted.

When I looked around, I realized an enormous branch had broken off and hit Tolik’s cabin and slid down. Rushing over, I inspected for damage. There was none visible. I knew Tolik cherished his home and I wanted to help to protect it.

The branch was lodged in a snow drift against the house. When I went to move it, I found it wedged in tightly. I was going to need to dig. My hands were covered in some old socks. I would have to work quickly because once they got wet, I wouldn’t have long before my fingers started to freeze. I had barely survived frostbite once, I wasn’t going to let it come that close again.

Digging quickly, I scooped snow away from the branch. Soon I realized it was easier to scoop with my entire arms. It wasn’t long before I could grasp most of the branch. As I lifted and drug the wood away from the house, I heard it. Soft, subtle, but there none the less. A scrape of wood on wood.

Curious. I dragged the branch a short distance back and then rushed to keep digging. It took a while, and by the end of it my fingers were tingling (definitely time to go inside) but I unearthed what I was looking for. It was a cellar door. A large cellar door. With an enormous padlock on it.

Some place new to explore! I couldn’t believe Tolik hadn’t told me about it. I mean, it was probably super gross and filled with tools and bugs, if bugs could even survive in this environment, but it was still something new.

Since I couldn’t do anything else until Tolik let me have the key, I left it for another day. It was time to rush in and bring some warmth back into my body.

Still, the door to the cellar was in my mind the whole time I stripped, changed, and got ready for dinner.

* * * * *

I loved that even if we didn’t see much of each other during the day, Tolik and I always had dinner together at night. It helped me feel like he wasn’t completely resentful that I was trespassing into his solitary life. I had asked and, while I didn’t think he told me the complete truth, it reassured me that he had made a choice to bring me into his home.

"Why did you save me?"

He shifted, uncomfortable. It was the right thing to do.

"No one is out here. No one would have known if you had left me."

"I would have known."

"Is it okay that I’m here now? I just… I am just so unsure about, well, everything. I couldn’t bear it if I was ruining your life, too."

"Not much of a life out here to ruin, I guess."

That had been the end of the conversation. It wasn’t a golden invitation or anything, but it wasn’t a rejection, either. If the only person I knew rejected me, I’m not sure I could handle it.

We didn’t talk much. I didn’t know enough about myself to open up and Tolik didn’t want to share anything about himself. Ever.

That didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the meal. He was so calm and comforting to be around. And he was not hard on the eyes, either. I didn’t think I could ever get used to how gorgeous he was. His hair was getting longer, flopping down around his jaw. I wondered if he drove his snowmobile for hours to get it cut. I doubted it—he probably just waited until it was long enough to drive him crazy and then shaved his head.

What did you do today? I asked, already knowing the answer but wanting to hear his warm, rich voice.

Hunted a little. I went back and looked around the area I found you in again.

My eyebrow raised a little but I tried to keep a poker face. Oh? We’ve combed the area over a few times, Tolik. I don’t think anything is there.

He shrugged. Snow’s been melting a little in the sun. You never know, something might turn up.

Somehow this hurt my feelings. I knew he just wanted to help me. Hell, I wanted that help, too. But was he trying to get rid of me? Find a passport or something with my real name and say, Ok, you know who you are now, have a nice life?

As much as I did feel a deep tug in my chest when I thought about my identity, I also felt pain when I thought about leaving this quaint cabin. When I thought about leaving him.

It was crazy. I knew nothing about him. He knew nothing about me. Who could build a relationship on that? Was a relationship even what I wanted? At this point, I thought I would settle for knowing he at least wanted me around.

My hurt made me angry. Nothing is going to show up. We both know that. If you want to get rid of me so bad, just say so.

He stopped eating and looked at me. Something glinted in his honeyed eyes. Normally cool, they looked at me with something wild flickering in them.

That isn’t what I said.

Then why else would you be out looking for something when we both know nothing is out there?

He shifted in his chair, his shoulders squaring. I am trying to help you. All I’ve done here is help. What more do you want from me? There was steel in his voice and I knew I had pushed him too far.

A flush crept up my cheek. Of course he was just trying to help. I was being difficult and worse, ungrateful. How could I tell him what I wanted was for him to open up to me? I was feeling starved for attention, for affection. His good looks and close proximately only made that more apparent. But that was selfish of me and I knew it. He was right. He was already giving me enough.

I’m sorry. I know you are just doing everything in your power to help me remember.

Tolik choked a little as I said this. He looked almost...guilty for a second. Why would he feel guilty? What else could he do for me? We had discussed driving me to the nearest town, but without identification, I could find myself in a worse spot and still no answers.

I must have imagined it.

Time for a change of subject. I waited as we ate a