Chapter 14
fourteen
Rainey heard a crash in the trees, branches snapping somewhere in the dark trees east of the clearing, loud enough to carry through the cabin’s closed door.
She froze, fist clamped around the pistol grip, and listened.
Another crash, closer. Something heavy moving through undergrowth, breaking through it, not caring who heard.
Tilly lifted her head from the floorboards. Her ears pricked forward, and a low growl rumbled through her chest.
Rainey eased off the cot. Her ribs complained, but the ache was distant now, overruled by fear and adrenaline.
She’d left the lantern burning low on the shelf, and in its dim light she crossed to the door, pressed her eye to the gap between planks, and saw nothing.
Trees. Darkness. The last gray light of dusk bleeding out of the sky.
Another crash.
Closer.
She raised the pistol, two-handed. Sight lined up on the center of the door. Finger outside the trigger guard. Her hands were steady. She was proud of that.
Tilly stood. The dog’s growl deepened. She moved to the door, hackles raised, tail rigid, and pressed her nose to the crack beneath the jamb.
And Rainey realized she was in a box, trapped, with only one exit. If someone blocked it, she was toast.
She sucked in a fortifying breath, threw open the door, and stepped out onto the porch with her pistol raised.
Something moved in the trees. A shape, dark against dark, staggering between pines. Too big for a deer. Too upright for anything but a man.
Her finger settled on the trigger.
The shape broke into the clearing and stopped. Stood swaying in the open ground between the cabin and the tree line, and the last of the dusk caught him just enough that she could see the blood on his face, the dark stain across his shirt.
“Evander!”
He saw her, and something broke in his face. He crossed the clearing and porch in a handful of strides, and pulled her hard into his arms.
“You’re here.” His voice came out stripped. Rough. “You’re here.”
“I’m here.”
His hands slid from her shoulders to her arms, down to her wrists, checking, and then he let her go and pushed past her into the cabin. He moved fast for a man who could barely stand. He checked every corner of the cabin.
Tilly followed him. The dog’s nose worked the air around his legs, picking up the blood, the sweat, the foreign scent of whoever had put their hands on him. She whined, low and anxious.
Evander reached for her. His palm cupped the dog’s muzzle, and Tilly pressed into the touch, her whole body leaning against his knee.
He murmured something to her—words Rainey couldn’t catch, just the low rumble of his voice—and the dog settled, hackles dropping, though her eyes never left the door.
He stood. Turned. Looked at Rainey across the cabin, and whatever had been holding him upright since he’d woken in that shelter gave out all at once.
His shoulders dropped. His breath came shaky.
He took one step toward her and stopped, his hand braced against the table’s edge, and the look on his face made her chest ache.
“What happened to you?” She crossed to him and pressed a hand to his cheek. “Evander. Talk to me.”
His hand came up and closed around her wrist. “I thought—” He stopped. Swallowed. Started over. “When I woke up, I thought he’d found you.”
“He didn’t. I came straight back. Barred the door. Waited.” She stepped closer. His chest rose and fell against hers, each breath pulling against whatever damage lived under his shirt. “You’re bleeding.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
He looked at her then. His eyes were dark and raw and stripped of every wall he’d built between them, and what she saw in them wasn’t the careful, measured man who’d slept on the floor between her and the door for a week.
“Fuck it,” he muttered and kissed her.
This was hunger, pure and desperate, his mouth hard against hers, his hand tangling in her hair to hold her where he needed her.
She tasted blood. His or the other man’s, she didn’t know, didn’t care.
His other arm banded around her waist, careful even now of her ribs, pulling her against him until there was no space between them, no air, just his chest against hers and his heart hammering where her palm had landed.
She kissed him back. Opened her mouth under his and let him in, and the sound he made against her lips was half relief, half surrender. His beard scraped her chin.
Her back hit the wall beside the stove, his hands already under her shirt, pushing it up and off.
The fabric caught on her elbows; she tore it free.
His mouth never left hers, hungry, teeth grazing her lower lip, and she felt the vibration of his groan against her tongue.
The pistol clattered somewhere—safety on, she hoped, but her brain had stopped working in any useful way.
“Evander—” she breathed, but he swallowed the rest, his palm flattening against her ribs, sliding upward, and the calluses dragged sparks across her skin. She arched into him. Her ribs protested, a distant complaint she ignored completely.
