Chapter 14 #2
They disperse without ceremony. The coordination runs on instinct drilled into us by my father, who managed this ridge with the expectation that his sons would adapt and execute without being told twice.
The operational competence he beat into us is the same competence that's going to keep Kendall alive.
Cameron's truck starts outside. Bryan's boots cross the back porch, heading for the south trail. Dash pulls on his coat in the mudroom.
The kitchen is empty except for us. Kendall sits at the table with her notepad and her coffee. She's looking at me the way she's been looking at me since the briefing started. Patient. Sharp. Waiting for the part I left out.
"Is there anything else you're not telling me?" she asks.
The honest answer is yes. There's the scope of how long I've been preparing for this, the fact that my preparation started the day Bryan flagged her as someone running. There's the degree to which I've been managing this situation while sleeping beside her.
"I'm telling you what you need to know," I say.
Her chin lifts a fraction. She hears the words, and what's underneath them. The withholding. The decision to control the flow of information because I've judged that control necessary.
Her eyes hold mine. The look is long, measured, and I can see her weighing it. Whether I'm protecting her or managing her. Whether the distinction matters enough to fight about right now.
"For now," she says.
The concession is conditional. The two words carry a deadline I can feel.
The danger is real, the men are real. Somewhere in the middle of laying all of that in front of her, the threat stopped being abstract. Someone wants to take what's mine. The woman sitting across from me at this table just made that personal.
The lodge is quiet. The brothers are gone. The fire pops in the hearth. Outside, the wind pushes against the windows, and somewhere on a road connected to this one, two men are driving toward this mountain with a photograph.
Kendall sets the mug on the table. She doesn't pick the notepad back up. She looks at me, and the look has changed.
The tactical sharpness is still there, the alert intelligence that just broke down Gary Simmons's operational playbook in front of my brothers like a battlefield briefing, but underneath it there's heat.
The same want that's been running between us since the night she crossed the kitchen.
Banked under mornings and coffee and her body beside mine.
Fed by the awareness that someone is coming for her and I am the thing standing in the way.
"You sat across from me on purpose," she says.
During the briefing, there were brothers between us. Now the table is empty and I'm still at my end. Six feet of oak, and I haven't moved to close it.
"Yes."
"The brothers are gone, Alex. You don't need the distance anymore."
"Maybe I do."
"Why?"
Because if I'm within arm's reach of her right now, with the adrenaline still running and the image of two men driving toward my mountain with her photograph, the part of me that plans loses to the part that wants to put my mouth on her throat and my body between her and the door.
She's reading that off me from six feet away, and the accuracy of it tightens my jaw.
"Alex."
Her voice is low and certain, with the edge that tells me she's done letting me manage the distance.
"Come here."
My own words, thrown back at me with the same quiet authority I used the night everything changed. She's telling me the distance I set is over. She's the one closing it, choosing this with the knowledge that two men are hunting her and the man in front of her is keeping secrets.
I come around the table. She stands to meet me, and my hands find her hips and pull her against me in a single motion that has nothing gentle in it.
Her body hits mine and the contact runs through me like a current. The adrenaline that's been channeling into tactical planning since the vehicle appeared on the road has nowhere left to go except into her. Into the press of her body against mine.
My hands tighten on her hips until my fingers dig into the muscle and she makes a sound low in her throat that tells me the pressure is exactly right.
Her hands come up to my jaw. She holds my face and looks at me, and what she's looking for is the thing I can't hide.
The possession. The territorial certainty that if anyone touches her I will take them apart with my hands and feel nothing but satisfaction.
She finds it. I watch her find it, watch her take it in.
Instead of pulling back, she pulls me down and puts her mouth on mine.
The kiss is adrenaline and possession and the raw urgency of two people who know the clock is running.
Her fingers slide into my hair and grip, and the pull sends a charge straight through my core.
I walk her backward until her legs hit the arm of the leather chair.
