Craved By the Mountain Man (Wildwood Alphas #3)

1. Chapter 1

Hannah

There are easier ways to discover your boyfriend has stolen your identity.

A declined credit card, perhaps. A concerned phone call from your bank. A tasteful letter beginning with Dear Ms. Vance, we regret to inform you that the man you have been kissing for four months is a lying piece of shit.

I would have appreciated the letter.

Instead, I get three men looking for money I never borrowed, an ex-boyfriend who has disappeared so completely he may have joined a monastery, and six hours of mountain roads with a phone that refuses to stop buzzing in the cupholder.

It vibrates again.

I grip the steering wheel tighter. “No.”

The phone keeps going.

“I said no.”

Threatening strangers have terrible respect for conversational boundaries.

Rain taps against the windshield as I follow the narrow road deeper into the Oregon mountains. Pine trees rise on both sides, black and endless beneath a sky that has already surrendered to night. My headlights catch wet asphalt, tree trunks, and absolutely no signs of civilization.

Which is the point.

Civilization knows where I live. Civilization has my credit score. Civilization currently wants sixty-eight thousand dollars I do not have.

I prefer trees.

The phone stops buzzing for a few seconds, then starts again. I look at the screen despite every survival instinct telling me not to.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

My stomach tightens.

The last message is still waiting beneath it.

Running doesn’t change what you owe.

“I don’t owe you anything,” I mutter.

The trees remain unsympathetic.

I should have thrown the phone away two hours ago.

I almost did at a gas station outside Bend. I stood beside a trash can with a stale blueberry muffin in one hand and my phone in the other, seriously considering which one had caused more harm to my life.

The muffin won by texture.

The phone survived because Kaden might call.

My brother has not answered in thirty-eight hours. I know because I have called him thirteen times.

Fourteen if we count the one where I panicked, hung up before voicemail, then immediately called again like the second attempt might find him in a more convenient section of whatever classified hellscape currently has him unreachable.

Straight to voicemail every time.

There are stretches when he cannot call. I know that. Kaden has spent most of my adult life appearing and disappearing according to rules I am not important enough for the government to explain.

Usually, I handle it by sending increasingly obnoxious texts until he resurfaces and tells me to stop threatening to put his face on missing-person milk cartons.

This week feels like a particularly bad time for my only dependable family member to vanish off the face of the earth.

The road curves sharply, and I slow, leaning toward the windshield as though those extra four inches will help me see through the rain.

“Come on.”

My little hatchback gives a suspicious rattle.

“Oh, absolutely not.”

Another rattle follows.

“You have one job.”

The engine offers no reassurance.

“You get me up the mountain, and I will buy you premium gas for two weeks.”

Nothing.

“An entire month.”

The rattle stops.

I nod. “Good choice.”

I have officially reached the bargaining-with-machinery stage of emotional collapse.

Probably healthier than calling Declan.

I tried that exactly once.

The number was disconnected.

Not surprising.

Declan never did anything dramatically enough to make me suspicious. That would have required the universe to provide useful foreshadowing.

He was charming, attentive, interested in my work. He remembered how I took my coffee, complimented my illustrations, and knew exactly how to make criticism sound concerned.

You’re wearing that?

Maybe something darker would be more flattering.

I love your curves. You’re just so sensitive about them.

You know I’m attracted to you, right?

That last one should have bothered me more.

At the time, I heard reassurance.

Now I hear a man reminding me I should be grateful.

My fingers tighten around the steering wheel.

I hate that he got into my head. I hate more that he found things already living there.

My mother planted most of them years ago.

Declan merely watered the garden.

The phone vibrates again.

I snatch it from the cupholder when the road straightens, praying for Kaden.

Unknown number again.

My pulse trips as a new message appears.

We can do this the easy way.

I stare at it long enough for the road to blur, then flip the phone facedown.

“Fantastic. Love choices.”

My voice sounds thinner than I want inside the car, so I clear my throat and focus on the road.

The last sign said WILDWOOD, 7 MILES.

Seven miles to a town of roughly three thousand people tucked so deep into the mountains that I am fairly sure the internet arrives by mule.

I have been there once.

Two years ago, Kaden brought me along for a weekend because he was passing through and decided his twenty-one-year-old sister needed fresh air, mountains, and a firsthand demonstration of what severe sexual frustration felt like.

That last part was Gavin Mercer’s fault.

I met him for one weekend and have remembered his face for two years, which seems unfair.

Especially because Gavin is not pretty.

Pretty suggests softness. Symmetry. A man who has never looked across a room and made a woman forget what she was saying halfway through the word probably.

Gavin is six-foot-four, broad enough to make doorways look decorative, with black hair, silver-gray eyes, scars, dark stubble, and the general energy of a man who could chop wood during a blizzard and somehow make the blizzard apologize.

He spoke maybe forty words to me that entire weekend.

I treasured thirty-seven of them.

The remaining three were, “Careful. It’s hot.”

He was handing me coffee.

I nearly proposed.

My dignity has always been delicate.

Thankfully, none of that matters now because Gavin is gone.

Kaden mentioned months ago that he was taking a long security assignment. I do not know where or for whom, but I know one important thing.

His cabin is empty.

My chest loosens by half an inch.

This is temporary. I stay one night, maybe two, get hold of Kaden, and we figure out what to do.

No one needs to rescue me.

I have spent most of my life making sure I never need rescuing.

