Mountain Mens’ Curvy Obsession (Lucky Lady Reverse Harems #21)

Chapter 1

1

Anya

S moke claws down my throat as a voice slices through the chaos.

“Anya—hold on!”

I don’t know an Anya.

At least, I don’t think so.

Panic surges, white-hot, because the truth is even worse: I don’t remember having any name at all.

“Who are you?” I try to say, but my tongue feels swollen. The words come out slurred, sticky.

His eyes lock on mine—sharp, stunned. Then they drop to my temple. I follow his gaze, lift a shaky hand, and flinch when my fingers brush a slick, burning gash.

“You shouldn’t touch that,” he says, voice low and firm. “You’re hurt. Can you move your toes?”

I nod, barely. “I…yeah. I think so.”

“Good. That means I can move you.”

He’s taking charge.

That shouldn’t be comforting. But right now? It’s everything.

My world’s on fire. My brain’s scrambled.

But something about him makes me hold on.

“We have to get you out now. The blizzard’s only getting worse.”

I glance out the windshield—cracked and laced with frost. The snow’s coming sideways now, like razors.

“Okay,” I whisper.

“Arms around my neck. Hold tight.”

I hesitate—but only for a second.

He’s massive. Broad-shouldered. Rugged in a way that makes something stir low in my belly, even through the pain. I wrap my arms around him, and as he lifts me from the wreck, the heat of his body swallows mine.

Something I shouldn’t crave, but do.

The only thing clear in this hellscape is the way his hands feel on me—like salvation and sin at once.

The stranger lifts me like I weigh nothing.

His coat smells like pine and whiskey and something darker. I bury my face in it for a beat longer than I should.

Stupid. Dangerous.

But my body doesn’t care—it’s clinging to him like he’s the only warm thing left in the world.

“Is that…?” I glance back at the twisted hunk of metal. “I was in that?”

“You shouldn’t be alive,” he says. “But you are. Let’s keep it that way.”

The snow hisses where it hits the flames on the car. From behind, tire tracks vanish under fresh powder—but no skid marks.

They didn’t brake.

They fucking rammed my car.

He tries to set me down. My knee buckles. Pain explodes through my leg.

“Fuck—” I gasp as the ground tilts. But he catches me again—effortless.

“I’ve got you.”

“My leg… my head…”

I’m spinning. Slipping. But he holds me like I’m weightless. Like I’m his.

I hear shouts muffled by the storm, and make out shadowed figures approaching.

Two other men appear before me—carved from the same fantasy.

Green eyes that pin me in place.

Broad shoulders that promise ruin.

That same raw, dangerous energy wrapped in flannel and testosterone.

Even with everything burning, even with my memory fractured and gone… I feel the heat building between my thighs.

What the hell is wrong with me?

“Who are you?” I manage. “What happened?”

“You’re okay, Anya,” the tallest one says gently.

“Who the hell is Anya?” I breathe.

“She doesn’t remember,” the third one mutters. “Shit.”

“She’s going into shock,” someone says. “We need to get her to the lodge.”

“What about the other car?”

“What other car?” I whisper, my head falling back.

“Shit. She’s fading,” says the biggest one. “Whoever it was—gone. And the bastards left her to die.”

I try to speak, but the words won’t come.

The last thing I see before the darkness swallows me whole is their eyes—fierce, protective, and maybe… burning with something else.

* * *

“Doc, you’re cutting out.” A man’s voice pierces the fuzziness of my scattered, confused thoughts. A timeline comes together ever so slowly, but it’s fractured and incomplete. “Say that again.”

“I think the cell tower is going to fail soon,” another man says.

His voice is similar in tone and timbre. I think they’re related. They have the same green eyes I saw earlier, or was it ages ago? I’m not sure.

I feel so weak.

But I’m warm. And the warmth is slowly thawing me, revealing every ache.

Before my eyes peel open, I know my right leg is broken. The knee, the ankle, part of my thigh and hip. I don’t know how it happened.

I barely remember getting here.

Where is here?

