Recurve Ridge by Dove Priest | Copyright © Dove Priest 2024 | Unedited and subject to change

PROLOGUE

Mulch scattered beneath my feet as I tore through the forest, its soft crackle overriding a brittle roar that consumed all thought inside my head.

Get away. Can’t stop. Don’t let them catch me.

If I went back, I might never get out.

No might about it. I couldn’t go back to that table. The shadows. The hands—

—can’t, can’t, can’t—

I couldn’t stop, not even if my brain kicked into gear. Something primal activated, and my body entered flight mode without my mind’s permission. Not that I needed to give it. Every nerve ending numbed in a desperate bid to survive leaving me a willing host, carried away from horror and death seeking the facade of freedom and safety.

There was nothing worse in the woods than him. The darkest monsters resided in their plush upper-class digs, not out in the roughened forest like wild mountain men… Right?

Wrong.

I would discover just how dark the monsters in the forest could be.

Myself, most of all.

CHAPTER ONE

ROBE

Bodies littered my cabin floor in various states of déshabillé. Stale piss and body odor overpowered the ever-present scent of spruce and brisk mountain air my remote ridgeline in the Adirondacks failed to combat.

One man groaned, and I knew they weren’t out for good. Still, it annoyed the shit out of me that I couldn’t use my own living space.

“I came out here to be alone,” I grumbled, gesturing to the mountains that surrounded my forest cabin. “Not host an over-aged frat party every damn night.”

My college years were well behind me. Easy days with no sense of responsibility, and less care factor. Those days were gone, trapped behind an unopenable door of my own making.

“Yet you take in strays with the heart of a philanthropist and the ease of a five-dollar hooker.” Jonothan Littleman pressed a mug of black coffee into my hand. Thick blond hair that matched his wild beard shot with the occasional strand of silver cascaded down his back. He looked less like a New York upstate taxpayer, and more like a Viking who stormed my house and took up residence. The latter was true in retrospect. “Be honest with yourself. You came out here to hide behind a mountain and lick your wounds.”

“And hide the devil within.” The corner of my lip curled. “We’re all damaged goods, unfit for human consumption.”

Jon snorted. “That’s why you are who you are, isn’t it? Robinson fucking Huntingdon, Earl of this shitful patch of ground away from everything and everyone we love, and rescuer of assholes like yourself.” He swept muscle-bound arms in a wide circle to encompass the living room, the largest part of my cabin mountain home in dire need of expansion.

I stared at the semiconscious men littering my floor, each of whom would wake with a hangover worse than the next. My heart clenched at the sight of the broken boys—men—I collected, rescued before they suffered a fate worse than mine. Before they hit the realm of unredeemable.

Each thought they’d already met wrecking-ball status. I knew better.

I grunted over my coffee, letting the dark ambrosia unpack what I kept hidden from the most prying mind: my own. Sleep itched the corners of my consciousness as I processed Jon’s words, though I rose an hour earlier.

My response came out more than a little salty. “Yeah, but it’s my shitful patch of ground.”

The cabin walls closed around me, a too-tight fit for a woodsman and a displaced trust fund kid-cum-officer-cum-CEO who learned to rough it alongside the rest of my outcast crew.

Never created with the girth of five large men in mind, the space we inhabited that I built by hand was for a contingent of two out of necessity. Recurve Ridge nestled amongst a brutal section of the Adirondacks Mountain range in upstate NY. Full of unforgiving granite outcrops and pitfalls, not to mention my own improvements to every defensible aspect of the land, it suited each of our flawed personalities to perfection.

I’d always intended to build a larger bunkhouse behind my cabin sometime after my other tenants arrived, but seeing as we all shoved into the cramped space, that time had come. I flicked my toe at a beer bottle that drifted near my foot. It rolled across the bare floorboards and bumped into a half-empty glass of cheap whiskey.

If I expanded, the space needed to be usable. More than a space to sleep. I drew out plans in my mind’s eye for an additional kitchenette, their own bathrooms—the latter because I was a pedantic asshole and refused to share. A man cave for toys and… more toys.

Change required topping up supplies, and that meant a trip out of Recurve Ridge for someone and back into the dark lure of civilization. Heading off the ridge incurred danger for us all, a place where only one of us was welcome. The rest may as well wear a shoot on sight tag knotted around his neck and have a bull’s-eye tattooed on his ass.

My stomach protested the thought of losing one of the boys I collected before they healed enough to seek their own futures. I covered my disquiet beneath a long draw from my mug. Scalding, bitter liquid seared my throat that instantly craved a second hit of the dark ambrosia. I relished the sharp pain that numbed a different sort, no matter how brief.

What didn’t kill me created a new evil, or some bullshit affirmation regular people invented to protect their cloistered lives. Pain offered a tainted strength that propelled me forward, each of us craving his preferred brand of poison.

The youngest man in the cabin stirred on the floor. Cracking a swollen eyelid that looked like it bore the brunt of fisticuffs from the night before, Will offered me a sloppy salute that might have been a thumbs-up, and returned to his sloth-like state. The man beside him who sported a home-job military grade haircut lay face down in a puddle of his own drool.

I might have worried for Miller’s existence if his barrel chest didn’t lift every so often in the deep sleep of an inebriated man. That, and he snored like a local drunk.

What else did we have to celebrate but surviving one more day against our personal battles?

I served with both Will and Miller in the Middle East, working shoulder-to-shoulder as their officer for too many years. The latter retained a desire to address me as sir though I no longer held any right to the title. Jon, I found in the midst of his blackest moment while my youngest recruit, Alan, fell into our ramshackle life through a design of fate I didn’t stop to study too hard, lest it replace their heartache with a loneliness once they left.

My lost, broken boys.

A piece of my splintered self featured in each man, giving us a neutral, if common ground. Their healing provided me with a selfish version of pride as I strove to give them what I couldn’t fathom for myself: redemption.

A life outside this pitiful existence.