The fact that I am currently driving toward my brother’s best friend’s empty cabin because criminals are threatening me feels irrelevant and frankly judgmental.

Wildwood appears through the rain in scattered lights.

A grocery store. A bakery. A little coffee shop with LATTE DA! painted across the window, because someone in this town committed a pun and no one stopped them.

I almost smile.

Then a dark SUV turns onto the road behind me.

My stomach drops.

I watch it in the mirror as it stays there through one intersection, then another. My fingers go cold around the steering wheel.

“Okay.”

I turn right at the next street.

The SUV continues straight.

Air rushes out of me, followed by a laugh that comes out shakier than I would like.

“Very brave, Hannah. Terrified of local accountants now.”

I drive faster anyway.

By the time I find the turnoff toward Gavin’s property, the town lights are gone and the darkness outside my headlights feels almost solid.

The road narrows, then narrows again, which feels unnecessary.

My tires crunch over gravel and wet pine needles as I climb. The last bar of cell service disappears from my phone.

Good.

No signal means nobody can track me through it.

My relief lasts approximately two seconds before the other side of that equation occurs to me.

No signal also means I cannot call anyone if an axe murderer lives in the woods.

Less good.

The cabin finally appears between the trees.

My headlights sweep over dark logs, a broad porch, and a steep roof shining with rain before I pull beside the house and kill the engine.

Darkness closes in at once.

Rain ticks against the roof, and my heart pounds hard enough to make the silence feel crowded.

“You made it.”

My voice cracks.

I close my eyes for a second and press my forehead against the steering wheel.

I am not crying. Crying makes my nose red, and I have been inconvenienced enough.

When I finally move, I grab my backpack and the little black zippered pouch Kaden gave me years ago.

The front door is locked.

I stand beneath the porch roof while rain drips from my curls onto my shoulders. The lock is expensive, solid, and much better than the cheap deadbolt on my apartment.

“Gavin,” I whisper at the door. “This is excessive.”

I crouch and unzip Kaden’s kit.

My brother started teaching me useful things when I was young, while our parents were busy being important.

He taught me where to hit if someone grabbed me, how to use leverage when someone was bigger, how to keep my thumb outside my fist, and how to get through a simple lock when getting through the door mattered more than respecting it.

This lock is not simple.

“Your paranoia is deeply unattractive,” I inform Gavin’s door.

The first pick slips.

I mutter something uncharitable and try again.

Rain drums steadily against the porch while I work by the faint light from my phone. The lock fights me for several minutes, which feels personal considering I once spent an entire afternoon illustrating individual strands of white hair against a white background without losing my mind.

Eventually, something inside the mechanism gives.

The lock turns.

Relief hits me so hard I nearly laugh.

“Still got it.”

I return the tools to the pouch, shove everything into my backpack, and push open the door.

The darkness inside is complete.

I hesitate on the threshold.

Two years ago, I saw this place in daylight, full of late-afternoon sun and Kaden’s voice carrying from somewhere near the kitchen.

I remember wood, stone, an enormous fireplace, and Gavin standing beside it with one shoulder against the mantel while I tried very hard to behave like a woman who had seen a male forearm before.

Tonight, I can barely see past my own hand.

I could use my phone flashlight. I probably should.

Instead, I step inside and close the door quickly behind me because standing in a pool of light while dangerous men are looking for me feels like a good way to become a cautionary tale.

The lock slides home beneath my fingers.

Only then do I breathe.

The cabin is completely, wonderfully quiet.

There are no tires on wet pavement, no phone vibrating beside me, no stranger asking questions at my apartment building and no Declan-shaped disaster reaching into another corner of my life.

Only rain against the roof and my own breathing.

My shoulders sag.

“I made it.”

The words come out so softly I almost do not hear them.

My eyes begin adjusting while I stand there. Large shapes slowly separate from the dark: the outline of a couch, the edge of a table, the pale suggestion of stone where the fireplace should be.

I slip the backpack from my shoulder. The strap catches against my damp sweater, and I tug at it while taking a step away from the door.

Then a hand closes around my wrist and yanks me around.

My backpack hits the floor as my back meets the wall, and before I can drag in enough air to scream, my other wrist is caught too.

Both of my hands are forced above my head and locked there in one large grip.

A hard body blocks mine.

Kaden taught me what to do when someone grabs me. Turn into the weakest part of the grip. Create space. Use momentum instead of strength. Drive a knee into anything vulnerable enough to make a man reconsider his priorities.

My body reacts before fear can shut it down.

I twist toward the thumb trapping my wrists and drop my weight, bringing my knee up at the same time.

He shifts just enough to ruin the move.

My knee catches nothing but air, my attempt to turn breaks against a grip that adjusts before I can exploit it, and suddenly I have even less room than before.

The efficiency of it terrifies me more than brute force would have.

“Don’t.”

The voice is low and rough, almost lost beneath the rain.

Recognition hits somewhere underneath the fear, impossible enough that for a second I refuse to trust it.

I know that voice.

My heart stutters and then starts pounding harder.

The man holding me shifts just enough to keep me secured against the wall without crushing me. One hand still circles both my wrists above my head while his other forearm braces beside my shoulder, caging me in.

My eyes have adjusted enough now to catch pieces of him.

Bare shoulder.

Wet skin.

Dark hair, wet and disordered.

The rough shadow of stubble over a hard jaw.

My gaze lifts to silver-gray eyes.

The world tips sideways.

Gavin.