2. Elias
ELIAS
Iknow the drive to my cabin, set deep in the Black Pine Mountains of western Montana, like the back of my hand.
I know the view through each season, every crevice and frost-split rock on the land, the meadows that flood gold with arrow-leaf balsam-root come July, and the lodgepole pines that line the road like sentinels all the way to my door.
The view of the sky deepening to dusk over the peaks with the last of the winter snow clinging to the higher ridges is my one companion.
And yet, as I maneuver the four wheel drive up the rough, winding mountain roads, everything feels different in an unsettling way.
Thanks to the woman out cold in the passenger seat, my unwanted guest.
I’ve lived alone in the cabin for more than a decade. Aiden, Adam and a couple of my military boys helped me build it when I wanted something far from civilization. When I wanted to escape the world that used me up and chewed me out.
I grow vegetables and fruits in the summer, have a freezer for meat and make runs to the nearby town maybe once a month.
The isolation suits me, even though it hasn't quite healed my nightmares.
Fifteen years of service, one bad call, and more bodies than I can count on both sides of the fence.
They gave me a medal for it. Called me a hero.
Hauled me out at ceremonies like a trained dog and asked me to perform.
I lasted eight months before I told them all to go to hell.
Now, for the first time, I’m bringing someone to my cabin. An intrusion into my space.
A woman in a wedding dress.
A woman that looks like a sweet angel with her round face and rounder curves. An angel I want to corrupt and drag into the darkness with me.
The fact that she’s out cold in the passenger seat should have let me focus on what I’m going to do with this unwanted baggage that’s suddenly fallen into my lap.
It doesn’t. I keep sneaking glances at her, like I can’t get enough of her. Like I have to do all my looking now before she wakes up and figures out my sudden obsession with her.
Long gossamer-wing like lashes, silky soft pale skin, pillowy lips, long straight jet black hair fanned out against the headrest. She's young, made of thick curves that make me pant like a dog being offered a treat, with an up-tilt at the corners of her eyes that says she’s half Asian.
It’s as if the universe decided to create a woman that ticks off all my boxes and then sent her to me as torment.
Fuck, I don’t even remember the last time I had sex, much less being hit with lust this badly.
I run a hand over my face and nearly miss a huge pothole.
The bodice of her wedding dress is tight around her chest and every time I hit a patch of gravel and the jeep bounces, the tops of her breasts bounce too.
Apparently, I’m also a tits man and hers are a goddamn work of art. I can just imagine the weigh of them in my hands as I squeeze and knead until the tip stiffens.
My blood runs sluggish and hot and my stiff cock reminds me I'm not as dead inside as I thought. The dying light catches the curve of her neck, the bare skin of her chest, turning everything gold and soft. Her head lolls against the window and my heart does something stupid in my chest.
I grip the wheel tighter. Lust is one thing, any man with blood in his veins would want her. But this…tenderness drumming through me is a whole another beast.
Already, the jeep smells like her. Jasmine and something else, something softer underneath it, floral and warm. It has no business clinging to the interior, clinging to my nostrils, claiming my space.
I'm losing my mind and I haven't even spoken to the woman yet.
Fuck. What did Aiden get me into? This was supposed to be a simple extraction and drop off.
Aiden Sorenson—my military buddy, one of the few men I'd trust with my life—runs a high tech security company now, handling real-time and high-tech security for assets like billionaires, sheikhs and royalty.
Recently, he acquired a wife and a child, and a life that looks nothing like mine.
When he begged me to take the job, quoting a forced marriage and an unwilling bride, I jumped in like the sucker I am.
The bastard definitely knows my weak points.
Pluck the bride out of a wedding from location A and drop her off at location B—simple, straightforward job. Until I walked into the church and saw her—white dress, dark hair, standing in the middle of flying bullets, looking like a lost sheep.
One look at her and I was so lost that I missed details I shouldn’t have—shooter count, entry points, who the actual target was. She made me sloppy before I even knew her name. Now I’m stuck with her and the bare minimum details that I insisted on with Aiden.
By the time I found my jeep and tossed her into it, she seemed to thaw from her dazed state. Started screaming about leaving her brother behind, begging me to take her back.
As if that was possible.
Thanks to my bad hip, she even squirmed out of my hold and made a run for it. Until she tripped on the torn hem of her dress and hit the concrete hard. I hauled her up and got her into the jeep before she could fight me again.
No one chased us but I had to get out of there. I hated injecting her with a tranq once we were on the road but I had no choice — she was screaming about her brother and trying to grab the wheel.
Except nobody was waiting at the drop point.
I sat there for two hours watching the light die, the woman unconscious in my passenger seat, and waited for a pickup that never came.
Aiden's people are reliable as a Swiss watch, usually. The silence told me everything I needed to know. The job had blown up in ways neither of us had anticipated. Protocol said one call on the burner. I'd made it. No answer.
So I made the only call left—mine. Bringing her to my haven.
My cabin’s the one place in the world that’s entirely mine—no people, no noise, no ghosts except the ones I brought there myself.
I wish I was enough of a bastard to just leave her somewhere and be on my way.
Turns out I'm not. Already, I can feel my emotions getting invested in her, in her story. In her wellbeing.
Who had forced her into the wedding with that oily-looking old man? Where was the brother that she was desperate to protect? Why had no one come to pick her up? Had she been the target of the shooting?
I slam the heel of my palm against the steering wheel, forcing my brain to cut off the question.
This is why I don't do this anymore. Why I don’t get involved with people even on the surface level.
Her head lolls again, this time towards me, her cheek dropping towards her shoulder, and that stupid thump hits my chest again.
Despite the rational warnings, I reach out and cup her cheek, supporting her neck.
I’m so fucked.