He fell silent again, looking into the fire, as though the flames held the answers to the questions that he seemed too afraid to ask even himself.

  “But Rafe, especially,” he admitted. “He was so trusting, even after we were first kicked out. Him and Ethan still wanted to believe that people were inherently good. Anton and I had to step up to protect them as best we could at the time, and I knew it wasn’t enough, even then.”

  “But he survived,” I pointed out. “You all did. You all…you’re here, you’re still family. Still together. And Rafe will be with you again soon…”

  “I really hope so,” Luke replied gruffly, picking at a loose thread on the carpet. I could tell that he didn’t believe what I was saying, but he didn’t let go of my hand. I wasn’t sure if it was for my benefit or his, but I appreciated it either way, the gentleness of his touch at odds with how rough around the edges he often seemed.

  “When I left my old pack,” I began slowly, not sure how exactly to frame this. “I was…I was so stuck, I was so alone. The friends I had back there, I felt betrayed by all of them…”

  “You’re not exactly making me feel better about the nature of our people, you know.” Luke shot a wry smile in my direction, and I shook my head.

  “No, I know.” I bowed my head. “I just wanted to…I just know how it feels, when it’s like you have nothing left in the world and you don’t know where the fuck you’re going to go from here. But you’ll find a way. We all will.”

  “I have to believe that’s true.” He squeezed my hand and I felt this surge of desperation. Total helplessness that, whatever happened, I knew I couldn’t fix this. Not here. Not tonight.

  “Luke, you know I’m going to do anything that I can to help him, don’t you?” I promised him, even though I knew my words probably didn’t mean a whole lot to him by this point. I wasn’t sure what I could do, what I could say, that would make him feel better. Instead of using words, I led with my heart, leaning close and pressing my lips to his.

  It was a tentative caress, more a comfort than a come-on. To my surprise, he responded at once, groaning as he slanted his mouth over mine, his hand sliding up the small of my back until he was gripping my hair. It was quintessential Luke. No finesse, just feeling, as he dragged me against him roughly, his fingertips digging into my waist as though to make sure that I was really there, that I wasn’t going to blink out of existence on him.

  He had been the last of the brothers I’d been with before I left the cabin that we had all called home for a brief while, and it felt right that he should be the first now that we were reunited. It was like coming home. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d been craving touch like this until he slipped his tongue into my mouth and pulled me on top of him. Any lingering doubts that had been at the back of my head seemed to vanish. For a while, we could forget. Comfort one another and reaffirm that we were here. We were alive and we weren’t giving up. The respite wouldn’t last forever but, damn it, I’d take it.

  He pressed me closer with a groan, the two of us lying flat on the rug beneath us, the fire warming my skin where our legs intertwined and our bodies met as though they had been built to fit together. He wrapped his arms around me so tight that I could feel his heartbeat thumping through his shirt.

  “Take this off,” I breathed in his ear, tracing the hem of his shirt, and he quickly leaned up and whipped it off, tossing it aside – before he lay down, he did the same to me, removing the shirt that they’d brought for me and letting it land next to his on the floor. He leaned up to kiss me again, our bare skin next to each other. It felt like I was feeding an addiction, the endorphins exploding in my head and every nerve ending beginning to prickle with excitement. He rolled on top of me, pushing me down, his hands traveling hungrily across my skin and down towards my pants. He hooked his fingers around the top and began to pull them down urgently, and I knew as well as he did which way this was going; I didn’t want to wait and neither did he, both of us pushing hard, bucking against each other, trying to drive ourselves together with enough force that we could push the bad thoughts from our heads for a while. I lifted my hips and let him yank off my pants, and he did the same, stripping down.

  The heat from the fire was the only thing lighting us by then, but I could see everything I needed to as he bore back down on top of me and kissed me once more; I could make out the way his muscles strained against his skin, the faded-down ink of the tattoos that I still hadn’t gotten a decent look at. There was this urgency with Luke…no time to slow down, no time to stop and stare. It was just pure, hungry need.

