Chapter 40 - Dove
Monty bangs on the guest house door at eight in the morning.
“Get up.” More banging. “We’re taking the yacht out.”
I sit up too fast and nearly fall off the bed. Wolf groans into his pillow, his hair a tangled black mess.
We left the door to the balcony open all night, the only reason we hear the wake-up call.
“Don’t care!” Wolf shouts toward the open door.
“It’s summer!” Monty shouts back. “Be at the dock in an hour.”
Summer.
In California, that means burnt asphalt, burnt skin, and traffic jams that smell like burnt rubber.
Here, though, summer feels warm but not punishing. Bright but not glaring. The Alaskan sun doesn’t cook my skin through my clothes. It kisses it like a playful wolf. Like my playful wolf.
We haven’t left the island in five days. The fresh air would be good for us.
I climb onto Wolf’s back, my bare chest pressed to the defined line of his spine.
He groans again, but now it sounds less sleepy and more hungry.
I nip the back of his neck. Then his shoulder. Then the place where his ribs curve. I cover every bit of skin I can reach with fast, noisy kisses.
“Sweet goddess of torment.” He squirms beneath me, grinding his hips into the mattress. “Come here.”
He reaches back to grab me, but I’m faster. I roll off him and yank the blanket away in one swift rip, leaving him completely uncovered.
Then I stare like I’ve never seen a man before.
Broad shoulders, strong backbone, narrow waist, long legs, all smooth muscle over pure tension, power wrapped in pale skin, shaped for speed, stamina, and insatiable fucking.
Naked Wolf is my favorite Wolf.
Unable to help myself, I pounce and sink my teeth into the chiseled muscle of his ass.
He jerks and lets out a rough sound that definitely isn’t a complaint.
“My darling dove.” His smile ruins his growly tone. “You have two seconds to hop on my dick.”
With a grin, I hop off the bed, just as naked as he is, and saunter backward toward the bathroom.
His hooded eyes rake over me in a slow sweep that weakens my knees.
“Come with me in the shower.” I hook a finger at him. “Or I’ll come without you.”
He’s off the bed so fast I don’t have time to blink.
We shower together, climax together, and an hour later, we’re on Monty’s yacht, slicing through Sitka Sound.
Not for the first time, it strikes me how bizarrely gentle summer is here. It’s cool at the edges. Soft around the lungs. Feels like a reset.
Wolf and I lie on the outdoor couch tucked against the cabin wall, our bodies entwined on sun-warmed cushions. His leg drapes heavily over my thigh, his cheek resting on a bent arm, his eyes regarding me from inches away. Every time the boat rocks, his breath kisses my cheek.
Across from us, Leo and Frankie are passed out on a shared sun lounger near the railing. Leo sprawls like he lost a fight with gravity, one leg hanging off the edge and a tangle of braids covering his cheek. His arms cradle a curled-up Frankie, her face tucked against his chest.
He looks different in sleep. Younger. Less threatening. Whatever storm lives in that man, it goes quiet when his wife is protected in his embrace. Even unconscious, his hand splays over her baby bump, guarding the fragile life within.
“Look at them.” I nudge Wolf with my knee.
He follows my gaze. “Leo just finished an insane accelerated program for his ATP license.”
“He needs that license to run private aviation tours in Alaska?”
“Nope. This is Leo being Leo. He doesn’t do anything halfway.”
None of them do, including their pregnant wife. Monty mentioned that Frankie worked a brutal shift at the hospital before he dragged us all out here. Sounds like she and Leo needed this break the most.
Inside the open cabin, Monty sits at the polished bar while Kody teaches him how to make cocktails I’ve never heard of.
“Don’t bruise the basil.” Kody slices herbs with assassin precision.
“I don’t care about the basil,” Monty mutters.
“You should. It’s the whole point of the drink.”
“Vodka is the whole point.”
“It’s gin, you overpaid lightweight. Try to keep up.”
They continue to bicker like lifelong friends. Like husbands. Definitely like brothers.
The resemblance between them is ridiculous.
Same dark hair, same athletic build, same controlled intensity beneath their broody moods.
Monty is the older, smoother version, Kody the rougher, colder one.
They carry themselves with the same squared shoulders and stony expressions, ready to protect and defend that which they hold most dear.
Family.
The word lands in my chest like a pebble in deep water.
“What is it?” Wolf tucks his voice beneath the wind, ensuring no one else can hear.
“It’s… I don’t know.” I stare past him, watching Monty steal a taste of the drink, and Kody smacking his hand away. “They’re so comfortable with each other. Like they’ve been doing this their whole lives.”