These loyal men looked to me for protection and decided to stick around to make a hash of my self-imposed serenity. Some part of me liked that a few salvageable qualities remained from my previous life, because the mission I set us on didn’t allow for error, only a skewed sense of morality.

One of the assholes broke wind in his alcohol-imbued stupor that filled my living room with a vile stench. I slugged the remnants of my coffee and thrust the cup at Jon. One bushy eyebrow rose, and his beard twitched.

“Make sure they clean up after themselves. I’m out.”

Jon said nothing as I stormed from the house into the welcoming arms of the forest.

I needed to shoot something.

****

The weight of the axe soothed my calloused palms as it sliced a parabolic arc through Recurve Ridge’s crisp mountain air. Sharp pine and warm, earthy mulch wrapped around me in a cocoon only the forest could offer as comfort. I was more at ease here than I’d ever been in the city, amongst everything I hated.

A city that hated me in return.

One day I would return to the lights and face my nemesis, but for now… I took a sense of peace in the ache of muscles tight from a lack of work that craved action. Sweat soaked my shirt with each swing, log after log. As good as the repetitive action felt, it wasn’t enough.

Shooting came first as my preference to overlay the coiling violence that writhed beneath my skin. The twang of the bow, a breath of mountain air at my cheek settled a sense of peace into my heart. Despite firing off several dozen quivers earlier the tension remained, the sort no bow or amount of spent arrows could fix.

I returned to my axe, a therapy Jon taught me when we first scouted land for the cabin together. My next exhale clouded around me, condensation obscuring my vision before air and breath melded in an invisible seam. A neat pile of split logs lay by my feet. I kicked the halves over to the heap and hefted the next round onto the stump. Damp mulch crackled underfoot in the wrong direction. The mountain stilled in a pensive air.

The only warning the forest provided that all was not well.

Hair rose on the back of my neck. I pivoted, reaching toward a change my brain reacted to, but hadn’t processed yet.

Fleeting sounds traveled between the trees, shattering and rebounding to displace its origin, but the predator in me refused to be distracted by splintered echoes. I closed my eyes, my breaths softening as I listened to the forest. The irregular stumble of prey that already forfeited its life filtered into the clearing.

A dual need—to hunt, to protect—rose in my chest as I swiveled on my heel, tracking my prey’s path across land I knew too well to allow escape.

I marked the thrashing gait against an invisible map in my mind as I scanned the spaces between foliage. There—a flicker in the shadows between the trunks. The light shifted, and again. This section of the forest around my cabin thickened by nature rather than design. I never bothered to clean out the underbrush and smaller saplings that vied with the natural giants, seclusion being the aim of the game.

My game.

My blood heated as my boots carried me one step forward, then the next, each lunge faster than the last as the panicked flurries neared. I wanted to pause and study the rhythm of the creature’s flight, but my heart put together what my mind still fought—the frantic, fleeing form was human.

Another person in my patch of the forest where no one else should be. Only those with a preconceived death wish sought access through my trees, not one whose survival instinct kicked in to extend a life. My land didn’t come under safe by any definition, occupied by some of the deadliest creatures in upstate New York, including the local human contingent.

Which begged the question: What could be so big and bad that drove desperation in my direction?

Nothing else came close to the ruckus a person created in their struggle to survive. A black bear lumbering through the Adirondacks in search of its dinner had more grace than a stumbling amateur hiker on a trail rated beyond their ability. Pure panic sat under its own category for the average, untrained person.

Good thing that neither Jon, me, nor any of my boys back in the cabin counted as the average human. Years of training kicked in as adrenaline dumped into my system at will.

My prey appeared to be a solitary chaos. I paced the clearing’s boundary on silent feet, seeking what tore through my section of the woods. The flighty sounds stumbled on alone long after its predator had been outrun. Snapped twigs brushed the pads of my fingers as I passed, their sharp edges digging into hardened calluses.

I stepped around small depressions that disturbed pine needle mulch and bared the earth in tiny sections. No heel print indented the exposed soil. I knelt at the side of the damaged path, letting my fingers sink into the dirt. The shallow imprint had no defined edges. Less than what a full-grown man would make, which meant my prey was either a small-framed person, or a child.

Or a barefoot woman running alone.

That thought spurred me into the depths of the forest that became my home over the past five years. I learned the ridge’s secrets though never divulged my own in turn, relieved by its silent support. The perfect companion for a man who took society’s eviction notice and hung it over his threshold in place of a welcome mat.

A flash lit a path beyond the trees. I frowned. Skin had a way of throwing light in the darkest places, an easy giveaway for any unassuming target. I spotted that earlier when she first darted away. When had I become so sure the runner was female?

That should provide her more endurance than a child. I filed the extra information away as a wild guess at best. Regardless, those rare flashes gave me something to aim toward.

The dodging pattern transformed into a primal path, the brain existing in pure survival mode after more than a few minutes. Soon the spike would deplete, and she’d crash.

I intended to be there when she fell.

But for now, she ran.

I timed my breaths with her movements, catching the second the pattern changed. A falter in step, a dodge around a fallen log… I weaved between scarred trunks and snagged a flailing limb as she shot past.

The body attached to the slim extremity followed as I swung the cold arm in a broad arc. She grazed the next tree, tangled in the undergrowth, and slammed face first into my chest, knocking breath from us both.

No startled cry ripped from her as I cupped a hand behind her head, worried I broke the poor creature’s nose. A handful of twigs and pine needles trickled from her mussed hair and streamed over the back of my hand in a steady cascade. She didn’t make a single sound or move at all.

The woods settled as I weaved my fingers through her chocolate dark curls, a natural silkiness present amongst the snares. What should have been long, luscious waves resembled a hawk’s nest that tumbled over my knuckles, massing about her head like a dark halo to a fallen creature.

A tear-stained, alabaster face turned up. Eyes older than her maybe nineteen, twenty years at most stared at me. Her gaze slid out of focus, glazed with unadulterated terror. I doubted she saw me or anything else in front of her. Despite her pale skin, ice cold beneath my roughened palms, her body warmth soaked into my torso too fast to be covered. Barefoot, and naked.