His shirt was gone. She didn’t know when, and her hands found the hot plane of his chest, the skulls inked there, slick with sweat and blood. She pushed him back enough to look. “Jesus, Evander. You’re hurt.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.” She touched a bruise. “This is bad.”
“Later.” He caught her wrist and brought her palm to his mouth.
Pressed his lips to the center of it, warm and rough, and the look in his eyes when he met hers over her hand was enough to make her breath catch.
“Please, Songbird. Later. I need you now. I need you so fucking much, it hurts more than anything that bastard did.”
She couldn’t deny him anything when he said sweet things like that, and caught his mouth with hers again.
He shoved her jeans down. She was bare underneath, having given up on her underwear days ago. He lifted her, and her legs wrapped his waist. The wall was cold against her back. He was hot everywhere, and hard between her legs, grinding against her despite the layer of fabric still separating them.
He broke away long enough to free his cock from his pants, and a tremble raced through her as he swiped the broad, flared head of it through her wetness.
“I’ve wanted this so fucking much,” he growled against her ear. “From the moment you opened your mouth and sang at that bar, I wanted you impaled on my cock.”
He surged inside. Her head knocked the wall and her breath left in a sharp rush. His forehead dropped to her shoulder, a groan tearing from his chest that sounded like it cost him everything.
“Rainey,” he whispered her name against her collarbone. “Fuck. You’re—”
She tightened her legs around his waist and rolled her hips to meet his next thrust. The friction sent sparks up her spine. He felt enormous, stretching her in a way that bordered on too much, but her body adjusted, welcomed, demanded more.
He drove into her again in one long, fierce stroke, and the world shrank to the point where their bodies met.
Rainey’s head smacked the log wall again so hard her vision sparked, but the jolt only made her cinch her legs around his hips tighter, holding him in with everything she had.
There was nothing gentle about it. He braced her between the wood and his battered torso, fucking her with an urgency that bordered on violence. His breath came in ragged gasps at her ear.
Pain laced through the pleasure—her ribs, her shoulder, the dull throb where the wall met her skull—but it was nothing compared to the tidal rush that flooded her nerves.
She rode it gladly, welcomed what his hunger demanded, because it chased out the fear and the cold and the memory of every hand that had ever hurt her.
He pushed deeper, nearly lifting her off the ground, and her body opened to him, desperate for every inch. The sounds she made were wild, high and helpless, and she barely recognized them as her own.
His lips found her jaw, her neck, and he bit down hard enough to leave a mark just as he slammed into her again. For a second, she thought she might black out from the overload.
“Evander—”
“I’ve got you.” His mouth found hers, sloppy and desperate. “I’ve got you, songbird. Come with me. Please.”
The please undid her. She came apart against the wall, her cry lost in his mouth, her body clenching around him in waves that seemed to go on and on.
His control started to fracture. His thrusts grew shorter, deeper, his grip on her hips tightening to the edge of pain. And then he followed, burying himself deep with a sound that was almost a sob, his whole body shuddering against hers as he spent himself inside her.
They stayed there, breathing hard, her back pressed to cold stone, his weight leaning into her for support now rather than possession. His heart hammered against her chest, gradually slowing. His skin was slick with sweat beneath her palms, sticky with blood where she’d touched his temple.
“You’re bleeding on me,” she murmured against his ear.
He set her down slowly and staggered.
All of the fuzzy afterglow drained away in an instant.
“Shit! Evander!” She caught him with a shoulder under his arm and dragged him to the cot.
He collapsed onto it and went still.
“Evander?”
No answer. His chest rose and fell, but the rhythm was wrong—too shallow, too slow. The bruise across his ribs had darkened to a deep purple-black, swelling at the edges, and when she laid her palm against his skin she felt the heat coming off it. Fever, or inflammation, or both.
The cut on his temple had reopened. Fresh blood seeped from the split skin, tracking down into his hairline. His right knuckles were split, the skin ragged and raw.
She shook his shoulder. “Evander. Wake up.”
He stirred. His eyes opened, unfocused, and fixed on the ceiling. “M’awake.”
“No, you’re not.” She ran across the cabin for the first-aid kit and pulled out gauze, antiseptic, and a roll of medical tape. “Sit up. Now.”
