Chapter 2
Two
J ack
This fucking mountain is my safe place. The morning started quiet after a night filled with jerking flashbacks and waking up fighting with my sheets in a cold sweat.
After the second dream, I stayed awake, so by 6 am, when my brothers pile into their trucks after our weekly Monday breakfast at my cabin my mood was less than stellar.
I host, because I have very specific breakfast needs and none of them can cook worth a shit. And none of the diners in town carry elk steak and my famous flap Jacks made with buttermilk and protein enriched oat flour.
It was the usual Monday, catching up, breaking each other’s balls. Brother stuff. Cade with his wilderness bullshit, Beau with grease under his fingernails, and Colt, quiet as always, his Sheriff uniform perfectly pressed.
"You're gonna rot up here," Beau had growled, slamming his coffee mug down. At forty-four, he thinks being the oldest means he can parent the rest of us. "Man wasn't meant to live without pussy, Jack."
I flipped him off, not bothering to argue. What the hell do they know? The cabin is mine. The silence is mine. The control is mine.
"Army broke you, brother," Cade muttered, scratching his beard. "Time to rejoin the living."
Colt just watched, that knowing stare of his cutting through my bullshit like always. Ex-fire jumper before he came home and took the job as the town’s Sheriff, with scars that ran deeper than skin. He understood better than the others why a man might need space.
"We're still on for Sunday," I'd told them, not a question. Sunday is our mom’s birthday. She’s been gone three years now, but we still celebrate her. Family is family, even when I wanted to throw my brothers in the fucking river. We take it in turns to host, even if I don’t trust my brothers’ cooking as far as I can spit, but this year Colt is hosting. “You need any pointers on how to cook venison, Colt, you just need to ask.”
“You can fucking cook, I’ll give you that,” Cade said, rubbing his stomach. “What you can do over an open fire is better than any Food Network contestant could put out.”
“Speaking of putting out—” Colt started shoving Beau, who promptly put him in a headlock. “You know I’m a take me home to mama man, I don’t put out unless you work for it.”
Beau doubled over like he was retching.
“Get the fuck out of here,” I groused. A few hours of company is enough human contact for me, and I was ready to get back to the silence of the woods.
When they finally left, dust kicking up behind their trucks and Cade’s squad car as they wound down the mountain road, I was left alone with my workshop and the half-finished twelve foot dining table some rich asshole from Denver commissioned.
Then the radio crackled—Billy from the ranger station, something about movement on the east ridge trail cam. Probably just another idiot hiker who couldn't read a fucking "PRIVATE PROPERTY" sign if it bit them in the ass.
But spring runoff made the river dangerous. And I didn't need a death on my conscience.
So I grabbed my keys and my rifle, and headed out on the four-wheeler toward the river, not knowing my life was about to fucking explode.
Not knowing she was waiting.
* * *
She's so fucking soft. Wet. Fucking trembling. And I can feel everything. Every goddamn inch of her against me. And I can't let her go. Won't let her go. Not now, not fucking ever.
The way her thighs press against my forearm, skin silky despite the cold, makes my cock throb like I nailed it with the hammer. Her breaths are these little puffs of warmth that shoot straight to my groin. The way she tugged on my shirt when I caught her like she was still falling, like I'm the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth...
Fuck me. This fucking girl has me changing into something new, and I’m not sure whether to praise the Lord or curse him for a fool.
She was hanging there from my goddamn rope like this was summer camp and not snowmelt death water. Tiny fucking thing. Crazy impractical little shoes with some happy looking cat on them. Slipping. Backpack pulling her down. Red hair plastered to skin so heavenly white I could die right now with my face buried in it.
Eyes wide with fear. Eyes I imagine for a split second looking up at me as I feed her every thick inch of my neglected dick.
And she was going to shoot a flare gun? Who the hell gave her that? Who the fuck let her come up here alone?
My cock hardens against my zipper, an instinctive, primal response to her scent, her softness, the way her body trembles against mine. I shift, knowing if she’s got any awareness she can feel it.
Totally out of character for me. The last time I got hard for a living breathing female was years ago. Fucking five? More?
Big hazel eyes stare up at me, flecks of gold catching the sunlight like treasure. Messy red hair framing a face too delicate for these mountains. Lips that shouldn't be that full on a girl that small, pink and trembling, begging to be claimed by mine. Freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks like a map I want to trace with my tongue, my teeth... My cum.
Beautiful yes, but that’s not enough. She’s cute, like a doll, but something about her perverts my thoughts, thinking of her crawling toward me, licking those bee-stung lips, popping her hips side to side, wearing one of my shirts and nothing else.