She was naked.

In my arms.

Bruises bloomed on every surface in a wide array of blacks and blues, all recent. I scanned her arms and legs but there were no tell-tale yellowish tinges, no evidence of older abuse. Blessed with a deep blue iris, somewhere between midnight and dark ocean, I wanted to fall into her and never escape. Fear dulled their luminous quality, along with exhaustion, but her stunning beauty still sucked breath from my lungs. My chest closed tight on expired air that refused to escape.

Whoever hurt you just topped my shit list.

A ripple of renewed energy slid through heated veins. I didn’t quell the urge to find who ruined her and revisit the pain she suffered on the asshole tenfold.

Biting back a growl, I scanned her body for more immediate injuries. Puffy, pink lips were split in more than one place and torn in others. I leaned forward, tracing the rounded depressions with my gaze alone. Were those teeth marks?

Someone ripped her from whatever coddled world she existed in before her assault and threw her into my dark territory where civilization and soft people had no place.

That made both her person and her vengeance mine to safeguard.

Fury seared my insides as I stared at her bare form, my gaze utterly uncontested. The woods fell into an eerie purgatory. No call echoed through the close-knit branches so often filled with the soft chatter of my furry and feathered neighbors.

The girl took a shuddering breath that should have jerked her back to the present but didn’t. Her pulse fluttered beneath my fingers in an erratic rhythm that began to slow as her body accepted her current predicament over her escape.

One breath became many. She gulped at the frigid air in shallow gasps that barely made it into her lungs before she expelled short gasps in wracking, tearless sobs. My heart wrenched as I held her tight, weathering the remnants of her fear and wondered what the fuck to do with her.

I was used to triaging broken bones and burns or worse on a battlefield, not recuperate a shattered mind in a fragile body.

I stared over her head, my jacket heavy across the taut line of my shoulders. No threat appeared from the gloom that might obscure an enemy. The only other heartbeat came from the prey in my arms, and even that thumped at half the rate I expected.

My gaze swept back to the girl, and a different muscle turned over.

I traced a light fingertip over plump, dusky pink lips, noting every tear in her swollen skin. Keeping my touch gentle, I cataloged each mark, lodging the damage in a running list headed due rewards for when I identified whoever hurt her. The bruises mapped her torment beneath her skin in a stunning array of torture that cost hours of her life not so long ago.

Four spots close together looked like finger marks. I sought out the thumb print, finding it where I expected over the other side of her shoulder. The handprint dwarfed her dainty frame. I picked out more of the same prints in varying sizes. Each mark on her differed enough to suggest a line of attackers. A similar puzzle covered her torso.

I didn’t need to check her legs to know they would show the same.

Christ.

“How many?” I grated, grazing my thumb along her arm.

My other arm wrapped tight around her back, holding her to me. Unprotected, my ass. Anything that came at her had to deal with a whole lot more than a tiny, unarmed, and untrained woman.

The girl stood statue-still during my inspection. A cool breath brushed my cheek through the untamed growth there. What did I look like to her eyes? A great brute of a wild mountain man, perhaps. A far cry from the silk blend suits after my uniforms were stripped away. Three lives in a single lifetime. We all wore many hats in different seasons. My scars were covered with checked shirts and a beard, while she stood bare before me.

Exposed. Raw.

“Where did you come from?” I didn’t expect an answer as I fell into her galaxy-dark gaze, processing the too-still woman in my arms.

My mind kicked into gear, and it took me too long to realize she stood still and quiet, not a shiver in sight. Cursing myself as a goddamn fool, I shucked my jacket free and covered her battered body. My lungs closed tight when she didn’t flinch, though the damage to her fine-boned body bordered on horrendous. That she still stood at all was a miracle. Shock did that to a person.

I’d seen soldiers trained for situations struggle with it. This slip of a girl had no defense mechanism to rely on other than what her mind provided, and now me. I shoved back the violence that pulsed beneath my skin, aching to erupt and tear the woods apart for her.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

Darkened eyes shifted to my face, the lone sign she heard me.

I caught her chin between firm fingers, careful not to incur further damage. Either someone got a little overzealous with their impact play or abused this girl well past a horrific level. It didn’t take much nous to select the latter option as her fate.

“Your name,” I repeated, cradling her face between my hands, and prayed she’d emerge from her head for me. “You’re safe. I promise. What’s your name?”

She stared at me through hollow eyes, and I swore she wouldn’t answer. Then those pale lips parted, and she offered me a part of herself I’d covet for eternity.

“M-Mari.”

The inflection of her British accent whispered around me. I struggled to hear her, though she pressed against me. I squelched the need to hunt the fucker down and show him what being the recipient of those bruises felt like firsthand.

Sliding an arm around her body, I wrapped my jacket tighter around granite skin covered in a cold flush. How long had she run, how far? I cupped her bruises with as much gentleness as I could offer.

“Where did you come from, Mari?”

Her luminous gaze dimmed as she retreated. Whether triggered by my words or my presence, I’d likely never know. The girl possessed an ethereal beauty. Cleaned up, she’d be stunning, and I had a damn good idea what made her a target for such an attack.

I kept murmuring, offering her what warmth I could, though she didn’t seem to make sense of my words. A flicker of attention entered her sapphire gaze as her brain appeared to process her adjusted situation.

Carrying her wouldn’t be hard, but we had a distance to reach the house where I could offer a hot shower and food, plus medical supplies. She would need a whole lot more to heal her mind. I could offer the basics, at least.

Prepared to hoist her over my shoulder and run her back, a part of me worried that placing an abused woman in a small space with five filthy men used to surviving in an all-male environment might not be my best idea, but it was the only option I had to offer her.

