3. Ridge
RIDGE
My gaze was immediately drawn to the blonde, not just because she was beautiful but because she was older than the other girls.
This was only our second Hunt, but I was already seeing the pattern: young women desperate for help, willing to do anything to solve their problems.
It made sense. I was thirty-five, had found my way to a calm, drama-free life on the Calloway Ranch, but my twenties were a shit show.
Life was even harder for women, so I wasn’t surprised so many of them needed help taking out the trash.
But the blonde held herself apart, her posture almost professional, her brown-eyed gaze sharp and clinical, like she was working a problem and was already well on her way to a solution.
“Fuck me,” Holden said, tugging at small black hoops in his ears.
His long hair was pulled back into a ponytail and his bright blue eyes glittered behind his mask.
He was younger than Graham and me, his skin smooth except for the large burn scar on his torso.
Black and gray ink covered both arms: motorcycles, long stretches of road, and chains interwoven with artfully drawn flowers.
I followed his gaze and realized he was staring at the same woman. “What?”
“That’s her.”
I knew Graham was scowling behind his mask.
Graham was always scowling.
“Who’s ‘her?’” he asked.
“The doctor,” Holden said, licking his lips. “The one who stitched up my arm.”
I looked back at the blonde woman. “The one you’ve been stalking?”
“Stalking is a strong word,” Holden said. “I’ve just been following her around a little.”
I snorted. “That’s the actual definition of stalking.”
“Not what I expected,” Graham said, eyeing the blonde.
He was in good shape for a guy in his mid-fifties. Not from the gym — I was pretty sure Graham Calloway had never been in a gym a day in his life — but from decades of hauling hay, fixing fences and stanchion doors, moving cattle when they were sick or birthing.
He had a single tattoo — a massive oak tree that spanned his chest, its roots planted on his stomach, its branches stretching over one shoulder — on display thanks to his shirtless torso.
His dark hair was peppered with silver, his beard hidden under his mask. Calling him old man was a running joke between Holden and me, but I’d seen the way women looked at him, knew even the young ones found him attractive in spite of — or maybe because of — his age.
“What did you expect?” Holden asked Graham.
Graham’s gaze was still trained on the blonde doctor. “Not that.”
I knew what he meant. Holden had talked about the doctor who’d stitched up his arm after he’d sliced it fixing the tractor in February. In fact, he couldn’t stop talking about her.
But Holden was twenty-six. Somehow I’d imagined the girl he’d been obsessing over as… well, a girl.
The blonde standing across the room was all woman, probably around my age, with thighs that had been poured into her jeans and a tapered waist visible even under her white T-shirt and a leather jacket that didn’t look quite right on her.
All of which was second to her A-plus rack, her tits pushing against the fabric of her shirt, the neckline offering a delicious glimpse of smooth milky flesh.
A hum of excitement started in my veins, and my dick stirred in my jeans. The Hunt had been fun the first time we’d played, the woman who’d been our prey enjoyable enough for the three months she’d been forced to live with us after losing.
But the thrill working its way through my body was about more than fun.
Novelty, I told myself. Hunting the blonde woman across the room would be different. The women who typically joined the Hunt were young, their flesh unmarked by time, but the woman on the other side of the room promised something different.
Experience.
Something had brought her to the Hunt, had made her willing to stand among women a decade — or more — younger.
I was surprised to find that I wanted to hear her story.
I scanned the other girls, an assortment of brunettes, one other blonde, and a short-haired girl with pink hair.
The brunette next to the doctor said something and one corner of the doctor’s mouth lifted just before the other. The crooked smile transformed her face, and my heart did an unfamiliar dance.
Fuuuuuck.
“So we’re hunting the doc, right?” Holden asked.
He was playing with his old Zippo lighter.
Click… click… click.
It had driven me crazy when he’d first come to live at the ranch, but now it was background noise I barely registered.
“Could be messy,” Graham said.
His face was hidden by his mask but I could almost see the expression on his face, the way he’d be staring at the doctor, weighing the risks and benefits of making her our prey like he was weighing the purchase of a mustang for the ranch.
“Couldn’t they all?” Holden asked.
“We’ve only done this once before,” Graham reminded him.
The blonde we’d claimed last time hadn’t been messy.
