Ashlyn bucked beneath him, eager for more and impatient to feel his skin against hers, and he used his knees to push her legs farther apart. With her free hand, she pulled at his shirt, and almost got it over his head before he grabbed her arm and pinned it with the other. She writhed under his mouth as it moved down her spine and gasped when he nipped at her ass with his teeth. He leaned over her, pulling her hair with his free hand. She responded by pushing her backside into his groin and enjoyed the rough feel of his jeans as he pressed back.
“Is this what you want,” he murmured into her hair, his hand darting between her thighs.
She moaned, waiting for his fingers to finish exploring, but his hand vanished and she whimpered at the sound of his zipper opening. He yanked her hips off the bed and shoved one of her legs to the side with his knee, opening her up to him.
“This is what you want, right?” he purred, wrapping his arm around her quivering leg and dragging his fingers through her pubic hairs. Once he felt inside her, he would know just how badly she wanted him, but again, he pulled his hand back.
“God,” she groaned. “Please…”
He laughed softly, then lightly brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “Tell me what you want, Ash, say the words,” he whispered into her ear, before chewing on it.
She couldn’t handle it anymore, and struggled to free her hands so she could touch him and pull him inside her, but he wouldn’t release her. He leaned forward and rested his upper body on top of hers, rhythmically pushing against her backside. There was no escape.
“Tell me,” he urged, the wonderful drawl of his hometown thick and present with each syllable he spoke.
Her heart was pounding so hard that it hurt. The sound of water rushed in her ears like a river, and she feared she might pass out just from the anticipation of ecstasy. How could he do this to her?
“I want you,” she groaned. “I want you inside me…right…now.” She bit down on her upper arm to keep from crying out when his hand slid between her upper body and the bed and cupped her breast.
As he rolled her nipple between his fingers, she rotated her hips open, waiting to feel his flesh against hers, to feel him slide inside her, but he still had his jeans on. “Know what I want?” he murmured.
She gasped and bucked again.
“Ask me, Ash,” he begged, releasing her nipple and snaking his hand back between her legs. “Ask,” he demanded, teasing her with his fingers.
“What?” she cried. “What do you want? I’ll do anything!”
His hand instantly slipped away and he climbed off her. She heard him zip up his pants, and she looked over her shoulder, confused. Connor stared back down at her, his face calm, but his eyes on fire. He stepped out of kicking distance, and then smiled.
“I don’t want you,” he stated. When she stiffened, he added, “I haven’t, not since I saw Riley back at the Ark.”
“You…” she panted, rolling over to face him. “You…fucking bastard!”
She flinched despite her anger, when he took two steps forward and lifted his hand in the air. He pointed a finger at her, and a sound came from his throat that closely resembled a growl. “You wanted to play games, Ash. Remember that when I leave this room. Stay away from me, and stay away from my family. Or I’ll kill you.”
He left the room just as quietly as he had entered. Ashlyn was cold again. Her skin became clammy and bumpy with gooseflesh, but it was her insides that shook from a chill she’d never experienced before. It was the kind of frigid that turned hearts black, and souls murderous.
This kind of frost would never thaw, and Ashlyn let it consume her. Payback was going to be one crazy bitch.
CONNOR
The moment he shut the door behind him, his arms began to shake uncontrollably, and he took the few steps across the hall to his room, closing and locking the door quietly. He barely made it to the bathroom bucket before he vomited with such force that he almost passed out. It didn’t matter how cold the crisp day was outside, he struggled to his feet and wrestled with the window until it cracked open. Greedy for fresh air, he slumped against the wall, sitting on the useless toilet, and propped his trembling chin on the sill.
What he’d done had two possible outcomes, he reasoned. One of which would have him watching over his back, and those he cared about, until Ashlyn was out of his life for good. The other, more favorable option was that she would simply leave him alone and find someone else to focus on. But their world had become all about survival of the fittest, and everything he had learned of Ashlyn up to that point was that the girl knew how to survive. At all costs.
As he sucked in the pine-scented air and let it slowly purify his lungs with cold oxygen, he began to recall how he’d met Ashlyn while on the run through the outskirts of Los Angeles, an angry fire hot on their heels. They had lost their supplies, and half of their group, because during the dead of night, flames roared down the street they had occupied, eating one house after another. They knew the fire was close, they’d been smelling it for days just like Connor had, but when the wind changed and blew the firestorm in their direction, they misjudged the true proximity of danger. Their group knew the roads even less than he did. They scattered in a soot-covered panic, then regrouped, forcing their way out of the burning neighborhood and into the hills on foot. If they hadn’t burst out of the brush at the time they did, Connor would have driven his beat-up truck right by them, in his own attempt to flee the fire that kept blocking his pathway back to Riley. But they did fall onto the road, and he stopped to help, because it was the right thing to do. He drove up and down the hills and parts of the highway for an entire day and night, stopping only when the gas ran out.
He inhaled another deep breath as he pulled his chin away from the window, and leaned against the wall with his shoulder. Connor hardly looked at his reflection anymore. He’d changed. His face was still healing, but he knew as he ran one hand across his jaw and neck, that there would be a nasty scar there forever, reminding him of that night. Sort of like Kris’ scars, he thought, with a sad smile.
