Chapter 4
4
MARI
I woke several days after I landed in my mountain man’s cabin in a stiff bed with a hard pillow beneath my head, and it felt like heaven. A long sigh grazed swollen flesh on its way out of my throat. Everest and his men left me alone because I silently demanded it, but I knew the end of my grace period was almost up. I could feel it in the pensive air that filled the cabin like the hush in the hour before dawn. Still, the warm air within the structure allowed me to breathe free and easy, and for that, I was grateful. My gaze flitted about the unknown room, seeking out the shapes obscured by the dim light, but nothing nefarious moved there.
My body’s apparent recovery somewhat suggested an extended rest period. My nerves should be jumping and my heart pounding, or so my head informed me as I languished in someone else’s bed when my feet itched to tear through the forest and escape. To escape…
And go where?
I didn’t have any answers my mind liked.
Silence surrounded me, though not the strained sort. For the first time in unknown hours— days —I reveled in a sense of quiet as the panicked, primal instinct to run retreated, the sense of peace that followed distinct from the blood still rushing in my ears.
Pushing all thought aside, I sank into the mattress. Warmth pervaded every limb, weighing me down in a cloud of safety and protection. A heavy quilt covered me, scented like the woodland area that surrounded the cabin. That smelled like him .
And so did I.
My eyes popped open.
Assault. Cabin.
Wild man.
Everest.
The room rocked, my senses swimming as I fought back the urge to puke as a memory slammed into me. At the speed of a sloth, my body caught up with my brain’s message. I gripped my arms in curled fingers, my torn fingernails scraping at hands that no longer touched me, and found my skin smooth.
Skin I hadn’t dared to touch in the last days, skin that didn’t feel like my own. Too many times I dug my nails into my legs, wanting to tear the flesh from my body, but didn’t have the strength. And so I took the bowl of watery soup I barely tasted when the knock came at my door, ate as I was commanded, and then cried until salt crusted my eyes and I slept again.
This time when I ran my hands over my body, the urge to rend my flesh from my bones and inhabit someone else’s carcass like a shell was absent. This time, I felt like…
Me.
Silky and clean, like someone had spread lotion all over my body.
I blinked at the wooden ceiling, womaned up, and peeked beneath the covers.
The grime and filth that had covered my body from my horrendous streak through the mountains was gone. Someone had washed me, cleaned me, and put me in a hard bed that gave me no doubt about who owned it. I still didn’t know his name apart from the one I’d labeled him with, even though he knew mine. My own fault. I couldn’t face anyone right now. Myself most of all, but that also included dealing with anyone who would start asking questions I didn’t want to— couldn’t —answer.
Everest my mystery man would remain until I had a chance to thank him and find a way off this mountain. The place might have been Mordor for the distance it put between this hidden world and civilization. Because sure as a Sunday roast, I was not in civilization.
Just give me a blue check dress, some small dancers, and a scraggly dog.
Pity I seemed to have misplaced those glittery red heels.
The rustic room offered more space than I’d given the cabin credit for from the outside. An It’s bigger on the inside comment rolled around my mind, but I rejected the humor as inappropriate when I should be planning my escape.
Rough-hewn walls suggested a hand-built structure, confirming my first assessment. It didn’t take too much brainpower to know that the owner used his personal well of formidable strength to construct the place himself. Paired with his obvious stubborn streak, the man and his house had become endearing in an odd sort of way.
Woven mats in tans and whites lifted an otherwise dark room that provided relief from the glare of the overcast sky outside viewed through a slim window above the bed. Basic wood furniture filled a few available spots—a single bedside table sat beside the king-sized bed I slept in, and a simple chair in the corner. I wondered if Everest had made those too.
The icicle-framed windowsill housed a collection of hand-carved items. None were perfect, though each had been created with the same painstaking attention to detail. A darkened doorway led off to one side, either a wardrobe or bathroom. Given the climate and location, I guessed the latter.
No one who lived out here required more than a few changes of clothing.
The austere existence suited the giant of a man, a polar opposite to my life experience, though I never considered myself a princess. The image of a fluffy frou-frou dress flew to the forefront of my mind and transformed into a high-end red-carpet-worthy ensemble in my vision. No, princess I had never been— would never be —which was the way I liked it.
Besides, a princess had a factor of innocence, and after the last forty-eight hours plus—I had lost count of the days in this bleak house—I could no longer claim that in any capacity.
Bile rose in my throat. I clutched the coverlet in whitened knuckles and prepared to launch myself out of the bed, praying I’d make it to the bathroom in time. If it turned out I got it wrong and the darkened room was, in fact, a closet, I’d have some explaining to do.
