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“How long do you hunt?” She puffs air into her cheeks, her arms shaking with the effort to cock the bow.
“Ten to fourteen days.” Kody grasps the string in her grip, stopping her. “You’re pulling too hard with your right hand. Keep it balanced.”
“I’m trying.”
“You’re failing.”
She releases the tension and straightens. “Where do you sleep for that long?”
“A small hunting cabin.” He absently motions toward the south.
“What?” Her mouth falls open, her eyes large and round. “That little isolated shed?”
“How do you know about that?” I lower the rifle and watch her closely. “It’s thirty miles south. You haven’t been—”
“I saw it from the plane.” Her voice drops to a reedy whisper. “I thought…” She fidgets with the safety latch on the bow. “I hoped someone lived there.”
“That’s why you stole the snow machine.” Realization crashes into me. “You thought you could make it there and get help.”
A sheen of moisture rises over her eyes, and she blinks it away.
“That’s our cabin,” I say coldly so she understands. “There is no one else.”
“Got it.” She grits her teeth and returns to cocking the crossbow.
Her gloves came off hours ago, her fingers cracked and bleeding from the unforgiving string. But she doesn’t stop.
Stubborn woman.
A bead of perspiration rolls down her temple, and my eyes chase the drip into her cherry-red hairline.
I lick my lips, imagining the taste.
The taste of her skin.
Her soft mouth.
Tiny tits.
Pink pussy.
Dangerous female.
Alluring goddess.
So goddamn tempting. I can’t look away.
Neither can my brother.
Ah, fuck. Now he’s licking his lips.
This is bullshit. We need to stick together and protect one another. The only way to do that is to keep her at a safe distance.
She’s just another woman. Another of Denver’s deliveries. Another tool he’ll attempt to use against us.
Won’t stop me from fucking her.
She can ride my cock and scream my name, and I’ll feel nothing beyond a physical release. No attachment. No affection. It’s my superpower.
I have Gretchen to thank for that.
But my brothers aren’t me. They’re innocent. If either of them gets a taste of pussy, it’s over. They’ll surrender.
We all know the stakes and have our own methods of avoiding the triggers. We can do this.
For the next two days, target practice and daily chores eat away the hours, and with each passing minute, a sense of dread coils the air. Like the string on Kody’s crossbow, it pulls tighter, stretching and straining.
No one vocalizes it, but I see their wary glances out the windows, eyes and ears on the sky, waiting for a plane.
On the third day, we finally hear it.
The moment the distant purr of the engine breaks the horizon, a communal sigh fills the cabin.
“Thank God.” Sitting at the kitchen table, Frankie slumps in the chair and drops her head in her hands.
The next hour is a whirlwind of tasks—unloading the plane, sorting provisions, and taking inventory. Denver didn’t bring home his usual load. This wasn’t a supply trip.
“Everything there?” He stands beside me, watching me rifle through the box of snow machine parts.
“Think so.” I close the lid and face him. “How was the trip?”
He opens his mouth and shuts it. His gaze drifts to Frankie, where she sits by herself near the hearth, observing us with hard, intelligent eyes.
“What is it?” My neck tenses. “What happened?”
It’s no secret that people are after him. He’s a criminal. A thief. A kidnapper. A wanted man. Perhaps America’s most wanted. And Canada. Probably Russia, too. Who the fuck knows?
He claims he’s never been identified, that his face has never been caught on camera or noticed by an eyewitness. I find that hard to believe. After all these years, surely someone has seen him committing a crime.
Even if he’s somehow remained under the radar, there’s more to his story. More to his past that he’s hidden from us. Why else did he choose this off-grid location to retire?
My mother and I were his first.
His first kidnapping.
His first captives.
Yet he built Hoss long before he brought us here. Did he design this hideaway north of the Arctic Circle with plans to abduct children and pregnant women over the next thirty years? Or did he originally come here because he was running from something? Or someone? And the kidnappings were just afterthoughts to soothe his loneliness?
What happened? I hold his gaze.
His eyes narrow. He knows I don’t give a fuck about his well-being. I just need his wings.
“Kody.” A dark grin appears on his face as he holds my stare. “Come here.”
My brother approaches, eyes guarded and posture threatening.
“How’s your hand?” Denver glances at him.
“Weak. But healing.”
“No infection?”
“No.”
“That’s my boy.”
Kody shows no reaction. Ever aloof and unmoved. But I know he’s dying on the inside. Denver’s up to something. We all sense it. Even Wolf, who pretends to be completely engrossed by his new carton of cigarettes. He’s listening with every nicotine-laced breath in his body.