Mari blinked once and twisted in my arms. I held my breath as one hand rose. Soft, slim fingers grazed the rough edges of my beard, pressing close enough for her natural heat to brush my jawline. I held her gaze, keeping myself still and unmoving beneath her discovery tour, waiting for her to open to me. My heart slammed in my chest hard enough she must have heard it firsthand.

Awareness slipped behind her eyes a second before her palm cracked across my face. Fine fingers tangled in my untamed beard. I caught her wrist, confining her as she writhed in my arms, scratching and clawing in a delayed reaction. Holding her at bay without hurting her took little effort. The size difference between us bordered on ridiculous. I dwarfed her as a mountain overshadowed a pond nestled at its foothills.

Her knotted hands pounded my shirt in weakening thumps. I weathered her beating until she panted, her frantic energy spent against my chest. Mari rested her forehead over my heart, her arms limp over my shirt. Ragged breath huffed against my lips as she turned up her midnight gaze clouded with fear and desperation.

Need.

For the base conditions a body required: food, water, warmth.

Security. Love.

A thin, strained keening tore from her throat in a pathetic whimper that shrouded my thoughts in a tempting promise of violence.

What the hell happened to this woman, and who do I have to kill to make it right? 

CHAPTER TWO

MARI

I thrashed against the twin logs of pure muscle hefting me over the forest floor while a giant of a man kidnapped me a second time. The kind giant who spoke in riddles my mind couldn’t untangle.

Dregs of adrenaline coursed through my body though my hands shook against his back. The hit diluted my fear until I exhausted my supply, leaving me useless and filthy, unable to protect myself from whatever came at me next.

Not that I’d been able to protect myself in the first place, reduced to a fleeing mess the moment he dumped me onto the forest floor. My brain still screamed at me to run, but my body crashed against its fresh imprisonment.

Wanting to believe that warmth equated with safety, though I knew better.

 My new mountain man walked for long minutes that blurred into an unmeasurable time, my body torn between memory and reality. My limbs gave pitiful jerks in the arms of the giant who carried me at too-late reactions to a trauma no longer fresh.

The behemoth ignored my feeble efforts to wriggle free as though I were no more than a flea on a mangy dog’s back. A horrendously strong, and wild dog. I noted the beauty of both my captor and our surroundings in a disconnect. Beneath his jacket my skin numbed, but instead of running cold, I blazed as with an injection of anesthetic, sweltering against his rough shirt.

All dark hair, and forest green, soul-deep eyes that seared through me when he halted my flight through the forest. Now I hung over his shoulder, filthy and damaged, though cleanliness listed last on my concerns. He stripped my identity away, baring me to the world as less than nothing.

Then, when I was at my barest, the man who carried me took my name. One of the few secrets I managed to keep to myself throughout my assault.

I gave that away too. Freely.

Rage broke over the fear steeping inside me. I scratched at a hard lump in my arm and came away with bloodied fingers. Perhaps a splinter from my dash through the forest. I hadn’t cared about what happened to my skin in a deep-seated need to run.

Something broke inside me as my mouth ran free in a delayed reaction to everything. I cussed my new captor endlessly, uncaring of the outcome. What could hurt worse than the hands that ripped me out from inside myself? But it was more than that. No matter what I told myself, this nameless, wild man felt safe. And so I unwound my fears, my horror in a place where I knew instinctively that he wouldn’t hurt me more.

Before, my mind and body froze when the multitude of hands touched me, leaving their marks on my skin while I screamed in the silent confines of my mind. Now, those same words exploded from me in a delayed burst. The dual effort left me drained faster than the manic energy came on, leaving my breath ragged.

“You fucking monster, you stole me. Ripped me away. Let me go–” Breath lodged in my throat while a quiet voice in the back of my mind whispered, it’s not him. But my mouth didn’t care, the words tumbling forth without censure, seeking freedom. “Get your filthy hands off me! Don’t touch me, you bastards,” I sobbed as my rage dissipated, only to flare a moment later.

If he helped me after this, it would be to an early grave, albeit a well-deserved one.

Survival and freedom wisped by my outstretched fingers. I craved each like a starved woman, filling my lungs with an alien air as I wished I’d never left England in the first place.

It’ll be an adventure. A learning curve.

My parents’ disapproving scowls floated past a blurred forest.

A learning curve. What a joke.

Joke’s on me.

What had to be hours of running for my life gave me plenty of fresh injuries. At surface level, the forest scraped me bloody. On the inside, unwanted hands flayed me raw. My single source of warmth and security came from the mountain of a man who carried but hadn’t hurt me.

Yet.

“It’s okay to scream, Mari. It’s fine. You’ll be okay. Promise.” His voice came out rough, as though not used to speaking so much, though his words didn’t strain with anger or fury.

I expected a mountain man not to have anyone to talk to, but apparently this one did. The trees, perhaps. Words abandoned me after that, and I waited for the blows to come. Relief shot through me when he patted the soles of my feet in a comforting gesture as I slumped over his shoulder. A few soft murmurs, a simple touch, and he removed me from the panicked headspace.

Too easy.

My frazzled brain turned that one over and came up with a disturbing conclusion I craved and hated all at once. The reason I felt safe in verbally abusing him was because I wasn’t afraid of him abusing me.

The odd things my brain noticed that I hid from myself in a bout self-sabotage, ranting in broken rasps that I struggled to understand, let alone expect him to figure me out.

Attraction. Safety.

Trust.

My world tipped from one extreme to another, and I wondered if Gideon pumped my bloodstream full of some exotic hallucinogen while I found myself… distracted.

The fear flowed again.

Hands reaching, sliding, grabbing.

Pinching and plucking and pulling.

Spread apart, wrists pulling and raw and fingers touching—

The scream built inside my throat, but it wasn’t an incomprehensible sound that burst free.

“I don’t want to be touched, you fucking prick,” I seethed. My heart thrashed inside my chest, willing my newfound voice to die a quick and silent death.

“Foul-mouthed little thing, aren’t you?” my mountain commented, patting my jacket-covered rump in a familiar gesture. “Is this the usual you or traumatized you?”