We still didn’t know who she’d wanted us to kill.
We didn’t need to know. We’d caught her a few hours into the last Hunt.
She’d lived with us, fucked us when we’d wanted to fuck, fed us when we’d wanted to eat, and we’d sent her on her way three months later with a hug and a little cash (the cash wasn’t part of the Hunt, but she’d needed it and we’d wanted to make sure she was good).
Somehow I didn’t think it would be that simple with Holden’s doctor.
“Might be worth it,” I said, eyeing the doctor as she shifted on her feet, taking in the room like a detective storing clues for later.
She met my eyes and I held her gaze, felt a ripple of electricity arc between us in the moment before she looked away.
Holden looked at the other teams sizing up the women across the room. “Are you going to tell them or should I?”
Graham turned to the men around us, their faces hidden by masks, a nightmarish gang of demons, clowns, and assorted other masked men. “We’re taking the blonde in the leather jacket.”
“No fair,” one of the clowns said. Their masks should have been ridiculous, but there was something sinister about the angle of their eyes, the leer of the oversized mouth. “We were going to claim her.”
The sense of ownership that rose in my body took me by surprise. “Too bad.”
“We should draw for her,” one of the other clowns said.
“No draw.” Graham said it like he said — and did — everything: calmly. “We make the rules.”
The words came easier than they should have: we’d taken over the Hunt from the Hawks less than a year earlier.
We’d spent the last few months retrofitting the tunnels. Making the tunnels ours was one of many perks that went along with leading the Hunt, which was more than fair in my opinion.
There were risks associated with the role.
Legal risks.
But we were no stranger to legal risk, and the chance to lead the Hunt had been irresistible.
Still, we were one of the newest teams, and Graham, Holden, and I had been as surprised as anyone when Hawk Cruz had handed us the keys to the tunnels.
I didn’t think I’d imagined the resentment from the other teams when we’d entered the holding room, but Graham didn’t bat an eye when he laid down the law about the doctor, and the clowns who’d been kicking up dust shuffled their feet and regrouped in a huddle, eyeing the women as they sought new prey.
Titus entered the room, gave Graham a nod, and stood by the doors to the stairwell.
I wasn’t offended everybody treated Graham like the boss. It wasn’t just that he was older — in his 50s — or that he’d inherited the Calloway Ranch a few miles outside town.
Graham was steady as a mountain. He treated a fire in the barn with the same kind of equanimity he treated a stuck calf, soothing whoever needed soothing and making decisions quickly and without panic.
It was one of the things I liked about living on the ranch. One of the reasons I’d stayed after Graham had hired me to restore two of the ranch’s old outbuildings. I preferred to stay in the background anyway, and Graham commanded respect without saying a word.
Plus after my stint upstate, it wasn’t like I’d been fighting off job offers.
The arrangement had been working for a decade.
Graham walked to the table on our side of the room and picked up the clipboard on its surface. I knew what it said because we’d all reviewed it before we’d joined the first Hunt.
Win or lose, the Hunt was fun, but we weren’t down to force ourselves on women.
They had to consent.
And according to Bram Montgomery, who’d started the Hunt, they always had.
I consent to be hunted.
I consent to be stripped.
I consent to be marked.
I consent to be owned.
That was the consent form the women signed before every Hunt. It wouldn’t mean shit in court, but none of the women who came looking for an assassin were going to spill their guts in court.
The consent form was just a way to make sure we were all on the same page.
A way to make sure the women knew what we were going to do to them if they were caught.
We didn’t need a form to hold up our end of the bargain. If the women lasted twenty-four hours in the tunnels without being caught, paying the price for our loss was a matter of honor.
And the only way we’d be allowed to Hunt again.
The women got quiet as Graham walked across the room with the clipboard. They shuffled away from him like sheep sensing a wolf in their midst — all except for the doctor.
She stood her ground, aiming the same clinical gaze at Graham that she’d used to inventory the holding room.
It had to be at least a little scary, looking up at his imposing presence, but she didn’t so much as flinch as she watched him approach.
My blood quickened in my veins. Not the abstract anticipation I’d felt the first time: the fun of the forbidden, the excitement of hunting a random woman through the tunnels.
No. This time it was a different kind of excitement.
The excitement of hunting her.