A laugh, alien to my headspace, bubbled in my chest. Rather than war with the reeling sensation in my stomach, the burst of impromptu emotion settled. As the urge to be sick faded, I rolled beneath the heavy quilt, which emitted a cloud of all-male scent.
I inhaled a deep breath filled with the scent of pine and leather and black coffee. A sense of peace washed over me. My heavy eyelids drew shut, leaving me in a weighted void I didn’t try to fight, surrounded by Everest’s personal brand of pure, wild mountain maleness.
* * *
Dust motes swirled around the room in a delicate dance when my eyes cracked open an unfathomable amount of time later. Sleep had become a timeless void where I fell endlessly. Thin slivers of windows sat above the bed, letting in little light and leaving me guessing at the time.
Grit itched the corners of my eyes. I swept the remnants of slumber away while faux fairies pirouetted between the narrow, slanted sunbeams that filtered through the unadorned windows a little longer. Their presence softened the unforgiving and unapologetic male lines of Everest’s room.
My dreamless, uninterrupted sleep gave my brain time to process the last few days. I’d lost track of time during my headlong dash, with only the few hideous flashes of grabbing hands that refused to leave me alone to backfill the absent hours. Though still sickened from my ordeal, sleep appeared to have removed the immediate edge from my shock. My stomach rumbled, leaving me in hope that, despite my brokenness, some remnant of myself might be salvageable as I smiled at my body’s ability to KBO.
I ran my hands over my stomach and limbs in an instinctive check-in, cataloging bruises and swelling in various places. Still naked. That hadn’t changed while I slept. To my relief, the aches seemed to be mostly flesh based, though some delved deeper than others. I didn’t suspect a single break in any bone.
The soles of my feet throbbed from a thousand pinpricks from my scramble over the forest floor, and my wrists and ankles stung where I’d been tethered to my boss’s table for entertainment purposes .
Hesitantly, I reached between my legs. My breath seized on a panic attack in the making at the concept of checking. The sensitive flesh there was still swollen, and as I probed a little deeper, I discovered that, although sore and tender, nothing had been torn or ripped the way I’d expected. Everything seemed revoltingly normal. My head couldn’t grasp that. The only casualties were my innocence and honor with a side serving of impending fear that wouldn’t quit.
Minor complaints.
A dose of lingering horror permeated my mind at the discovery. I leaned back into the hard pillow with a long sigh that verged on a sob, grateful for its staunch support.
“Inch worm, inch worm, measuring the… something something,” I muttered, out of tune and out of memory for the right lyrics of the childhood ditty that evaded me.
“A woman in my bed is a new occurrence for me,” Everest remarked, breaking into my solitary assessment. “The boys don’t mind sharing when I choose to rest. Or not.” His ambiguous comment charged the meager air in the room between us.
My gaze snapped to where he leaned against the doorway. I winced at the involuntary reaction, my heart pounding at the huge shadow he presented, then slowing as I registered his voice. While my body had begun to heal, my bruised brain swirled like a dirty martini after a hard night at a dingy bar.
I pressed my hands to my temples, my skin flaring at the sensation of cool mountain air after the warmth of the weighted blanket, and I squeezed my eyes shut to prevent the room from swimming around me. “Oww, Everest.”
He huffed a sound that could have been a laugh. “I didn’t mean to make you move. I’m sorry,” he murmured.
That he could speak in such a soft voice despite his giant barrel of a chest surprised me. Steady footfalls announced his entry as Everest crossed the room. I shifted beneath the blanket, burrowing deeper on instinct. Shivers not unlike the sort that afflicted me in the forest rippled across my skin despite the weighted quilt’s warmth as I sucked in shallow breath after breath.
He’s not going to hurt you. He’s safe. He brought you here ?—
And undressed me, if removing his pine-and-mountain-scented jacket counted. Washed me, looked at me, and touched my body without permission.
Not that I’d been conscious back then to give consent.
This never would have happened if I stayed in Britain.
Where my parents would have dressed me in their neck-to-ankle cultish clothes and married me off to the highest bidder by Christmas in their small village outside Bristol. I mean, the next most interested suitor. Part of me found that funny still.
The other part couldn’t laugh anymore.
Cowering beneath the pathetic shield of blankets that trapped more than protected me, I peered over the stifling edge as he maintained his slow but steady progress toward me.
A red-and-white checkered shirt hung open to expose the expansive chest that its buttons had strained to confine when I first met him. The light that fell in sharp relief hinted at deep, carved muscles I’d become acquainted with during my sojourn over his shoulder for half the journey to his forest home. Beneath the brushed cotton, tails of ink peeked between the loose panels of his shirt. Dark hair and a freshly trimmed beard complemented his forest-green eyes that simmered with an intensity focused on one thing—me.