When I couldn’t answer, my words run through again, he sighed, shifting those broad shoulders to sling me across his chest instead. I stared into the underside of his mahogany beard, unable to see little except the tips of thick eyelashes utterly wasted in the wilds.

I shook my head at his unanswerable question, barely able to recognize who I’d been, let alone who I’d become now. My frozen toes contacted his torso, eliciting a soft puff of air. A masochistic smile curled my lips. If I hurt, my brain claimed it stood to reason that he should too. How broken I’d become in the short space of scant hours. A day? I closed my eyes, waiting for bile to rise as my stomach emptied itself over his shoulder.

But it didn’t.

Thank God, because everything hurt.

Fingers groping, tongues—

My stomach did rise this time, bringing with it the bitter edge of acid that teased the back of my throat. I clenched the urge away with effort, removing my ability to speak.

The internal argument rioting inside my mind insisted I never wanted anyone to touch me ever again. So why did this mountainous lump of muscle with his hands around me seem safe? After the abuse I suffered at my boss’ hands and his friends, I shouldn’t be comfortable with anyone, let alone the mountain manhandling me. Yet I allowed Mr. Everest to hoist me into his arms when my legs refused to support the weight of my shame.

Maybe allowed stretched the point a touch too far.

I sank against Everest’s hard chest, my cheek grazing rough cotton scented with man-sweat and the sharp tang of pine. I breathed in the scents of home and safety and laughed at myself inside my head. I’d clearly lost it, but I went on cataloging all the comforting features that made him real to my mind. His steady heartbeat became my rhythm. I counted each thump, matching my breath and his footsteps in sync with every graceful movement.

Hands pressed to my sides, tearing at clothing, then skin. When they reduced every part of me to shreds, they tainted my soul.

A raspy shriek battered against compressed lips that I refused to open. Fear became my fuel, and I possessed an abundant store.

Sleep was no longer an option.

Despite no new adversary announcing themselves, I huddled within the protection of my mountain man’s jacket as he halted. I craned around him, my body rubbing against the obscene amount of muscle he possessed. I swore he could be the twin of the giant pines that guarded the forest.

A soft huff that might have been a laugh brushed my cheeks. He turned so I could see the circle of ancient trees that surrounded us. In the center of the clearing sat a rustic log hut that looked like it had risen out of an eighteen hundreds wild west story.

“Did—” I stared, but the rest refused to come out after my tirade.

He seemed to get the gist and nodded. The cabin had an air of strict neatness, as though the occupant couldn’t abide any change to its surface. A small, wrap-around verandah stood well-oiled and clean, and bare of furniture. The windows were empty. No spiderwebs clung to corners, no leaves tumbled across its clean swept exterior.

The structure appeared as welcoming as an abandoned hospital wing.

Through it all, Everest stared down at me. A small, possessive smile lifted his beard at one end. Or maybe I imagined his kindness, and he would become my new tormentor.

My insides frosted at the concept, though my heart took up a faster rhythm than when he walked. When I tried to speak, my brain played ball, and real words fell out.

A tortured whisper worked its way past my lips, “Where are we?” I peered past his beard, ignoring the aches that vexed every abused muscle.

A strong jawline and high cheekbones emphasized a dark, full head of hair trimmed neat at the edges, shot through with dark chocolate strands that highlighted their reddish neighbors. Longer on top and swept into a messy knot, his hair tousled, though something darker—harder—lay beneath.

Like this man had seen horrors and stored them within himself when others would run screaming. Deep laugh lines were etched around a wide mouth visible through his beard, though I couldn’t imagine his smile. Burnt cinnamon eyes surveyed me with a tinge of impatience masked by concern, and something else. Determination.

Or possessiveness.

That flicker of obsession rippled over me again, the expression I recognized from my boss’ face.

 They’re not the same. They’re not the same…

I’d spent a few minutes at most in this man’s arms. A kind temperament didn’t define a lifetime of delusion. He might be the sweetest man I met, or the flip side of the monster I fled. Perhaps he was the proud owner of one of the pairs of unknown, disembodied hands.

A shiver worked its way along my spine though my mind denied the thought. His eyes flared, filled with awareness.

“My home.” My giant shifted but didn’t release me.

The world rotated in a slow fashion that did nothing whatsoever for my nauseated stomach. Sensing my discomfort, Everest hauled me flat against his chest. I leaned into him, burrowing deeper as the urge to puke on him passed, then I squeaked as my legs dangled well above the ground. My bare, scraped feet struggled for purchase against his pants’ tough material.

I lifted both knees to wrap around his waist, but the immediate intimacy overrode my need for freedom. Fighting a closing sensation in my chest, I let him press my body to his as he lowered me to the forest floor in a controlled drop.

Damp pine mulch compressed between my toes in cold pockets as his jacket drew up, leaving my bruised rear hanging out for all and sundry to see. Lucky for me, there didn’t seem to be anyone else around. I yanked at the heavy material, preserving any scrap of dignity I still possessed.

Like I deserve dignity.

Perhaps my ego believed that thought consisted of a joke. If it did, I missed the punchline. Or maybe the punchline was me.

A soft sound drew my attention upward. My giant stared down at me, too close, though he didn’t shrink my world. Maybe the world shrank for him, instead. His breath brushed my cheeks as he busied himself with wrapping my arms around my body to hold the makeshift barrier in place.

Calloused fingertips paused over my cheek and slid through my hair, avoiding snares by some miracle. A gentle touch for such a giant of a man. Everest caught a rogue strand that tickled my nose, tugged it lightly, and tucked it behind my ear. His unexpected, tender touch left me shivering.

That flash of possession in those forest green eyes returned that said this man would kill anyone who touched me without my permission.

And my stupid, broken mind liked it.