He pushed himself upright. The movement cost him—his face tightened, a muscle jumping in his jaw—and he braced one hand against the cot’s edge. “I’m fine.”
Guilt flooded her. She’d known he was in bad shape when he walked in, but she’d let him have his way with her anyway because she’d wanted it so badly. “How the hell did you come back with sex on the brain? You have a concussion, at minimum. Possibly cracked ribs. And someone stabbed you.”
“No.” He frowned down at himself. “I stabbed him.”
“Well, he got you back.” She pressed a gauze pad to the cut on his temple. The blood soaked through almost immediately. “Hold this.”
He took the gauze. His hand was unsteady. She watched his eyes, the pupils, and when she held up two fingers in front of his face, he tracked them, but slowly.
“Look at me.” She cupped his jaw and turned his face toward the lantern. “How many fingers?”
“Two,” he grumbled.
“What’s my name?”
“I just fucked you against the wall, and you think I don’t know your name, songbird?”
“Smartass.” She peeled the gauze away from his temple. The cut was clean—straight-edged, probably from the pistol butt Creed had used. She cleaned it with antiseptic, hissing through her teeth when he didn’t flinch, and taped a fresh pad over it. “You need stitches.”
“Not getting them.”
“Then you’ll have a scar.”
“Not the first. Won’t be the last.”
She moved to his ribs. The bruise spread from his sternum to his left side, mottled purple and black, swelling visibly along the lower ribs. She pressed gently along the bone, feeling for give, for the telltale shift of a fracture, and when her fingers found the spot, his breath caught.
“Here?” she asked.
He nodded. Tight. She reached for the elastic bandage in the kit. “Arms up.”
He lifted his arms. The movement pulled at the stab wound low on his flank, and fresh blood welled from the cut. Three inches long, shallow but angry, the edges clean—a blade had gone in and been pulled out, and whoever did it had known exactly how deep to go. She pressed another gauze pad to it.
“Who did this to you?”
“Creed,” Evander said. His voice had gone flat. “Former Army Ranger. Was a resident at Valor Ridge until two years ago. He was a problem from the start. Put a man in the hospital, got cut loose, ended up with the Sins.” He sucked in a breath. “He’s good. Better than I gave him credit for.”
She began wrapping his ribs. The elastic pulled tight across his chest, and he held his breath through the first few passes. “Does he know where we are?”
“No.” Evander watched her hands work. “He knows we’re on this mountain. He knows there’s a cabin. He doesn’t know where.”
“But he could find it.”
“Given time.” Evander’s hand came up and covered hers, stopping the bandage mid-wrap. “We need to go. Tonight.”
Rainey looked at him. At the bandage half-applied across his ribs, the gauze on his temple and over the stab wound already spotting through with fresh blood. “You can barely stand. We’re not hiking through backcountry in the dark.”
“I’ve done worse.”
“Not with me attached.” She finished the wrap and secured it with tape. “First light. We pack what we can carry, take Sable if she’ll follow, and make for the fire road. You know the terrain. I trust you. But we do it when you can see where you’re putting your feet.”
He held her gaze and opened his mouth like he wanted to protest, but then decided to let it go. His shoulders dropped a fraction. He nodded. “First light.”
She cleaned the stab wound last. Antiseptic, gauze, tape. He didn’t flinch. She wasn’t sure if that was toughness or damage, and it worried her. When she was done, she set the kit on the shelf and turned back to find him watching her, his eyes dark and steady in the dim light.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what? Cleaning you up after you got yourself half-killed?”
“For staying.” The words came out quiet. Honest in a way that made her chest ache. “When you saw what I did in the shed. When you found me like this. You stayed.”
Rainey sat beside him on the cot. The mattress dipped under their combined weight, and his shoulder pressed warm against hers.
She took his hand and laced her fingers through his, and they sat like that in the quiet, the lantern burning low, Tilly asleep on the floorboards, and the night holding its breath outside the door.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.
His hand tightened around hers, and tension eased out of his body as he leaned against her. His head tipped toward her shoulder, and she knew he was fighting sleep because sleep.
“Rest,” she whispered. “I’ve got the door.”
He didn’t argue. His breathing deepened, slowed, and within minutes the weight against her shoulder grew heavier as his body surrendered to the exhaustion he’d been carrying since the shelter. She sat still and let him sleep, her hand in his, and watched the lantern flame gutter on the shelf.