I’m not the only one he cleaned up.
Each measured step provided me with plenty of time to scream bloody murder or scramble away. Neither urge presented itself, a relief after the never-ending running and running and running. Craving security, I exhausted my supply of both energy and fight.
If I’m going to die, let it be here in a hard bed, near a harder man.
But it would be by my choice.
In what might have been the single stupidest decision of my life, I put my trust in him.
All of it.
A silent prayer left me that if he broke my tenuous faith, it would end fast. I clung to the facade of safety that let me pretend my life would continue on as per normal. But I couldn’t.
Nothing will ever be normal again.
His gaze never left mine as he approached, reaching out to pat the quilt around me like a mother hen. Careful to avoid all contact, he perched on the edge of the mattress, which dipped under his mass. I tumbled sideways into the dip, a slow-moving target pinned beneath a bear of a beast.
His features tightened under the shortened beard, almost horrified that the barrier between us might be broken—albeit through a swath of thick fabric—and retreated a fraction.
The visual brought on a fit of giggles while I fought to maintain a straight face. Inappropriate . Pushing my smile back with no small degree of horror, a stunted squawk passed my lips. The strangled sound would have terrified a bear on the hunt.
My savior sat back, his weight slipping to the edge of the hard mattress, eyes flaring with alarm.
The giggles returned for round two. Everest froze with every bout of hysteria that left my lips in snorts and suppressed grunts, panic written across his features. I laughed all the harder. My vision blurred as tears leaked free, and I raised my hands to scrape them off my face but couldn’t.
My hilarity died a short death as I realized my arms were trapped beneath the quilt and his weight, though he gave no indication that he noticed. I braced for the panic I expected to swamp me, but nothing arrived. Although I’d been tied down what felt like only hours before, though both my mind and my body promised me the trauma happened much longer ago, this seemed… safe. Like his restricted space gave my anxiety no place to develop.
No frantic flailing, no thrashing, no cursing.
Shit. I swore at him.
Hurled abuse right in his face, if I opted for honesty over ego. I could write my behavior off as part of my survival instinct, but screaming whatever came out had been a stress-relief mechanism, pure and simple. Taking my reclaimed freedom and doing whatever the fuck I wanted with it, I cussed out my wild mountain knight in the process.
The last of my unhinged mirth subsided in an inhale beneath his watchful gaze. Eyes wary, Everest leaned forward, his hand half raised. He paused, as though considering the action. When I didn’t shy away, he closed the distance and brushed hair from my face.
“It’s okay. I’m okay,” I lied. My voice came out soft and raspy, refusing to cover my falsehood, though nothing could be further from the truth. “I don’t know your name. To say thank you for stopping me. My escape from….”
Where, exactly? The pits of purgatory? An icy hell? I’d take either option to escape the violation my body had been subjected to while my mind tried to flitter free but failed.
A small smile curved his lips. I wriggled harder, trying to free my hands to trace over his features, but his weight compressed the heavy quilt over me, rendering me immobile. The draw to him doubled as my breath shortened. Even in my admittedly hysterical state, I knew I shouldn’t want to touch a man I didn’t know who resided in the middle of the woods with others who, like himself, screamed dangerous , but I couldn’t help myself.
He leaned into my space, those forest eyes of a woodland god lighting with a promise of more I wanted to delve into. My body heated beneath the blankets, suffocating, my skin on fire but still craving the warmth of him. The only air I wanted was whatever he would give me.
One look, and I’d let him claim me.
What is wrong with me?
I’d gone from running for my life like the typical victim in a horror movie to embodying the farce of the debunked Stockholm Syndrome myth. That was not reasonable. But after what I’d endured, what did my new baseline consist of, my new normal? I had no benchmark to align myself against.
“Robe Huntingdon.” He pronounced his last name in a stilted way, as though he hadn’t said it in some time.
“Mari Merripen.”
He raised an eyebrow, the arched sort that featured in a double-page magazine spread.
And now I knew his name.
A sense of power flushed me from head to toe, as though he’d divulged his deepest secret. Maybe I banged my head in my mad dash through the woods, or perhaps he’d given me a sedative that scrambled my thoughts. I clung to the threads of false evidence that I hadn’t yet broken and tried to convince myself life would return to normal. Not a single word of my mantra rang true.
I dropped my gaze to his chest, imagining the hard ridges of muscle that had pressed against me with every step through the forest. The hard ridges my palms had been molded against, and now I wanted to see if I imagined it right, the phantom caress of his bare skin against mine.
So freaking broken.
The thought of him naked sent a shiver rampaging violently over my skin. I clutched at my elbows to hold it in, but there was no chance that he didn’t notice me gawking at him like a lovelorn teen deprived of contact with another living person.
