Chapter 3 #2
Enchanted, he watched her bring the fur to her cheek so she could nestle in its softness. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the silk lining, and his jaw locked. His fingers curled against the desk, his nails scraping into the polished surface.
She looked around the room and, for a moment, her desperation disappeared. The start of a smile danced across her lips, then she doubled over in pain.
His brow knit with concern, but he saw nothing with her buried in fur and wool. Perhaps an injury he’d missed.
Brushing her hair out of her face, her skin glistened with a thin sheen of sweat. He glimpsed a deep gash on her temple and cursed himself for not searching her body more closely for bruises or identifying tattoos when he had the chance. He could rewind the feed, but she was on the move again.
“Where are you going now, quick little rabbit?”
Her strides were slightly steadier as she retraced her earlier steps with purpose. She was learning the layout of their home, which both bothered and impressed him. She saw rooms not open to the public, and he wondered why he hadn’t yet notified his brothers that they had a trespasser.
The kitchen cameras revealed her desperation in stark detail, and he zoomed in once again.
She devoured food like she hadn’t eaten in days, tearing into artisanal bread and aged cheeses with the hunger of someone who’d forgotten that sustenance was a luxury, not a guarantee.
This wasn’t the practiced nibbling of a woman worried about her figure.
This was survival eating, raw and honest and beautiful in its desperation.
She was running. The question was from what? Or whom?
Stone’s fingers moved across the console like a pianist interpreting Rachmaninoff, switching between cameras to follow her exploration of their domain. She moved through the common areas with wide-eyed wonder that suggested familiarity with wealth but not with wealth like this.
The style of her earlier clothing, though torn and soaked, whispered of money, old money, inherited money, but her behavior spoke of someone unaccustomed to the kind of power that built private kingdoms.
This was no princess. This was a refugee.
Once her appetite was satisfied, she neatly wrapped the food and returned it to the cupboard.
“What nice manners you have.” He chuckled. “Steal our food and clothes, but put them back sweetly.”
He didn’t mind her thievery because she was doing the hard part for him. Dry clothes, a warm house, and a full belly. It wouldn’t be long before she crashed. And then she’d be at his mercy.
He followed her curious journey from one lens to the next. When she discovered the second-floor playroom, Stone’s breath crystallized in his lungs.
“Careful, little one.” He zoomed in to see her face more clearly.
She froze in the doorway, like a deer scenting predators, staring at the equipment and sensing the edge of danger it implied. The confusion painted across her features was genuine. She didn’t understand what she was seeing. Not completely. But some part of her knew.
A flush of color that had nothing to do with the lodge’s warmth flickered across her face.
Curiosity.
He leaned closer to the monitors, pulse quickening as he watched with a slow grin. “See something you like, Zayka?”
Her hand slowly reached out, only to still before touching a single surface. She backed out of the room slowly. Her palm pressed against the closed door for an extended moment, as if she wanted to understand but had to deny herself the time to explore in order to prioritize survival.
He chuckled. “Coward.”
He tracked her exploration to the third-floor bedrooms. The cameras were Stone’s masterwork.
High definition and night vision capable, positioned to capture every angle of beds that had witnessed pleasure in its most exquisite forms. He’d installed them personally, taking pride in the image quality that would make Hollywood envious.
Never had he been so grateful for his perfectionism.
She tested the bed Hunter preferred during club events, bouncing once and moving on with the decisive dismissal.
Stone grinned. “Of course, you’ll want something softer for sleep.”
The next bed was made for slow seduction and long cuddles, Ash’s domain during parties. She sank into memory foam and wrinkled her nose like a cat offered substandard caviar.
“Sweet, little, precious rabbit. You’re used to comfort, aren’t you? I think I know exactly what you need.”
He switched cameras and waited as his bedroom door opened. Despite his pleasure that his bed suited her taste, his jaw clenched when she pulled back the covers.
His room. His sheets. His private sanctuary, to which no one entered without an explicit invitation.
His nostrils flared as she slipped between the sheets, wearing Hunter’s sweater and his spare sable coat.
