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My lips parted as she removed her bra. But when she removed her panties, my heart short-circuited. A flush, hot and fast, rushed through my body.
For a moment, I considered reaching down and rubbing one out, despite the subzero temperatures and the fact that I was on a job—andthe fact that I hadn’t jacked off since I couldn’t remember. Although, considering my latest sexual encounters, I might as well have been.
For the last few years, having sex has involved me closing my eyes and imagining another woman just so that I could climax. A fictitious woman, the only kind who would ever be willing to put up with the kind of work I did, who knew about the bodies I’d buried, had witnessed my nightmares. I couldn’t imagine telling another human being about the darkness that lurked deep inside me, only releasing in random explosions of blind rage.
Instead of draining myself, I watched Sophia gather her clothes and walk across the room, trying desperately to make out every detail of her blurry body. Of all the times to forget my damn binoculars. From what I could see, Sophia’s body was staggeringly sexy—soft, feminine curves, the kind made for grabbing onto while straddling my thighs, and then curling into after screwing each other into oblivion.
Damn—this woman.
She moved out of sight, and like a magnet, I moved with her, slipping from tree to tree. I caught sight of her again just as she stepped into the bathroom.
Ten minutes later, Sophia reemerged wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around her body. Guess I’d have to addtimely showersto my turn-on list. Her long wet hair ran down her back, curling at the tips. She disappeared into a small room off the kitchen (the laundry room, I assumed), and returned wearing a pair of baggy flannel pajama pants and an even baggier sweatshirt. I wasn’t sure which was sexier, to be honest.
She opened the fridge, grabbed a beer, popped the top, and took a long sip. My mouth watered. Then she sank onto the couch with the weight of someone who’d worked a ten-hour shift. After another long pull from her beer, Sophia picked up a book from the coffee table and settled in, in front of the fire. That’s when I realized there was no television in her home.
Sophia read for exactly thirty-seven minutes before her head lolled to the side and the book slipped from her fingertips and tumbled onto the floor.
I waited a few minutes to be certain she was asleep before slipping out from behind the tree and circling the house, surveying the property. There was an old shed in the back, nothing special. Aside from that, the perimeter of the home was all trees and shrubs—now under inches of snow.
I made my way to the window.
The interior of the house was minimally decorated with only a single couch, an end table with a lamp, the coffee table, and a rocking chair. The most expensive item looked to be the massive Navajo rug that stretched over the hardwood floor. Where there should have been family pictures or paintings were bookshelves filled with books. Hundreds and hundreds of books in the shelves, on the floor, on the countertops.
My brows lifted as I took in the total disarray of it all. Sophia might be gorgeous, but she lived in a pigsty. Shit was everywhere. Clothes and shoes and towels were strewn about, discarded glassware and plates sitting on surfaces, newspapers and notebooks were stacked haphazardly.
Okay, sonotperfect.
For a moment, I watched her sleep, the image tattooing itself onto my brain. Strands of golden hair framed a soft face, gently parted lips, and long, curved eyelashes. Occasionally, her lids would flutter and her finger would tap.
Something deep inside me stirred.
Sophia Banks lived a life of solitude, inside her little bubble completely cut off from the rest of the world. And from experience, I knew that there was only one type of woman who lived alone in the middle of nowhere.
A woman with something to hide.
8
Justin
When you make it past a certain point in the military, things you once considered necessary for comfort become irrelevant.
For example, going for days on little to no sleep, eating bugs the size of your fist, and remaining motionless for hours while hidden in a bush swarming with insects become just a part of the job. If you couldn’t handle it, another—stronger—man could.
A part of the job that I never grew accustomed to, though? Sleeping in a car.
Screw. That.
Sleeping under the stars, I could do. But finding a comfortable position in the confinement of a vehicle—especially in subzero temperatures—was nothing short of impossible. If not for my thermal blanket, I would have frozen to death.
So, when I pulled into the Creek House Diner the next morning, timing it so that I arrived an hour after Sophia, I wasn’t in the best mood. The only positive was that the snow had stopped, but according to the forecast, much more was on the way.
A bell jangled as I stepped inside. The restaurant was warm and smelled of fresh coffee and bacon. My stomach growled.
I saw her instantly.
Bent at the waist, Sophia was serving coffee to a couple of hunters who were wearing head-to-toe camo. Both men, one the size of a refrigerator with a gut that could barely fit under the table of the booth, and the other, young and skinny with buck teeth who reminded me of the rabbit my brother and I caught when we were little. We named him Buck, obviously.
Sophia straightened and glanced over her shoulder. Our eyes met, and I was faintly aware of someone appearing in my peripheral vision.
