Chapter 12 #2
She drank, head tilted back, sweat trailing down her neck to follow the curve of her breast. His cock stirred to life.
The stupid, inconvenient thing.
It had little interest in sex for years, and now suddenly she just had to take a drink, and it popped up to say hi like he was a teenager again.
Jesus.
He forced his attention back to the radio, twisting the dial with more force than necessary. The static cleared, and a fragment of traffic cut through— a state trooper reporting a BOLO on a white F-250, last seen east of Solace. The trooper sounded bored, routine, a man reading a bulletin.
Then came a voice he knew. Corbin Brandt, the U.S. Marshal who’d been hanging around Valor Ridge a lot this past year. Sometimes it was business— Nessie Harmon had once been in WITSEC under his care—but mostly the man just seemed to like the ranch and the people on it.
Evander didn’t dare live there himself, but there was a reason he’d settled right on the outskirts. He’d known from hour one it was a special place, one that needed protecting, so he’d made damn sure he knew every person who came through those gates.
From what he could tell, the marshal was one of the good ones.
Brandt’s voice was clipped and professional. “—confirmed sightings of the F-250 near the junction of Old Timber and County Twelve. Vehicle was stationary approximately forty-five minutes, then proceeded east into the national forest. No visual on occupants. No confirmation of the female.”
“Female,” Rainey murmured. “That’s me.”
Evander adjusted the gain. The static resolved.
“—advising all units to hold position. Do not pursue into backcountry without coordination. Repeat, do not pursue. Subject is considered armed and dangerous, and the terrain favors the suspect.”
The transmission broke.
Another voice cut in, rougher. “Brandt, we got a problem at Valor Ridge. They’re prepping for a wedding here in a few days, and the Sons of Sin have a truck and three bikes at the west gate, blocking vendors from getting in.”
Brandt again, tighter now. “Understood. Don’t engage the Sins, and tell Boone to keep Ghost on a tight leash. Last thing we need is a bloodbath. I’ll be there in twenty.”
“Oh, God.” Rainey pressed a hand to her mouth. “River.”
“He’s safer there than anywhere else.”
“I hope so.” She stared west, toward the mountains that hid Valor Ridge from view. “I never should’ve brought this to his doorstep.”
Evander studied her profile. Her jaw tightened, and her hands trembled. She pressed them flat against the rock.
He recognized the fear coming off her and understood it from a distance, almost clinically: River was her anchor, the only family she had left.
Love like that was foreign to him. He could picture it, respect it, but he’d never felt it.
He’d never really had a family. Just a narcissistic mother and a father who spent more time behind bars than free. He’d never belonged to anyone.
Watching her fight her worry now, he couldn’t say whether he was glad for that or whether he envied her.
Maybe it was a messy mix of both.
“Boone Callahan’s there,” he said. “Ghost. Jax. Bear. Walker. And Brandt’s headed in. Valor Ridge is full of capable, dangerous men. It isn’t a soft target.”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes stayed on the western range. He turned to follow her gaze to the wall of cloud building there, moving fast on a wind that hadn’t reached them yet.
“Storm’s coming. We need to get off this ridge.”
She blinked and seemed to notice the clouds for the first time. “Can we make it back to the cabin?”
“No. But there’s a shelter half a mile down the east face. I’ve used it before.” He packed the radio and held out a hand to her. “Come on.”
“What about signaling Ghost?”
“If the Sins are outside the ranch, it’s not safe to send anything, even Morse code. They’ll be listening to all of the transmissions, same as us.”
Her shoulders slumped.
“We’ll think of something else,” he promised.
After a beat, she nodded, drew a breath and took his hand.
They descended. The trail down ran steeper than the one they’d climbed, loose rock underfoot and the wind rising with every minute.
Rainey moved carefully, testing each foothold, and Evander stayed behind her, close enough to catch her if she went down.
She didn’t.
The shelter showed through the trees— a shallow overhang, maybe eight feet wide and four deep. It wouldn’t stop a determined rain, but it would break the worst of it. Evander ducked under the lip as the first drops came, fat and cold, spattering the stone around them.
Tilly followed and shook the water from her coat in a spray that caught Evander full in the face.
“Tilly,” he growled.
Rainey laughed. “She is unrepentant.”
He looked down at his dog as she settled belly to stone, back legs kicked out like a frog’s. “She’s shameless,” he said, but the word came out rough, almost fond, and he crouched to run a hand down her wet back. She leaned into the touch, her tail thumping once against the stone.