The sight of her there, golden hair scattered across his ivory pillows like spilled champagne, sent molten heat shooting through his veins like liquid fire.
She looked like she belonged there. Like she’d been born to grace his sheets and warm his bed. The thought was so unexpected, so completely inappropriate, that Stone shoved back from the monitors as if they’d turned radioactive.
He snatched his phone, stabbing out a text to his brothers like he was declaring war.
Get down here. Now.
Hunter’s response materialized instantly.
What’s wrong?
There wasn’t time to explain in detail. Showing them would be easier.
Surveillance room. Now. Bring Ash.
Stone poured fresh vodka while he waited, keeping one eye on the monitor displaying the sleeping intruder and the other on the door. She’d curled on her side with one hand tucked beneath her cheek.
In sleep, she appeared fragile, breakable in ways that had nothing to do with physical strength. But he knew better. There was untapped strength inside of her, the kind borne of will and suffering more than muscle.
His fingers tightened around the crystal tumbler as heavy footsteps announced Hunter’s approach. In the last second of having her to himself, he grieved and accepted that she would never be solely his.
“What is it?” His older brother filled the doorway like a flesh-and-blood natural disaster.
Dark hair tousled from working out, sweat still slick on his bare chest, and black cotton pants that slung low enough to display the roadmap of scars across his torso. Each mark told a story of violence survived and lessons learned in blood.
“We have a visitor.”
“Someone dies tonight,” Hunter growled in Russian, scanning for threats across the machines.
“Not yet.” Stone gestured toward the monitor watching his bedroom. “There.”
Ash materialized behind Hunter, his characteristic silence intact.
Stone didn’t need to see him to know he was there.
He sensed him like a shift in atmospheric pressure that drops the temperature and kills the wind.
Where Hunter was brute force and volcanic fury, Ash was controlled violence wrapped in deceptive calm.
Ash moved with surgical precision disguised as meditation.
Glancing back to read his brothers’ expressions, he took in Ash’s dark jeans and a thermal shirt that outlined every muscle. His alert ice-blue eyes zeroed in on the screen despite the ungodly hour. “Is it a child?”
“No.”
“A woman,” Hunter said matter-of-factly.
Stone watched Ash’s expression transform as comprehension dawned. “How did she penetrate the island?”
“Boat.” Stone indicated the harbor camera. “She climbed up from the dock approximately ninety minutes ago.”
“She? You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
Hunter’s low growl dropped to a register that made smart people reconsider their life choices. “And you waited ninety minutes to alert us?”
“I had a handle on the situation.”
Hunter approached the central monitor with predatory focus, the one displaying Stone’s bedroom. The brand on his back, right shoulder glinted under the dim blue lights of the security feed. “That little thief broke into our house?”
“I didn’t feel like digging a hole through two feet of snow.”
His brother’s molten eyes glared at him. “You let her in? A perfect stranger—”
“She was soaked to the bone. A minute longer, and she would have died out there.”
“That’s not the point. She could be dangerous.”
Ash chuckled. “I think we can handle her, Hunter.”
Stone rolled his eyes. Might as well get it all out in the open now. “She’s also been consuming our food and stealing our clothes.”
Ash squinted at the lump of fur surrounding her face. “Is that your old fur coat?”
Hunter growled.
“Just be glad she’s sleeping in my bed. I’ve got the situation under control.”
The three brothers stepped back from the monitors in contemplative silence, each watching the woman sleep and wondering what the next move might be.
She’d kicked away some covers, and the sable coat had fallen open to reveal the elegant line of her thigh beneath Hunter’s oversized sweater.
The cascade of her hair spilled like gold, catching candlelight.
“She’s exquisite,” Ash said quietly, his voice carrying that dreamy quality that meant fantasies were crystallizing.
Hunter grunted in agreement. “Beautiful women are dangerous.”
“No, not her. She looks like a fallen angel,” Ash argued. “She’s just a lost little lamb who wandered into a bear den.”
Stone glared at Ash. Not a lamb. She was his rabbit. “She wasn’t aimlessly strolling about, Ash. The little zayka was desperate for shelter.”