“Retrograde amnesia,” the first man mutters. “So, no pressure? Seriously? Doc, given the circumstances, there’s an urgency we do need to consider—Doc? DOC! Fuck.”

“What?”

“The line went out.”

“Try calling him again,” the third man says.

I hear the sound of fingers tapping on keypads. “I can’t. Chance is right. The blizzard must’ve taken the tower out.”

Footsteps thud softly around me.

I sink into a warm mattress, wrapped in blankets and fur. I let my burning fingers run over the surface. It’s smooth and silky, almost like cuddling a giant cat. Opening my eyes slowly, I look around.

“What did he say?” the man I think is Chance asks Booker.

Yes, I recognize Booker. I recognize them by their voices, actually. I don’t have a name for the giant yet, though. Hell, they’re all big. Tall as oaks, with broad, muscular shoulders and piercing green eyes. They’re definitely brothers. I can see it their cheekbones, the shape of their lips, the burnt caramel brown of their hair.

“It sounds like a traumatic head injury, but we need to ask her certain questions to make sure,” Booker says. He glances my way and sees that I’m awake. “You’re awake.”

“Am I?” I whisper, my throat raspy.

The mountain fetches a glass of water and slowly comes to the side of what feels like a comfortable bed. “Here, drink this,” he says.

I’m parched, aching all over. Every move I make hurts everywhere. He notices me wincing as I reach for the glass and decides to bring the glass down to my lips, letting me sip slowly. I welcome the cool liquid down my throat with each gulp.

“Easy, easy,” he says, his voice low, almost a purr that makes my core rumble. “You’ve been through a lot.”

“Do you know where you are?” Booker asks. His brown, wavy hair is a tad longer than Chance’s, tufts of it left to fall over his forehead.

I shake my head.

“Do you know what happened?” Chance follows up.

I shake my head again. “Who are you?”

The brothers give each other a startled stare. “You called it,” the mountain tells Booker. “Or, better yet, the doc called it.”

“Do you know your name?” Booker asks me.

My head hurts. There’s so much noise swirling between my ears, a ringing that comes and goes, ebbs and flows, making it increasingly hard for me to focus. I feel the sweat beads trickling down my temples. Instinctively, I bring a hand up. There’s blood.

“Ouch,” I manage as I touch my bandaged temple.

“Go easy,” the mountain urges me. “Tell us your name.”

“You kept calling me Anya,” I say to Booker.

He gives me a confused frown. “You don’t remember your own name?”

I think about it for a moment. Snippets of places and people flash before my eyes, but I can’t knit them together into anything coherent. “No. But you know me?”

“What do you remember?” the mountain asks.

Again, I need a moment. It’s hard to catch a thread in the chaos currently swelling in my head, and the aches radiating from almost every inch of me aren’t helping, either. There’s a sliver of clarity as I look into Booker’s eyes. I hold on to it.

“I remember… waking up in the car… there was… there was a crash?”

“That’s right,” Booker says.

“You pulled me out,” I reply, then look at Chance and the biggest of the brothers. “And you… You were trying to put the fire out.”

“What else do you remember?” Chance asks.

I lower my gaze, a sharp pain shooting through my brain. “That’s… That’s it. Why can’t I remember?”

“It’s okay, Anya, we remember you,” Booker says.

“But who are you? Who am I? What am I doing here?” My heart starts galloping a million miles per hour, my pulse racing, and my breathing out of control. I’m scared and in pain and awake and somehow half-asleep at the same time. I can’t make sense of anything or anyone. I’m lost in the darkness of my own shattered memory, and I don’t know what to do with myself. “Where am I? What happened?”

“Easy, Anya. Breathe,” the mountain urges me, but I’m losing control.

“I can’t… I can’t…”

“Deep breath in; I’ve got you,” he says and comes closer, his big arms gently stretching out to hold me. For a split second, I want to push him away, but something instinctual tells me these men would’ve already killed me if they meant any harm. Or they would’ve left me to die in the snowstorm. So, I let him hold me. “Deep breath in, slow breath out, come on.”