My stolen moment of peace lasted until the door to his hut swung open. Three strapping young men bursting with bulk stepped out onto the verandah dressed in an assortment of checked shirts and jeans, consistent as a uniform. A second giant, who dwarfed the man clutching my frozen form, followed the newcomers. Blond hair tumbled over bare shoulders. He reached obscenely thick arms above his head to grip raw cut struts the looked capable of pulling the entire thing down on his own.

I tugged at the hem of Everest’s jacket, wriggling closer to hide, but there was nowhere to go. The soft rumble that vibrated against my ear offered a second shock. He laughed? A smile crept up my face, the action both alien and forgiving in one. Then I remembered why I stood before him naked and bruised, and the muscles that strained to hold up my good humor died as I cowered into myself.

To my horror, fresh tears welled, prepared to join the filthy tracks coating my face in God knew what.

“British, huh? Work visa?” Everest nudged the top of my head with his chin.

I shook my head, willing him to let me hide between his bulk and his jacket. “That was one of the threats,” I mumbled, debris and sweat tumbling into my mouth.

I’d send you home, but who would want you?

Certainly not the overly religious parents already on the verge of disowning me for leaving my small hometown to visit the land of sin. I laughed off their backward notions at the time, but now…

No one will take you back. You’re so much more beautiful when you’re ruined.

Bile coated the inside of my throat as my boss’ voice echoed around my mind, trapped in the confines where his torturous words echoed on repeat.

My legs trembled. Pressing my weight forward, I stole a little more of the support Everest offered, sucking his warmth into my tainted bones. He nudged me with such a tender grace that I gave in and raised glistening eyes to meet his fathomless gaze. The soul of a mountain god disturbed by a mere mortal stared back. Understanding flooded his face, something akin to awe tinged with regret. He moved sinuously for a man his size, his body twisting either side of me.

My reflexes long dulled, I became a voyeur, unable to fight off the pending attack as he engulfed me in a protective embrace. Salt streamed into my mouth, bringing with it all the accumulated grit and filth from my short burst through the forest. From before. I pressed my lips into a tight line, caught in his bottomless gaze that held knowledge of too many dark things.

Broken, ruined, I fell into his silent offer of safety and never wanted to leave.

 I need to go home, but home won’t want me anymore—

Which left me a begging orphan beyond her depth.

“Easy, Mari.” Everest kept his hold light but firm, like he expected the deranged animal in his arms to bolt at the slightest hint of danger. Freeing one hand to tuck my head into his shoulder, he called out to the men behind us.

I ignored his muted words, matching my breaths to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. The regular motion calmed me, the panic that nibbled at the frayed edges of my sanity ebbing.

His hand closed around mine, Everest pressed his lips to my temple. His touch offered a simple comfort, a brush of skin that barely equated to a kiss, but the sweet caress gave me a moment’s extra warmth, a contrast to the grabbing—

NO.

Unaware of my roiling internal conflict, my mountain man marched forward, towing me alongside him. A roar that filled my overstimulated mind. The edges of my vision filled with dark spikes curving inward. Hands jostled me, shifting me from person to person. I tried for logic and failed. My mind took me back to that place, pulled and tugged in every direction.

Everest’s face entered my narrowing vision, my anchor to a world I feared. Concern edged into his verdalite eyes. I made out my name on his arched lips before the world dropped out from beneath me.

This time when the darkness fell, the nightmarish creatures stayed away.

CHAPTER THREE

ROBE

“What the hell is she doing here? What the hell are you doing, bringing her here?” Miller ran a hand over his recently shorn head, bushy brows lowering as he offered me his customary scowl. “How is it we can’t tell anyone about this little piece of hell you’ve corralled us into, under strict instructions on secrecy, pain of death and the like. Fuckhead,” he added under his breath. I knew he wasn’t finished. “But you get to have the girl? As per fucking always.”

Miller didn’t bother to disguise the sarcasm in his voice, and for that, I loved him all the more.

The nugget of a man who followed me through so many campaigns, took bullets on my behalf, and walked away with the tinge of disgrace to his pedigree instead of a pretty set of medals, folded his arms over his barrel chest and glared at me.

Jon shifted at my side, but I held up a hand. “Miller’s correct. He has a right to know. You all do.”

His unspoken words hovered between us, though neither of us aired them.

I need to know.

And he would. Keeping secrets from the men who gave up everything to stay by my side while my world imploded had never been my intent. Certainly not blacklisting the soldier who backed me every step of my downfall like a stocky, battle-scarred shield.

I didn’t doubt his judgment, or his loyalty. That he mistrusted mine in turn motherfucking hurt.

“She’s a runaway, panicking and flailing in the woods, Miller. And she’s clearly been abused. Are you going to ignore that, pat her on the rump, and send her off to the next house on the ridge? Have a heart, asswipe.” Alan Dale, stripper and my best source of information about the city that abandoned me, sent the sturdy ex-soldier on the other side of the bar a scathing look.

I pressed my lips into a firm line as Alan beat me to saying the words already formed in my head. For a man whose IQ outweighed the entire cohort jammed into my living area, his tact lacked his standard brand of finesse. An unusual slip for him; Alan’s ability to blend was the trump card I stowed in my pocket for a rainy day.

My gaze narrowed, taking in the faintest downturn of his lips despite his smile. True worry etched his brow. In all the scant tells the younger man let show he exposed only what he wanted me to see, and act upon.

I bared my teeth beneath my beard. Manipulation like that is an open door, my friend.

The curl of Alan’s lip when he looked at Miller told its own story. His gaze flicked between me and the closed door where Mari slept in my bed. It might seem arrogant to place her there, but hell, she ran into my home and my arms. I watched Alan, looking for what I might have missed in my first pass. Annoyance didn’t match what rang in my barman and friend’s gaze.

Concern.

“She escaped some sort of hell,” I hedged, unwilling to admit that, though she ranted at me the entire walk home, I hadn’t gotten a single piece of useful information out of her apart from her name. “And she’s been abused. That much is clear but where— Fuck.” I glanced at Alan.