“An angel in a storm. Let’s wake her up.”
Hunter caught Ash’s sleeve. “Angels don’t commit breaking and entering.” His black eyes were fixed on the monitor. “Angels don’t steal.”
“So maybe she’s not an angel.” Ash’s smile could have cut diamonds. “Maybe she’s something far more interesting.”
Stone switched to thermal imaging replay, showing them her arduous approach to the lodge. “She was nearly dead when she arrived. Hypothermic. Starving. Desperate.”
“Running from something,” Ash observed, back to clinical detachment. “Or someone.”
“Which means desperation drove her actions.” Hunter cracked knuckles, the sound similar to breaking bones. “Desperate people make mistakes.”
“Like trespassing on property belonging to men who always collect their debts,” Stone agreed, leaning against the console with deceptive casualness.
“So we agree,” Ash said. “Violating our sanctuary without invitation means one thing and one thing only. We aren’t going soft.”
“Agreed.” Hunter’s arms bulged as he crossed them over his chest.
Stone glanced at her defenseless form. Her breathing had finally found a peaceful rhythm, and tension no longer pinched her features. “So what’s our response?”
Hunter’s answer dropped like an edict. “Wake her up. Extract information about her identity and purpose. Then decide whether she lives or disappears.”
“We could contact the authorities,” Ash suggested without much conviction. That wasn’t how they operated on The Island.
Stone’s laughter roughened with disbelief. “And reveal what? That someone breached our private club? The one that doesn’t exist in any official capacity?”
“We handle this ourselves,” Hunter decided with finality. “Like we handle everything else that threatens our domain.”
Pragmatic as always, Stone pulled up the Doppler. “The storm won’t break for hours. She’s not going anywhere regardless of our intentions.”
“Who says we want her to leave?” The question came from Ash, and both Stone and Hunter turned.
There was nothing Stone could do to help this golden-haired thief with her desperate eyes now that they saw her.
She was as good as theirs. But thinking back to her determination with the fire and how battered she’d been from the cold, he knew she wasn’t built for captivity.
“What if she just needed shelter and a warm place to rest? We could just give her a place to catch her breath and let her—”
“She violated our rules,” Hunter pointed out in his unbending militant tone. “You break it, you buy it. That’s always been our policy.”
“She owes us,” Ash agreed with mastered casualness. “At least until the storm passes. We ensure she’s... appropriately grateful for our hospitality, then we decide when and how we let her go.”
“If we let her go.” Hunter’s grin contrasted with the storm of violence swirling in his dark eyes.
Stone switched camera feeds to display the storm still savaging the landscape outside. Wind howled around the lodge like hungry ghosts, snow and sleet turning the world into a frozen hellscape.
“She has nowhere else to go.” Even if she could reach her shitty little boat, she’d never survive the crossing in these conditions.
“Trapped,” Hunter murmured with satisfaction. “Little thief trapped herself in a predator’s den.”
Ash chuckled and rolled up his sleeves.
Stone checked his watch. Three-seventeen in the morning. “We wait until she wakes naturally.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.” His protective instincts kicked in. “Let her believe she’s safe a little longer. It’ll make her shock that much sweeter.”
“Fine. But we approach her together,” Hunter ordered. “Then we introduce ourselves properly and explain the house rules.”
“Sounds good.” Ash left the room, and Hunter silently followed.
Stone remained in the surveillance room’s electronic glow. He told himself it was for security purposes, to maintain vigilance against any additional surprises the storm might deliver. But his attention kept drifting to the bedroom camera, to the woman sleeping so peacefully in his bed.
He gave them his word they’d approach her together, which meant he was shit out of a bed tonight. With a sigh, he swept his vodka off the desk and lounged back in the office chair, crossing his hands over his broad chest. As he sipped, his finger clicked the mouse, zooming in.
She’d burrowed deeper under the covers, and something about her protective position made him wonder what had driven someone like her to risk her life. Whatever her reasons, she’d soon learn everything came with a cost.