Little girl in Daddy’s shirt. I’ll be beating off to that image from now until they throw dirt on top of me, I know that already.
Fucking girl.
She's shaking. Good. She should shake. She should tremble. She should feel what I'm feeling—this earth-shattering, foundation-cracking change that’s happening inside me.
I can't tell if it's fear or cold or adrenaline. Probably all three. I don't give a shit. I just want to yell at her. Grab her shoulders and shake her until she gets it. Until she understands that she's mine now. That she never should have been anywhere but under me, under my protection, under my body.
I thrive on order. One of the reasons I've retreated into the mountains where I make the rules. Where I'm the law.
Besides my brothers, I barely speak to any other humans. Now, the devil has dropped this little curvy morsel into my lap and what the fuck. I'm a sick bastard because my first thought was to fuck some sense into her. To pin her against a tree and claim her so thoroughly she'd never think of doing something this reckless again.
"What were you thinking?" I growl again, my voice coming out like gravel, like the sound of earth shifting before an avalanche. My hands span her waist, fingers nearly touching at her back. So small. So fucking perfect. " Alone . Over spring runoff? You could have been hurt. You could have been killed."
She stares at me. Dripping wet. Little black circles under her eyes from the wet makeup. Delicate and fierce all at once.
Her lips purse, arms locking over her chest. "Are you Jack Boone or not?” she demands, defiant little face looking so fucking adorable. “I told you my dad said you'd help me, but I gotta say, you're a little bit of a jerk. You don’t think I don't know what could have happened?"
Mouth on hers.
Jesus Christ. My cock jerks against my zipper, desperate to feel that mouth wrapped around it. To feel those words vibrating against my skin instead of burning into my ears.
My blood freezes, remembering what she said earlier. I want to tell her I’m sorry. I know what happened and I should have been there. Instead, all that comes out is, "Your dad..."
"Are you hard of hearing? Yes, my dad . Hart. He said you lived in Wildfire mountains, on the east side. He gave me your phone number, email, address, but…well, let's just say it's all gone and that's part of the reason I risked my life to try to find you."
My vision narrows. The air punches out of me. This is Hart's kid. Hart's baby girl.
The one he used to show me pictures of. It's her, the round face, those eyes that defy a simple color name. The one he swore he'd keep safe forever—unless something happened. The one he made me promise to protect if he couldn't.
Same guy I owe my life to, and will never be able to pay off that debt.
Five years ago, he came to visit. He told me his kid was at a girlfriend’s house for the weekend, and he had something important he needed to say. He’d never once held that life debt over me, never asked for a goddamn thing, but now as we sat with the bourbon between us like old times, he did. "Jack, if anything happens to me, you look after my girl. Look after Delaney. She's all I have. Only one I trust with her is you. This world’s gone rotten. I can’t stomach the thought of her in the world without me. I know that’s wrong. I just planned to live forever I guess." His smile was dark as he looked up at the stars.
I'd nodded, not understanding then what that promise would come to mean. Not knowing how it would feel to hold her. See his eyes in hers. As I look at her now, I still see that same little girl, all pigtails and bright eyes, grinning at some private joke in those pictures he emailed me before I went full-on recluse and cut off the outside world in every way that mattered. No phone, no visitors, just a laptop and a monthly drive into town to collect my mail.
But she's not that little girl anymore. Now she’s all curves and softness and fucking fire.
Guilt tangles around my throat. I hate the city. I didn't know he was that sick. Or, at least that's what I tell myself when I tip up a bottle of the same bourbon, sitting alone in the silence of my cabin at night, trying to fool myself into thinking I didn't fucking know what the right thing to do was.
The possession that floods me isn't about my promise to Hart. It's about her—this girl-woman with haunted eyes and a stubborn chin. Something in me recognizes her like I've been waiting. Like my cock has been hard for her since before I knew she existed.
Fuck me. My head’s in a dark place.
I'm breathing her air, watching her tilt her head back to hold my gaze. My hand comes up to grip the back of her neck, feeling the delicate bones there, the rapid flutter of her pulse beneath my thumb. Like a hummingbird trapped in my palm.
“I keep my promises,” I manage. “But on my land, it’s my way.”
She blinks, but she doesn't argue. Doesn't pull away. Her lips part slightly, a little gasp escaping that goes straight to my dick.
“Seems I don’t have a lot of options at the moment. You’re my only choice, so...” She shrugs, “I guess I’ll try to do things your way. No promises though.”
And the way her pupils dilate, the way her breath catches, her little river-drunk body knows the score, even if her brain hasn’t caught up yet.
This isn't just about keeping a promise anymore. This is about keeping her. Forever.