The youngest kid in the room raised an eyebrow as if to say, caught on yet?
The brat put together what everyone else hadn’t. What I missed. His display of emotion didn’t bother me; on a deeper level, I knew what happened to her. One simple fact remained obvious to us all—there was no next house on the ridge.

Gideon Blackthorne’s neighboring property matched the thousand acres of my land. His compound sat on the eastern boundary away from the cabin, on the other side of what the boys fondly named Recurve Ridge. The forest Mari dove headlong through divided the distance between us, miles of scrappy woodland and sentinel pines that explained the surface scratches covering her body, but not the rest of the damage she incurred.

Paired with invisible fence lines we both made an effort to maintain without laying eyes on each other, my sole residential neighbor offered a reminder of my failure in NYC. My presence gave his purpose—banishment for failing to keep me in check.

His boss had no concept of forgiveness, something I needed to teach him one day soon.

We kept our distance from each other by a keen dose of mutual hatred. The old adage about keeping enemies close ran through my mind, but all I wanted was his head in the center of my arrow range, and a clean shot on a windless day.

The soldier turned businessman crossed the law at least as many times as me, but if a moral line existed, he fell in at the farthest edge of the black.

On our other side, a tall ridgeline for the next mountain rose, harboring a few small vacation homes owned by NYC politicians and CEOs along with the odd athlete, and a reclusive artist who avoided politics and people at all costs. Those were rarely used until the holiday season, though some hunting went on throughout the year, whether legal or not. At the base of the mountain a few small homes contained the rest of the local population.

As we claimed our own issues with that side of the law, we stayed the fuck away from everyone else, unless those activities crossed over our boundaries.

Like today.

I held Alan’s startling azure gaze as each thought turned over in my head. I’d wanted a shot at Gideon for a long damn time. Now that the opportunity landed in my lap, I couldn’t grasp a clear course of action to follow.

Follow the need to destroy Gideon and wipe him from the face of the earth, or the desire to wrap up the girl he took a hand in abusing, protect her until she could manage on her own again, and then return to clause one.

Choices, choices.

My bartender’s knowing smile irritated me, but not so bad as it did Miller who strode toward the exotic dancer with his clenched fists raised.

Alan raised his own hands, palms stretched outward, his explanation falling on deaf ears. “We can keep her safe. No one should have to go through whatever happened to her.”

Miller swung at the kid as soon as he ventured within range.

“Like a fucking school yard,” Jon spat. “You gonna break it up?”

“Alan needs to stand up for himself.” I kept an eye on my young spy and knocked my shoulder none too gently against Jon’s.

The moonlighting exotic dancer backed up at speed, his grace and balance enviable. For a man with fists thrown at him every half second, his back-peddled crabwalk looked nothing like a man scrambling to save himself an ass kicking.

In fact… I narrowed my eyes. “Shit, he’s good.”

Alan bobbed low on his heels twice and rose in a smooth movement.

Timed to perfection between punches, the slighter man straightened into the empty, undefended space between a blur of fists and jabbed Miller square in the nose.

A muted chorus of sympathetic hisses filled the room.

“There it is.” I canted my head as Miller, clutching his nose, delivered a sharp side kick to Alan’s ribs. I winced for them both. “Damn. Schedule hand-to-hand training for tomorrow. It’s meant to be a clear day.”

Jon nodded his agreement, his brow creased as he tracked the two men’s progress across the room. “Could do. Might also want to teach your new girlfriend how to fend for herself.”

“She’s not my girl,” I growled, low enough to strain my throat at the effort.

But the plain fact that Jon called her mine sat all too well in the cavity that once housed my heart.

A hand banged against the wall of the room she slept in, and Jon shook his head. “Enough.” He thumped a fist on the kitchen bench, but neither man halted their mini battle despite pants and blood splattering my walls. “I said— Ah, fuck it.”

He leaned into the foray and grabbed both boys by the scruff of their necks to separate them at shoulder height. His shoulder height, which meant two pairs of feet dangled well above the floor.

Alan raised a hand and waved in my direction.

I rolled my eyes, noting Miller’s opposite reaction. He folded his arms across his barrel chest while still dangling in midair and glared first at his opponent, then me.

I sighed. “Put them down.” The big man hesitated. I clenched my teeth, my patience fraying. “Now, Jon.”

“Don’t you two start up again, or you’ll be cleaning outhouses for the next month. Got it?” Jon glared between the pair of younger men, both his junior by at least half a dozen years. The thirty-four-year-old giant took a step back, bracing his tree trunk arms overhead against the thick, exposed beams that supported the ceiling, matching their girth.

Alan’s nose twitched. He made it all too easy to read his intent as his mouth opened to object that we didn’t have outhouses. The intent seemed to dawn on both men at the same time.

“Yes, sir,” two voices mumbled.

I caught a fleeting smile that disappeared from Alan’s face at speed. The brat would end up killed or come limping back with his ass handed to him if I didn’t do something about their attitudes soon, but right now, we had other concerns.

“Miller. Spit it out.” I leveled him with a stare that said he’d crossed a line, but the soldier who saved my life too many times to count sent that stare right back.

Balls and testosterone clashing in my house were better suited to a barracks. I needed neither when I had an injured girl in my bed with God only knew what damage haunting her mind as well as her fragile body.

“Fine. You bring home a girl who happens to turn up in our woods. Your woods, Robe.” Miller looked between us and threw up his hands. It might have been comical if his eyes didn’t bore their intent into mine. “You want to save her, but what if she’s a plant, Alan? Jon? Did you think about that?” Miller rotated on the spot, catching each man’s attention before his singular focus returned to me. “Did you?”

I nodded. “I have. And I’ll risk everything to secure the safety and wellbeing of a woman who’s been treated so… harshly.”

Miller’s lip curled, and not in a nice way. “You haven’t changed.”

“I hope not.” I smiled, offering an olive branch.

Miller glared at me for a moment longer. Clumps of hair from his home buzz cut job stuck up too tall from the top of his head. His mouth turned down, not finding what he sought in my face. A moment of stillness strained the oxygen in the room while we conducted a silent conversation about events the others weren’t privy to.