They were on the road, driving aimlessly for two weeks, stopping only to search for water and supplies, and siphon gas for the truck. The others told him of their path, the one he’d taken with Riley, and how the fire swallowed the same streets. After seeing the destruction the fire had made, he was sure that even if he could find where her body was thrown from the horse, there would likely be nothing left of Riley to return to the others. She was gone. But because they weren’t safe for more than a few hours at a time, he couldn’t sit still long enough to think about what her loss meant. He didn’t hide the grief, not exactly, he felt it all, and channeled the raw emotion into keeping the rest of them alive. And it worked, for a while.
The group was scavenging their way through a gas station, when he exited the building and went around the back, where a shop had been left open to the elements. Once in the office he rifled through the drawers of paperwork, looking for anything consumable, until Ashlyn walked in. Her face was drawn and smudged with dirt, like his. Her eyes were heavy from loss and despair, also like his. When she looked up at him, the two shared a lifeline, a mutual understanding that even if it lasted only a few moments, they could each use the other to feel slightly better. With the smell of oil and grease hanging in the air, they had sex on the desk, swiping the contents off the top in the process, and taking from each other what they needed, and giving nothing more. They didn’t speak; they didn’t even touch mouths. It was hungry, desperate sex. The kind that lacked intimacy, with the end result being the only reward.
It happened twice on the road after that, the last being the first time that Connor felt the need to slow down, to enjoy the moment and look at Ashlyn like a woman, perhaps his woman. To taste her, feel her, appreciate her. He cried that night, while Ashlyn slept soundly in his lap as he watched the hills for fire, her slender and bruised arms wrapped tightly around one of his thighs. Because she wasn’t Riley.
A few
days later, he’d fallen asleep in the cab with Ashlyn and another piled in beside him for warmth, while the rest of the group huddled in balls in the truck bed. With the wind pushing the smoke north, all they could rely on in the dark was a visual placement of the fire, which is why he drove each day until they could no longer see the red line on the horizon behind them, devouring the landscape with tremendous speed and power. It was alive, that fire, a living and breathing thing, like a dragon. With no resistance, it snaked over buildings and across valleys, through the trees and around the water, like it had a purpose, a destination. And Connor was that destination.
He woke up to the heat. It burned through the window glass that he’d fallen asleep on, sizzling his cheek. The wind had shifted again, and sent the fire barreling down the ravine next to where they slept at a speed so fast that they couldn’t time it. The men in the back of the truck began to scream, to yell for him to start the truck and go, but the heat had already begun to blister the paint job, and melt the tires to the road.
They made it half a mile before the truck couldn’t go any further. By then, the fire had shifted again, teasing them, giving them a chance to run, but with nowhere to go that wasn’t surrounded by flames. The highway was a mile away, and they raced as fast as their feet would take them, stopping only once to pick up the fallen. This is when a gust of wind, on fire with embers, landed on Connor’s coat and licked up his neck, scorching his flesh instantly. He couldn’t remember the pain from that moment, but oddly enough, he would never forget the smell of his burning hair. The man he was trying to save had caught on fire and was being eaten alive from his legs up to his waist; there was no way he could get up and run. Connor had to leave him there, and grab at the others to follow, despite the man’s painful screams for help and Ashlyn’s cries to wait. As the rubber of their soles stuck to the pavement, they staggered away in a daze, delirious from fear, choking from smoke, and ran until they couldn’t hear the screaming over the roaring of the flames, until luck somehow moved them away from the fire, out of its path. They didn’t stop walking, not once, not until the highway split and they had to choose: the coast, or the mountains.
If the plane hadn’t flown over them early that morning and circled around twice to properly land on the strip, Connor was sure they would have died at that interchange, barely one hour into dawn, trying to decide which way to go. They could have ended up anywhere, but he woke up at the Ark with Ashlyn by his side, clean for the first time since he’d met her, kissing on his bandaged face and neck, murmuring that she would take care of him, because he saved her. And he let her, because being taken care of wasn’t that bad of a thing, was it? When she kissed him, he kissed her back. With the curtains drawn around his bed at night, he let her make silent, careful love to him while the others slept through their recovery. She talked of their future at the Ark, about what the place might mean for them, and he listened politely. She trimmed his nails, brushed his hair, fed him food and wiped the drool off his chin, and never once complained. He played house.
But then Riley burst into his hospital room like a ghost, and the house that he let someone else make crumbled around his feet, forgotten. Because when he saw Riley again, he remembered why losing her hurt so much that he shoved the pain aside and filled the gaping hole in his chest with someone else, because his whole heart could only belong to one person. It could only belong to Riley.
He dropped his chin back onto the windowsill and gulped in the mountain air, praying that she was still out there. This time, he wouldn’t let her go so easily. This time, he wouldn’t let her go at all.