“I’m lost.”

“I know, Anya, but you’ll find your way back. Just rest for now.”

Whether it’s his low voice that hypnotizes me or the exhaustion of my battered body, I’m not sure. But I feel myself slipping away until all I can hear are murmurs in the thickening, warm shadow of an unwanted sleep.

When I open my eyes again, the brothers are sitting by my bed.

A candle burns by the window, but the lights are on in the room. I see a white ceiling, a chandelier made of painted deer’s antlers hanging from it. The walls are made of varnished logs. It’s a cabin up on the mountain. The blizzard keeps howling outside, its wails reverberating through the entire house.

A large animal pelt covers me. Underneath it, a soft, plush blanket. I can smell the fabric softener. A tinge of lavender lingers.

Booker stares out the window. Chance keeps checking his phone, frowning. My guess is the cell tower is still down.

I cannot, for the life of me, remember who I am, where I come from, or what the hell I am doing up here in the first place.

“Anya,” the biggest man says, looking at me. “How do you feel?”

“I’m not sure,” I reply, honestly. “Tired, I guess. Thirsty.”

“Hungry?” he asks.

I shake my head slowly. “Or maybe yes; I don’t know.”

“Is anything coming back to you?”

“No. How long have I been here?” I ask.

He glances at his brothers before he shifts his focus solely to my face, his gaze softening. I like his dark beard and the way his long hair falls over his massive shoulders. “Almost eight hours,” he says. “We’d take you to a hospital, if we could, but we’re stuck on this mountain until the blizzard passes. It’ll be awhile.”

“The good news is we stopped the bleeding from your head injury,” Booker adds. “And you don’t seem to have any broken bones. But the car crash rattled you badly, and you’ve got your fair share of bruises and scrapes.”

I look down at my arms. My right wrist is fully bandaged. Given the pain in my right leg too, I’m guessing that side took the brunt of the impact.

“Your car was half wrapped around a tree on the passenger side,” the one whose name I still don’t know says. “You probably have a bit of whiplash, and a lot of pain on your right side, right?”

“Yes.” I frown and exhale sharply, registering the pain in my ribs, too. “Why can’t I remember anything?”

He points to my temple. “You hit your head really hard. We managed to speak to our town doctor before the lines went down. You’ll be okay; you just need to rest and recover. You’ll remember everything in time.”

“It’s so weird.”

Booker sighs deeply. “Tell me about it.”

“But you know me.”

The nameless one speaks. “I’m Nico. These are my brothers, Booker and Chance. We live here.”

I look around again.“Where is here?”

“Seeley Lake, Montana,” Nico says.

They’re all watching me, their gazes piercing through my soul as if they’re expecting me to remember something. I wish I could, but nothing springs to mind, nothing except a faint sense of familiarity.

“Am I also from Seeley Lake, Montana?” I ask.

“No,” Booker replies.

“You’ve never been here before, in fact,” Chance adds.

“Then how do you know me? You said you know who I am,” I say, replaying the bits I do remember. “Back at the car crash, you were surprised to see me.”

Chance takes a deep breath. “We knew your brother. And, yes, we know you.”

“I have a brother?”

“You do. Do you remember him?”

Once more, I have no choice but to shake my head, tears stinging my eyes as the migraine intensifies. “It hurts. My head hurts.”

Take it easy, Anya, don’t force it.” Nico covers my hand with his. “Close your eyes for a moment.”

“Why?”

“Just try it. Close your eyes.”

Inclined to trust him, I close my eyes. Not the best idea, because the room starts spinning with me in it. The whole world falls apart in tiny threads, and I can’t grab one to focus on. Images slip past me. Brick buildings. Brownstone facades. Skyscrapers.

“I feel weird,” I mumble.

“Think about home, Anya. When I say the word ‘home,’ what do you see?” Nico’s voice echoes somewhere far away.

I want to open my eyes again, but I’m slipping farther back into my dreams. Or my memories. I’m not sure anymore.