What the hell was wrong with me? I’d been assaulted, I lay naked in a strange—albeit beautiful—man’s bed, and now I wanted to screw everything in sight?
Broken, broken, fucking broken.
His lips formed my name, though no sound came with it. “Did your parents hate you? I’ve heard the English can be like that.” Rolling off his tongue in a smooth glaze of honey and whiskey, his musing brought me back.
I spluttered at him, my mouth hanging half open. “No! I mean, well….” A smile tilted the corners of my lips, then, to my horror, formed into a grin. “Maybe a little.”
“Mmm-hmm.” He coughed, the corners of his mouth twitching around his raised fist. “I thought you might prefer to wake up clean, feeling fresh. If I’ve made a mistake, then I am sorry.” His dark gaze held me captive as he trailed one calloused finger down my cheek.
One part of my screwy brain wanted to know what else that finger could do.
The other part declared outright that this man never made a mistake. An exact dose of confidence coated every aspect of his being, just like another man I knew but refused to give brain-space to, now or ever again. Refocusing on Robe, I studied the hard angle of his jawline exposed through the edges of his beard, the way he tilted his head down, watching me with a mixture of concern and amusement. His attitude spoke of a man kind enough to remain shy of the line that would transform him into a royal asshole. I hoped.
God complex much?
While I obsessed over a man I didn’t know, maybe I could add delusional to my growing list of pathologies to declare before a cute doctor handed me a nice white jacket and led me into a cozy padded cell.
I wiggled again, and he leaned closer. Air evacuated from the small space between us. Even beneath the blankets that pinned me, my skin rippled with the anticipation of his touch, craved it.
That didn’t help at all.
“No, you made no mistake in cleaning me. I feel….” I inhaled a breath of him that went straight to my head. Leather, coffee, pine, and forest spice. He might have washed me, but he clearly hadn’t taken the same liberty for himself in any recent capacity, or maybe the woodsy essence just clung to him. A flush ran through me at the thought of him beneath the covers with me—or with no covers at all. “I feel smooth and clean. Thank you. Did you use lotion? Did you shave me?” My brow dipped at the suggestion, and I knew I should be horrified.
I added another line to my mental broken list.
“Arnica. For the bruises. My sister sends baskets of feminine goodies in the hope I’ll convince someone to share my reclusive existence. It hasn’t worked yet.” Robe shrugged. “My en suite is yours alone, whenever you need it. I’ll share with the boys. Use the products. Be comfortable.” He hesitated, then stroked one fingertip over my cheek as I watched him with widened eyes but didn’t shy away. “I’m sorry if I overstepped. I’ll get you some clothes.”
Overstepped what? I didn’t have boundaries anymore. The ones that once existed had become twisted, maimed things that were better off bulldozed than trying to repair the gaping holes left behind.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
My voice thickened with emotion that he… that anyone could care after what happened. The thought overwhelmed me, choking the tender skin of my swollen throat. Another emotion flushed through my body, and this time it had no connection to his proximity.
Shame.
His gaze shifted from the fathomless void I’d become accustomed to seeing to resemble a normal man’s gaze rather than that of a mountain god. Staring at Robe Huntingdon was like looking into the sun after contemplating a black hole—both terrifying and enlightening.
“Well, Mari Merripen, stay and have coffee with me. The bar is that way. You have nothing to fear here, from me or from anyone in my house. Rest. Recover.” He offered me a lopsided grin. “And when you’re ready, come out and meet the rest of my household.”
A refined accent clung to his words, as though he belonged to another time. Robe’s cultured speech threw me. For a man who lived in the literal sticks, his education clearly far outweighed my Catholic school days. It would be as easy to imagine him as an NYC suit as to think he came from old money and had been afforded a full education, despite the contrary evidence of his choice of living situation staring me in the face.
Paired with his neat beard, relaxed but confident demeanor, and the fact that he appeared to care about the woman he rescued despite the way she had been ripping up his trees, I watched the rabbit hole open beneath my feet and prepared to dive in headfirst.
I am in so much trouble.
He tapped the quilt at my side, his knuckles scarred and calloused. In a swift movement full of a dancer’s grace, he stood and headed for the door.
“Wait!” I called.
“Yes?” Robe turned back, raising one of those manicured eyebrows.
“Am I…? Do I have to stay here?”
Can I go home?
After all that I’d been forced to endure, I didn’t know if I had a place to call home anymore.
Robe stared at me for a long moment. His gaze swept over the lump I made in his bed, huddled beneath his quilt. “If you want, although I advise waiting to return to your life until you’re healed and we’ve… talked.”
Without another word or offering any explanation, he strode from the room, leaving me alone.
It took every fiber of my self-restraint not to call him back again.