  He took his cock in his hand and suddenly he was pressing that massive, throbbing length against my entrance. And me? I was more than ready. Aching and wet, whimpering and shifting my hips to help him. First, it was just the smooth, broad head, breaching my tight folds. And then, all at once, with a mighty groan, he was inside me…filling me, stretching me almost to the point of pain. There was no time to catch my breath as his powerful hips pulled back and thrust forward again, seating that cock to the hilt.

  “Ah, Luke!”

  There was no slow and steady. No gentle caresses or reverent kisses. Our teeth clacked together as he mashed his mouth against mine again and took me, owning me with each thrust. As big as he was, it should’ve hurt, but something about the roughness of the way he was moving satisfied a craving I didn’t know I’d had – feeling our bodies crashing together like that was the only thing in the world right now, his warm skin against mine. I slid my hands down and sank my fingers into his ass, pulling him against me as hard as I could, letting him know that I could handle it…that I didn’t want him to hold back even a little.

  Within moments, the two of us had built our pace to a frenzy, moving with each other in perfect harmony, me rocking forward as his hips moved like pistons, driving me relentlessly toward ecstasy.

  Before I knew it, I was panting and clawing at his back and wrapping my legs around him and trying to take him even deeper, even harder. His breath coming in harsh gasps, he caught my bottom lip between his teeth and tugged hard, making me groan. I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the feeling of total abandon.

  Holy hell, I had needed this worse than I could have possibly imagined. I was already getting close, edging towards a splintering orgasm with every movement. I knew he was, too, could tell from the way he groaned, all ragged and raw, his eyes closed and his jaw clenched. Seeing him so lost to this moment, knowing how much I was turning him on…feeling him all hard and thick inside me, my channel gripping him like a fist, it was all I needed to-

  “Luke!” I cried out, the noise shattering the quietness around us; he let out this deep growl from deep down in his chest as he gripped my hips in a viselike hold.

  Tremors rocked through me as I exploded around him and I dimly felt him stiffen above me. He surged forward one last time, burying himself deep as his thick cock jerked, filling me in hot, heavy spurts as my pussy clenched around him in fluttering spasms. I couldn’t stop. I could only hang on to him for dear life as the storm raged on.

  Long moments ticked by, the silence only broken by the sound of our breathing as we came back to earth. I held him tight, savoring the warmth and the safety of his body as I waited for reality to set in once again.

  Luke held himself inside me, until, reluctantly, he pulled away. The shock of the cold on my skin where he had been hit me like a slap as he handed me my clothes.

  “Much as I would like to keep you naked, you’ll freeze, even with this fire.”

  He managed a tight smile, and then leaned in and planted a soft kiss on my mouth. I kissed him back, and for one, last moment I could pretend that all of this wasn’t really happening, that it was all some awful nightmare.

  But then he pulled away, and I could see the shadows on his face. The ones that I was sure matched mine. No matter how much we wanted it to be otherwise, we couldn’t escape from the mess I’d created.

  Rafe was still gone, and we had no idea how we were going to get him back.

  3

  When I awoke the next morning, the sun was bouncing off the snow outside and forced me to blink against the sudden onslaught of light. It took me a second to remember where I actually was; for a moment, I was sure I was back in that cell, deep in that compound, and my heart leapt up in my chest and I scrambled to my feet in a bleary state, certain that I was going to need to fight my way out.

  But then I saw Luke lying next to me, on the rug next to the fire, his arm tossed out where I had just been, and I relaxed once more.

  I was safe. I was here, with Luke, and the two of us had fallen asleep together after making love in front of the fire. There wasn’t much left of it now, the flames reduced down to a smolder, and I stretched as I stood. We had exhausted the pile that had been on the porch, and I could already feel the cold seeping into my bones as I went about my morning business.