Remember what happened last time?

I remember saving lives, getting them to safety.

I remember us getting shot at while you had a little romance.

I remember finding out she had a husband who died to save her because of me.

I let the old sadness grip my heart. It hurt, knowing the woman I almost gave both our lives for wouldn’t come back with me. At that point I still had a career, and afterward, a business.

Perhaps that choice saved her a worse future here, where Mari lay.

“I remember acting human, even if I’d lost my sense of humanity by then,” I murmured.

Miller’s grimace transformed into a snarl. I wasn’t the only one affected by what we’d seen and done during those peacekeeping missions, every one of them bullshit. He pivoted on his heel and stormed from the house.

Alan sidestepped, waving him out the door in his typical, flamboyant fashion. I half expected the younger man to say something, but the cabin filled with a strained silence.

“Miller—” Jon started forward, four steps too late.

I held out a hand, pressing my fist to his chest when he pushed against my arm. “Leave him. He’ll cool off.”

“Will he?” Jon rubbed the back of his neck. “He reminds me of…”

“Me, twenty years ago. Full of righteous indignation and a misguided sense of loyalty.” I gave my best friend a lopsided grin that he didn’t return.

“Your moral compass might be screwy, Robe, but your loyalties are fine.” Alan pushed away from the door that swung shut after Miller’s exodus. “Are we going to have dinner or what?”

I waved him away, grateful for the distraction, despite holding the same reservations as Miller. I kept those to myself, however, event though my moral compass never pointed true north. Maybe I hadn’t found my north yet. Miller was right; I broke both trust and procedure by bringing her to the house, but where else did one take a distraught and abused woman?

You should have taken her to her car, or the highway, or called an ambulance and sent her off without a whiff of fanfare.

I couldn’t hand her off to a law enforcement lackey who might or might not be in someone else’s pocket. She turned up on my front lawn, convenient as that may be, which gave me the right to seek vengeance on her behalf. My body burned for it.

A bored soldier is a dangerous soldier.

A cute adage, but true, nonetheless.

A reckless soldier is a dead soldier.

My mind slipped to her asleep in my bed, as I acknowledged the truth that burned in my veins. As soon as she gave me what I needed, I’d take action, but not before.

“Wait until she wakes. I want to know what the boys discovered.”

Mari had been in the house for a good hour an hour, which gave us more than enough time for Alan to work his magic, though Will magically disappeared.

“Are you going to starve us out?” Jon glanced sideways at me. His gaze dropped, focusing lower.

A familiar thrum set every nerve ending alive. “Probably.”

“Asshole.”

“You know it.” I nudged him. “We need to talk about the company.”

“Isn’t Yana coping?”

My business partner had a limited range of use, and her expiration date encroached. A brilliant personal assistant, Yana had neither the drive nor the inclination to run a multimillion-dollar organization. If I didn’t find a replacement soon, Knight & Watchman would fold.

I pressed my lips into a hard line. “Yana wants to retire, Jon. And she’s earned it, running everything for the better part of five years while I—” I couldn’t finish that sentence.

Jon acknowledged my hesitation. “Your grace period is up.”

“Looks like it.” I rubbed my hand over my head. “Fuck it. If I go back, I lose everything, anyway.”

“You can do most of it remote, you know,” Jon consoled me. “None of us can go home, Robe. Not back to work in any traditional fashion, except maybe for Alan. Hire someone else to do the job. Let her pick another office manager for you.”

It would take an entire boardroom to manage what Yana covered in a week. Glorified personal assistant perhaps, but as a stand in CEO, she managed to keep a Fortune 50 company in check while I hid from the world.

“And turn my company over to a stranger? At least for now, I have some façade of control.”

Jon held my gaze. “Life changed, Robe. Maybe you’ve been in hiding long enough.”

I ground my teeth until they grated together.

Alan winced. “Keep it down, yeah?” he called from the bar.

I nodded and fixed my gaze on my bedroom door. Maybe a pretty little distraction would quell the fear roiling through me. Hot on its tail a strong dose of protectiveness arrived, followed by the lightest brush of lust. My cock stirred, and I shoved the thought away.

Inappropriate, asshole. Someone else fucked with her, and she doesn’t need an outlaw brute humping logs in her path to get a taste.

Focusing on turning my anger to revenge, I let the protector in me take root. I should be used to betrayal by now, but I surprised myself every time I brought home a stray to add to my collection.

Marks covered her body. Some originated from hands, while others came from blunt trauma. We were damn lucky hypothermia failed to make the list from her mad dash to escape her demons. I cleaned the passed-out girl as best I could, my gaze impassive as I removed the gunk and grit from her fragile form, distancing myself from the gorgeous woman who deserved better.

I hadn’t checked deeper than skin level, but I bet I’d see worse if I looked between her thighs, instead of washing her with gentle hands and keeping my eyes averted. A rape kit was laughable; Gideon and his boss had the local sheriff and cohorts paid up a decade in advance. She’d be lucky if she didn’t end up with an extra cache of bruises and trauma if I sent her down the mountain. And so, I cleaned her.

No woman who suffered what she did deserved to wake wearing the filth of her abuse. Shame shone from those eyes the moment the dull light in them faded. Telling her she couldn’t go back to whatever life she previously sat high on my tick list, but that didn’t mean I looked forward to breaking the news.

Letting her fall back into overwhelming despair would be the grossest neglect. I existed in the shame-filled realm long enough to know intimately how that ruined a soul. I’d do anything to save hers. I needed to know who hurt her, and I wanted to make her safe by removing her aggressors from the face of the earth. My little rescue project unknowingly created the perfect distraction to put a pause on my inability to return to the world.

A world that hated me enough that I removed myself from it in the first place.

Perhaps my chance at redemption had arrived after all.

Recurve Ridge by Dove Priest | Copyright © Dove Priest 2024 | Unedited and subject to change