The rain came on fast. Within minutes it sheeted across the ridge in gray curtains, drumming the rock above them, running off the overhang’s lip in ropes. The temperature dropped with it.
Evander shrugged off his pack, pulled the radio out, checked it for moisture. Dry. Good. He set it on the stone between them and sat back against the rock wall, knees drawn up.
Rainey sat beside him, close enough that their boots nearly touched. She’d pulled the jacket collar up around her ears, and her hair had gone dark with rain. She looked so damn small in his jacket. Smaller than she was.
He didn’t like it.
He needed her larger than life, because the thought of her small and breakable twisted something in his chest he didn’t have a name for and didn’t want one.
The sleeves rode up, and he caught sight of her burn scars.
Last night he’d been too wrapped up in his own shit to comprehend what they really meant.
Her father had used her as his personal ashtray.
The ugly thing in him stirred. He wanted to find that fucker and put a whole pack of cigarettes out on his skin— to start. He dug his nails into his palms, focused on the bite of it, and forced the thing back down.
When he trusted himself to speak without grinding his teeth, he said, “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
She looked at the scars before pulling the sleeve down over them. “No abused kid does. He did worse to River.” She sighed and looked west again. “I shouldn’t blame Riv for getting out the second he could. But I do.”
Evander didn’t know what to say to that. He wasn’t built for comfort or soft words, and there was nothing to do about it.
But she didn’t seem to need comforting words. She sat quiet a while, arms crossed over her knees, then turned her head and looked at him with those clear, direct eyes. “Can we talk about last night?”
Fuck, no.
It took him a second to find his voice. “Rather not.”
“I just have one more thing to say. You don’t get to kiss me and then punish yourself for it.”
His chest cinched down until pulling in air went hard. “It wasn’t about the kiss.”
“Oh, you are so full of shit, Evander. You hurt yourself because you let yourself want something.” She held his eyes.
“And then you decided wanting it made you dangerous. That’s not about Afghanistan or what happened at Valor Ridge.
That’s all about me, and the fact that for ten seconds in that cabin you forgot to be afraid of yourself, and you couldn’t stand it. ”
A drop of rain struck between his boots, and he stared at it, watching it spread dark on the stone.
“You have no idea what being with me could cost,” he said.
“I know exactly what it could cost. I watched you put a knife through a man to keep me breathing. I’ve got the general shape of the risk.”
“You should’ve run,” he said.
“But I didn’t.”
Evander looked at her. Rain. Dark gold hair. The set of her jaw that said she’d argue with a mountain and expect it to move.
He was tired of arguing.
His hand moved before he gave it permission—up to her jaw, thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. Her lips parted. Her breath warmed his skin. He felt the hitch in it, the slight catch that told him she hadn’t expected him to touch her again so soon.
Or maybe she had. Maybe she’d known exactly what she was doing, pushing him like this, refusing to give him the distance he’d spent eight years convincing himself he needed.
He kissed her.
There was no slow build this time, no tentative exploration.
He’d spent the morning braced for her to recoil, and she hadn’t.
He’d spent the hike cataloging every reason to keep his hands to himself, and she’d stripped down to her sports bra and looked at him like he was the only thing in all these mountains worth seeing.
Her mouth opened under his and the sound she made—low, approving—sent his heat racing down his spine. His hand found her waist, the other threading into her rain-wet hair. She tasted like the canteen water, like the honey from breakfast, like something he’d forgotten existed.
He pressed her back against the rock wall. She went willingly, her spine arching into his palm, her hands fisting in his shirt. The jacket slipped off her shoulder. He followed it down, mouth tracing her collarbone, the hollow of her throat, the salt-sweet skin where her pulse jumped.
“Evander.” His name in that songbird voice did something to him. Something dangerous. Something he should stop.
He didn’t stop.
He found the edge of her sports bra. She made a sound of pure invitation, and he felt a tremor run through her under his fingers.
“Ribs,” he managed.
“Fuck my ribs.”
He laughed against her neck, surprised by the unfamiliar feeling and sound. Then her hands were under his shirt, palms flat against his stomach, and the laugh died into a groan. His cock throbbed against his fly, and her knuckles brushed over it.
The world narrowed. Rain on stone. Her breath against his ear. The weight of her thigh as she hooked it over his hip, pulling him closer until she was stopped by the layers of fabric.