She sits on it, and the height puts her at the right level for me to step between her knees and press forward until there's no space left.
My mouth moves from hers to her jaw, down the line of her throat.
I find the spot below her ear where her pulse runs fast and close to the surface, and I press my lips against it and feel her heartbeat against my mouth.
The tempo is elevated. Not fear. Want. I know the difference in this woman's body by now.
Fear makes her go still. Want makes her arch.
She arches.
"Your brothers," she says against my temple.
"Gone." I drag my mouth down her throat. "All of them."
"How long?"
"Long enough."
My hands work the buttons of her flannel. The fabric parts and I spread it open, and her skin underneath is warm and flushed. I press my palm flat between her breasts and hold it there, covering the center of her body, holding the rhythm of her breath under my hand.
She pulls my shirt over my head. Her hands land on my shoulders, then slide down across my torso, tracing the lines of muscle with the focused attention she brings to everything.
The way she touches me is an inventory. She learns what belongs to her now and commits it to memory.
The methodical thoroughness of it drives me out of my mind.
I pull her flannel the rest of the way off.
Unhook her bra with one hand and let it drop.
She's bare from the waist up in the firelight, and the sight of her stops my hands for a fraction of a second.
The place where Gary's bruise lived is smooth and unmarked.
Clean skin. The last trace of him gone from her body.
Good.
I lower my mouth to the spot. Kiss it slow and deliberate, the same attention I gave it the first time, tasting the skin that is healed and mine. She makes a sound, quiet, raw, and her hand grips the back of my head, pulling me closer.
My mouth moves lower. Down the curve of her ribs, across to the swell of her breast, and I close my lips around her nipple and suck until her spine snaps straight and her grip in my hair goes tight enough to sting.
The sound she makes is low and guttural and vibrates through her ribcage into my mouth.
I press my tongue flat and drag it across the peak, and she shudders.
I give the other breast the same treatment, slower, rougher, using my teeth until she hisses and her hips roll against me.
The friction of her body grinding against mine through two layers of denim sends a pulse of heat down my spine that settles in the base of my skull.
My cock is straining against the denim, and the pressure of her hips rolling against me is borderline painful.
The ache of it makes me want to strip her bare and bury myself inside her until neither of us can think.
Then I stop being slow.
I pull her off the chair arm, one arm under her back, and lay her down on the couch. I lay her down and follow her, covering her body with mine. The full-length press of skin against skin is gasoline on a fire that's been building since I saw her hand close around her own wrist on the porch.
She's wearing jeans. I'm wearing jeans. The logistics of denim and belt buckles and the narrow couch require more coordination than the urgency allows, and we work them off each other with the efficient gracelessness of two people who don't care about elegance.
Her boots hit the floor. Mine follow. Denim gets kicked toward the hearth.
Skin. All of it. The length of her under me, lean and strong, the body that has survived on intelligence and refusal.
My hands run down her sides, across her ribs, over her hips.
I feel the muscle in her thighs when she wraps them around me, and the strength there tells me she's holding on, pulling me closer, taking what she wants.
Her hand wraps around my cock. The grip is firm, deliberate, and the contact after the ache of waiting sends a jolt through my abdomen that makes my hips jerk forward into her fist. She strokes once, slow, her thumb dragging across the head, and the noise I make is raw enough that I don't recognize my own voice.
She does it again, watching my face with the same razor concentration she uses to take apart a room, tracking what her hand does to me with an attention that borders on clinical.
I catch her wrist. Pin it above her head against the armrest. If she keeps touching me, this ends before it starts.
I brace one hand beside her head on the couch cushion. The other slides between her thighs. Her pussy is wet and hot and swollen, and the first stroke of my fingers makes her gasp hard enough that my teeth clench in response.
Her face while I work her is worth every second of restraint. Two fingers pressing in, curling, finding the ridge of tissue inside her that makes her breath catch and her thighs fall open wider.