A big blue sky. Everything is green as far as I can see, but tall buildings rise in the distance. Steel and glass and old masonry. They surround the park. It’s a park. I’m in a park in the heart of the city. Anya, come here! A woman’s voice calls out to me. Don’t go so close to the water.

“Don’t go so close to the water,” I whisper.

“Anya?” Booker tries to reach me.

But I’m sinking into the darkness again.

* * *

I wake up to the sounds of wood creaking and windows shuddering against the biting winds. I wake up from dreams I don’t remember, from memories I lose as soon as I open my eyes—memories that somehow leave me with a constant sense of dread.

My body is in pain. My head throbs, so I can’t make any sudden movements.

Chance comes in with a bowl of hot chicken soup as I manage to pull myself up into a sitting position. “How are you feeling?” he asks, carefully setting the bowl on a nightstand within my reach.

“Like I wrapped my car around a tree, I guess. How long was I out this time?”

He checks his watch. “About two hours.”

“What’s the total so far?”

“Almost a day now,” he replies, sitting on the edge of my bed.

He wears his dark hair shorter than his brothers, but there are some unruly waves at the top of his head, giving him a boyish flair of sorts. They all appear to be in their thirties. Grown men, packed with muscles and a hardness earned elsewhere, not just on the mountain. They carry themselves with an unspoken dignity, yet they are so gentle with me.

It’s uncanny.

“I wish I had better answers for you,” Chance says. “But I’ll be honest. The doctor recommended we let you recover your memories on your own.”

“My head hurts like hell when I dig too deep,” I groan, but the smell of hot chicken soup soothes my frustration. “You said I have a brother? He must be looking for me?”

“We’re stuck up here for at least a few days, I’m afraid,” Chance replies without answering my question. “We’d have taken you straight down into town, but it’s impossible. The snow is getting thicker with every passing hour. Soon, we won’t be able to make it past the front porch. The entire mountain and its surrounding area are under a code red emergency. All we can do is sit tight and wait for it to pass.”

Slowly, I reach for the bowl, but the pain in my side makes me whimper as I retrieve my arm and keep it close to my ribs. “Fuck.”

“It’s alright,” he says. “Let me help you.”

Gingerly, patiently, Chance spoon-feeds me the chicken soup. It tastes good. Really good. “Thank you,” I say when we reach the bottom of the bowl. “At least there’s food and electricity here.”

“The power lines are underground,” he says. “We paid through the nose for this system before we moved up here. And yes, we have supplies for at least a couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks?”

“Hopefully, it won’t take that long for us to make it out of here. According to the weather report, the blizzard should pass by Sunday.”

I give him a confused look. “What day is it?”

“Monday.”

“Crap.”

He chuckles softly. “I know. It’s all we can do, though. Besides, you need rest.”

“What about the phones?”

Chance checks his again. There’s that furrowed brow of his, already giving me an answer. “Tower still down. No signal whatsoever. This is the worst winter storm to hit Missoula in at least a decade. We prepared for it, so we’re safe. We just didn’t expect… you.”

I’m feeling soft and fluffy all of a sudden. In fact, I’m sinking into the mattress, my stomach full and my eyelids droopy.

“I need to get out of here… I need…”

Chance quashes any attempt at rebellion. “You need to sleep some more.”

I can’t exactly argue with him. “You said you know me?” I keep repeating myself as if to coax the memories back. “How did we meet?”

My eyes are closing. Maybe I could try to get out of here on my own as soon as I’m able to stand, but the windows are all white. Snow everywhere. I wouldn’t even know left from right out there. I’d freeze before I reached the road.

Whether I like it or not, I’m stuck here.

“Sleep, Anya. It’ll come back to you, eventually.”

“I want to remember. Now.”

“Sleep…”

I don’t know if it’s a command or a plea, but my body betrays me and complies. Before long, I’m lost between dreams and memories once more, trying to figure out who I am, where I’ve been.

Trying to figure out where I belong.

And miserably failing as the darkness hugs me tighter.