  From the bedroom, I heard the door click, and froze; was that Anton and Ethan back already? That would have been a little too quick, surely. I hung back behind the door, heart pounding, and slowly inhaled the scents of the people who had just entered our cabin. To my utter relief, I recognized them at once as the men that I had trusted my life to.

  I stepped out from inside the bedroom, aware that I was only wearing a shirt and nothing more, and faced the two of them again.

  “Hey,” I greeted them a little shyly, reaching for the pair of pants that I had discarded the night before.

  “Hey.” Anton shook the snow from his hair and dumped a bag on the floor in front of them; they must have stopped to shift and dress on the way back here, because both of them were swaddled against the snow. I turned my back, a little self-conscious, as I hurried to finish getting myself ready.

  “Did you get everything you need?” I asked, pointing to the couple of bags they’d brought in from the cold, and they both nodded; Luke had begun to stir and sat up, greeting the others with a nod.

  “Yeah. I see you two made up,” Ethan remarked, cocking an eyebrow at us. I flushed. Was it really that obvious?

  I opened my mouth to explain, but Ethan only nodded approvingly and shared a glance with Anton that had me snapping it closed again.

  Sneaky bastards. They’d left us alone on purpose so we could work through Luke’s anger. My cheeks flushed as I recalled exactly how much we’d worked through it.

  “You want something to eat? We brought weapons back with us, but we also brought food.” Anton ripped open one of the bags and pulled out a loaf of bread and proffered it to me. “It’s not much, but it’ll keep us going.”

  “Let me get the fire started again.” I gestured to the remains of the fire we’d built the night before. “That way I can actually cook something. We need something warm in our belly. Then we can make a plan as to what to do from here.”

  “I second that.” Luke yawned as he got to his feet, and soon enough the four of us were bustling around each other, getting the place set up for something to eat – they had managed to grab a few hunks of meat and some vegetables along with the bread, and it was more than enough to make a decent meal with. We cooked in silence, but it felt companionable, despite the tension and fear that was still raw and present between us.

  “I’m so glad you’re all back okay,” I sighed as I handed out plates of food to the three of them, sitting down with my back to the fire and letting it warm me through. “When I heard you coming in this morning-”

  “We’re fine. It was an easy run, actually.” Ethan shrugged. “I thought it would be worse. We did catch the scent of something, though.”

  Ethan shot a glance at Anton, who seemed to fire him a firm “cease-and-desist” glare back, but Ethan just shrugged. I frowned and looked between the two of them. Luke was oblivious, too busy tucking into the food we’d put in front of him.

  “Oh, yeah?” I prompted Ethan, turning my attention to him. I knew that Anton wouldn’t tell me if he didn’t want to, but now that Ethan had brought it up, I was pretty sure that I could coax it from him.

  “Yeah, we did,” he nodded cautiously, mopping up some of the stew with a chunk of bread. “I’m pretty sure we came across a trail left by some of the guys from your old pack.”

  My appetite vanished at once and I stopped eating.

  “My pack?”

  What the hell were they doing this far out here? It didn’t make any sense. The Kellum compound was so far away from here that they would have had to come out of their way to find it, out of their way to-

  “Oh, shit.” I shook my head. “They’re looking for Cora, I bet. My friend who has been captured. They’ll be out here trying to find her if she’s gone missing.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Ethan shrugged. “If things ended as badly as you say, we could do without running into them, to be quite honest. Pretty sure they’re just going to get in our way and we have enough enemies right now.”

  I fell silent, picking at my food some more. I knew I needed to eat, but something was niggling at me hard, and I couldn’t shake it.

  It was a stupid idea. One that was almost certainly destined to fail, but desperate times…

  “Or we could go find them,” I said flatly.

  Anton raised his head and looked up at me with an expression of sheer incredulity in his eyes. I knew he was the alpha. I knew he was the one in charge, but that didn’t stop me bristling at the way he was looking at me right now. I could do without that glare, the one that told me that he was pretty certain that what I had just suggested was the dumbest shit he’d ever heard in his life.