“They didn’t start that easy. But now? Yeah, the four of them are annoyingly made for one another.” He sounds entirely too happy about it to be annoyed. “Next question is mine.”
“Okay.”
We’ve been trading questions for days. Questions that started as nothing but turned into… Whatever this is. Honest. Disarming. Sometimes absurd. Sometimes bold enough to stop my heart.
“Your mother Celeste…” His fingers graze my wrist. “Tell me about her.”
“I don’t remember much. Just flashes here and there. She was very pretty. And young. But always tired. Always scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“No idea.”
“Was her murder premeditated?”
“They said it was a random burglary gone sideways.”
“What do you think?”
“I was only eight, so everything is jumbled. I remember David and Celeste fighting off the intruder, probably guarding what little we owned.”
He nods, listening the way only Wolf can, ears perked, eyes locked, endless patience.
“And Jag?” He keeps his voice low, safely inside our private pocket of sound. “What does he think?”
“Who knows? He never talked about it, no matter how much I pressed.”
“Where’s his bio mom?”
“She died when he was a baby. David married my mom when Jag was nine. Celeste is the only mother he ever knew.”
Wolf presses closer, brushing his cheek against my temple, encouraging me to continue.
“Jag was close to his dad and my mom. Really close. I remember that much.” My chest constricts. “But he never talks about them, not about their lives or their deaths.”
“Why not?”
“Losing them messed him up. When he pulled me out of the pantry after he stabbed that man…” My voice thins. “The way he looked at me, it was like the world was dead, and I was the last thing he had to drag through it.”
“He shouldn’t have put that on you.”
“It wasn’t his choice. But it became his curse. He was wanted for murder, so everything we did was about survival. Running. Hiding. More murder. He turned himself into a death-dealing fortress, and I was the stray locked inside.”
“What about your bio dad?” His thumb traces the bones in my hand. “Did you try to find him?”
“No. My mom never told me his name or why she left him. Only that he didn’t deserve our love and wasn’t worth the space in our heads.” I loosen a breath. “The concept of family died with David and Celeste. I don’t remember what being part of a family feels like.”
“You do now.”
My throat stings.
“That’s not just my family.” He nods toward Monty and Kody. “It’s yours now, too. If you want.”
I look at the two men inside the cabin, one lecturing about muddling mint, the other pretending not to care. Then at Leo and Frankie asleep on the lounger, curled around each other in perfect tranquility.
It feels unreal, like stepping into someone else’s dreamy life.
Except their lives have been anything but dreamy.
I read the journals and can’t help but think about the hell they lived through.
So many harrowing moments plague my mind.
Like the wolf attack that shredded Kody’s body, and Frankie’s quick reflexes with the blood transfusion that saved his life.
The scar across Leo’s abdomen, and eight-year-old Wolf’s revenge against his mother.
Monty’s year-long hunt for his missing wife, and the discovery that his depraved brother had taken her.
And Wolf… Abused by not one, but two monsters. The things they did to him, no one should survive that. But he did. And now he’s lying beside me, warm and alive and looking at me like I’m the celestial light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
I swallow hard and push my fingers into the cushion to steady myself.
“And me.” He tugs at my hand, bringing my eyes back to his. “You get me.”
“And you get me.”
“I plan to take full advantage of that.” His smile is devastating.
Heat flares through me, along with an intense pull to burrow closer and prove to myself that I’m worthy of Wolf’s devotion and what I feel for him isn’t going anywhere.
“This is my first real summer.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “I didn’t know it could feel like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like something worth staying awake for. Like a daydream that doesn’t turn to ice or threaten to leave.”
The way he says it, with his gaze drilling into mine, tells me he’s not just talking about summer.
“Five days ago, I told you I couldn’t stay.” I touch his jaw, smoothing the sudden tension there. “Because I don’t want to endanger you.”
“What did I tell you?”
“You said Jag is your problem, not mine. But if I stay—”
“If? Is that still a question?”
Old fear rises fast, shrinking my ribs and kicking my heart. My brain tries to drag me backward, back into running, back into hiding, back into every instinct that kept me alive.
But I look at him. At the quiet waiting in his eyes. At the trust he’s learning how to give. At the way his throat jogs, not because he doubts me, but because he’s terrified I’ll pull away.
“No.” I inhale through the fear, push the old reflex down, and wrap my hand around the back of his strong neck. “I’m not leaving.”
He searches my eyes, waiting for a catch.