Chapter Ten
RILEY
I wanted him to stop talking, to just close his mouth and forget everything he was going to say so I didn’t have to hear the words. He could tuck it away into the back of his mind. I knew he could, because I’d done that with so many things already. But, as if playing a cruel joke on me, he wouldn’t shut up. It was like he couldn’t.
At one point, I tuned him out, because it began to replay in my mind. I didn’t need his account of my first feverish night in his care, and the sordid tale of my abduction and torture through raging fits of insanity, because I was the one who had lived through the real thing. I was the one who had gone wild. Turned savage, like a caged animal freed after a lifetime of abuse and neglect. I was the one who wandered off into the woods, running away from the ghosts of the dead and the living. Running until I collapsed not far from Jin’s doorstep. He took me in, nursed me back to health, and shared his wisdom. Though he didn’t realize it, he’d become a friend.
I felt myself fall, hitting the snow-covered rail with my lower back, and I wondered, for just a moment, if I could fly. Would it be so terrible to die? To let go of the anger, the hate, to accept the pain as it was, a never-ending storm of doubt and grief. I could do it, I thought. To be with my kids again, wherever they were, I could do anything.
But the drawl of Jin’s calming voice pulled me forward, back to the treehouse porch we stood shivering on. Back to the frozen pines and quaking aspens, and the secrets hidden in the rings of their cores. Away from the jar and its contents. I couldn’t be angry at him, not for repeating what I knew was true, so I did all I could. I let some of it go, some of that grief and pain that so desperately wanted to ruin the good that was left in me. I passed it on to the breeze, and let it drift down the valley with the fading sun. Because I didn’t want to carry it any more.
For the first time since the night he found me in the woods, I let Jin hold me. The two of us couldn’t change what had happened, and we couldn’t prevent the next storm from coming, but our hearts were still beating. We were alive. As we held each other under the first twinkling stars of the early evening, I reminded myself that life hurt because it was worth living. The best things in life were always worth fighting for. Through all the pain and loss, there was also love and friendship. And despite what I’d been through, I still had a family somewhere out there, searching for me. I refused to lose them, too.
JIN
He watched her at the window, the tea in her hand and a thin blanket around her shoulders, looking out at the night and its mysteries. She was lighter, he could tell. And it made him happy. Before they’d come back in from the cold, she’d let him hold her, just to feel the presence of another wandering soul. And that’s what they had all become – wanderers. Jin refused to believe they were all lost, or doomed, despite how the world looked. For that would be conceding defeat, and Jin was not a quitter.
He let the chamomile steam from his mug flush his face before taking a sip. They’d lost their desire to speak, exhausted from the day, from the year, really. So, the three of them sat and listened to the dying wind and their own breathing, enjoying the simple pleasure of holding a warm drink in their hands. It wasn’t until the wind turned into a howl, and then that howl multiplied, did they realize it wasn’t the wind rushing through the trees that they were listening to, but the pack of wolves they’d encountered earlier in the day. As if the realization hit them all at the same time, the three stood and rushed toward the front of the cabin. From the window, it was impossible to see directly down, but the longer they stayed there with their noses pressed to the glass, soft glints of yellow light began to dance in the woods. They had company.
“They found us,” Cole whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” Riley asked.
Jin couldn’t help but chuckle. “They knew of us long before today.”
Riley shifted beside him, using her knee on the chair to lift herself up, but she was still unable to see much.
“What do they want?” Cole whispered again. Riley, no longer interested in being so close to the boy, pushed off the chair and returned to her window.
“Maybe you should go out and ask them,” she suggested, annoyed.
“They won’t bother us,” Jin assured him. “They just fed.”
He looked over his shoulder at Riley, who had her head propped against the freezing window frame a
gain, watching the valley below them through the handful of trees that kept them neatly hidden. She picked at something on the glass, and then let her hand fall back to the tea she wasn’t drinking.
“We shouldn’t have gone out this morning,” Cole grumbled. “Now they’ll be waiting for me.”
“Yeah,” Riley grumbled. “I’m sure they’re climbing up the tree right now.”
Cole backed away from the window, then checked the knob on the front door. “Locked,” he declared, relieved. She rolled her eyes at him.
“It’s late,” Jin said. “We should sleep now.”
“I’m not tired,” Riley mumbled. “Plus, last time I slept I woke up to an empty cabin. That was stupid, by the way, taking off this morning.” She aimed her disapproving glare at Jin first.
As Cole settled onto the floor next to his chair, using two blankets as a makeshift mattress, he laughed. “I told him I had hot chocolate. But, I don’t think that’s what he wanted.”
Jin felt her staring at him, but he rose from his seat and took the mug to the sink, and wiped it clean with a cloth. Riley stayed at her window, watching him the entire time, waiting for an explanation, but he gave none.
“Don’t stay up all night,” he said to her quickly, before climbing the loft ladder and settling onto the full-size bed. He left his boots on, and rolled over, pulling half of the blankets with him. The floor creaked below him ten minutes later, not long after Cole began snoring.
Riley’s head popped into his view, and she situated herself on the rungs so that she could see him. “There’s something you aren’t telling me,” she said, her voice low to keep from waking Cole.
Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost Page 9