  “No, we can’t,” he corrected me grimly, spearing his fingers through his hair before blowing out a weary sigh, as though it pained him to say it as much as it pained me to hear it. “They exiled you, remember? They just left you out there in the middle of a war to die. You can’t just go back to them with your tail between your legs and beg them to change their minds and to welcome you back into the fold.”

  “I’m not-” I snapped, and then took a deep breath. We didn’t need to be fighting now. No, I needed to find some way to get Anton to see my point of view. Because I was pretty sure what I was suggesting was the only chance that I had of making things right and getting Rafe back. “I’m not doing it for me or so they welcome me back,” I assured him. “And I hear you, I do. But if we go back there, talk to them a little bit, maybe they will help-”

  “You think they’re going to listen to anything you have to say, after you sold them out?” He cocked his head at me. I knew he didn’t mean to be an asshole, but I had to press my lips together to keep from lashing back at him. I didn’t like being talked to like I was an idiot – it reminded me of too many times when I had been back home, when I had been trying to get involved with my father’s work and he had brushed me aside like I couldn’t possibly understand what he was talking about

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I do know that the MacLarens have one of their packmates, someone who wasn’t cut out, like I was. Someone good and loyal,” I swallowed hard past the knot of pain in my throat as I thought of Cora, “and I’m not sure my father can turn his back on her and not seem like a complete and utter monster to his people. That will be the kiss of death for him. They’re not perfect, but many in the pack have good, if misguided, hearts.”

  “For all you know, he could kill you for even trying,” Ethan pointed out, and I felt my shoulders sag. As if I needed reminding.

  “He could,” I murmured, dropping my gaze once more. “But I don’t think he will. I think we could appeal to their sensible side. You’re three very strong, healthy males and I’m pretty sure that any pack would at least have to hear you out before dismissing you outright. They’d be idiots not to.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe that’s exactly what they are,” Anton cut in. “If he would go as far as to exile you, I’m pretty sure he’s not going to suddenly come around and listen to what we have to say.”

  “So then, what?” I demanded, cocking my hands on my hips. “Do you really think we can break into the MacLaren place and get Rafe out by ourselves?” I pointed out. I was the only one who had really seen the inside of that place – they didn’t know what they were dealing with. I did. And I knew that the four of us wasn’t going to be enough to get us inside that place and make it out alive, no matter how badly we wanted to.

  “I think we can give it a good shot,” Luke remarked, touching the small of my back in this secret little gesture that I knew was meant to calm me down but that had the complete opposite effect. I bristled at his touch. I didn’t want them talking to me like this – I needed them to listen, to trust me, to accept that we didn’t have much choice in the matter.

  “Well, we can’t,” I shot back bluntly. “The only chance we have is if we go to my father. He’s not going to do it out of the kindness of his heart but maybe because he has something to gain by working with us.”

  “Right. The girl…who is she to you, again?” Anton lifted his chin at me, speaking through a mouthful of food. “Why are you so sure that your father will give a damn about her and not you?”

  “Cora.” I looked down at my hands. I wasn’t sure why, but something about saying her name out loud again made my heart hurt. No matter. They needed to know about her, about the bond we’d shared.

  “She was my best friend when the two of us were growing up,” I explained, my voice soft, as though speaking too loudly would make it too hard to go on. “We were so close, right up until the day I was forced out.”

  “Did she try to help you?” Ethan asked, and I shook my head again.

  My heart gave a squeeze. “No. Short of leaving herself, she really couldn’t. She was always loyal to my father and the pack.” Maybe to a fault, but I’d always known it and I refused to blame her for my choices. I forced a smile and shrugged. “She was…she was the kind of pack member who worked for the good of everyone. Maybe that’s why she was taken, because she was so valued. She would leave a hole behind when she was gone. Like Rafe.”

 

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