Montana Heat: Escape to You

by Jennifer Ryan

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Brice poured the last of the gasoline across the beautiful bed in Ashley’s room. He hated to lose the precious art, but had to cover his tracks and didn’t have much time. The cops would be here soon to execute their search warrant. All they’d find was the charred remains of the home he shared with Ashley.

  He missed her. But he’d get her back. And he knew exactly how he’d find her and Adam. He had an inkling of where he’d find Ashley, but first he needed Adam. The boy could talk about what he’d seen between Brice and Ashley the few times he’d defied Brice’s order to remain in his room.

  Did he remember more?

  Brice couldn’t take the chance.

  “Everything is set downstairs.” Darren held the overstuffed briefcase in both hands against his chest. Everything from Brice’s office, the cash from the safe, and Brice’s passports. One in his name. One in a name no one knew.

  He had an escape, too. Someplace no one knew about. But first, he needed to collect Adam and Ashley and get them on the plane he had on standby. They’d go to his hideaway and everything would be back to normal.

  “I’m done here.”

  “We need to hurry. We can’t get caught here.” Darren checked out the barred windows yet again for any sign of someone coming up the drive. Brice had closed and locked the gates. It would take them a while to bust through and give him time to get away if they arrived too soon.

  “Let’s go.” Brice tossed the empty gas can on the bed and pulled out the gold lighter Snoop Dogg left in his dressing room after sparking up before the show. Brice lit the lighter and tossed it on the four-poster bed that held so many sweet memories of him with Ashley. The flame sparked the fumes seconds before it landed in the puddle of gas and burst into a ball of flames that spread quickly.

  Too quickly. He and Darren ran down the stairs. Thick, noxious smoke following them.

  The place would burn to the ground before the fire department arrived.

  Brice burst through the French doors and ran across the back patio. They fled across the open pasture filled with the horses he’d ordered Darren to release from their stalls in case the stables went up in flames with the house. He wasn’t inhuman like that asshole sergeant thought.

  Darren stashed the rental car on the dirt road that ran along the edge of his property. They got in and sped away, smoke and flames pouring out of several exploded windows on the second level of the house. No way the fire department made it out here before the fire gutted the place and left only a charred stone facade.

  Darren drove the speed limit. Only two other cars passed them on the road. Brice didn’t even hide. He planned what came next.

  They pulled into the lot behind a deserted office building on the outskirts of town and parked beside the second car Darren rented for Brice. The cops would have a hard time tracking him if they didn’t know what car he was in. He’d left all his vehicles at the ranch.

  “Go back to your hotel and wait to hear from me,” Brice ordered. “I’m going to pay that asshole sergeant a visit and repay him for all the vile things he said to me. He’ll tell me where Adam is or wish he did.”

  “It’s too risky. You know where Ashley is. Get her and let’s get out of here.”

  “No. I need Adam, too.” Getting past the asshole with the gun and all that security would be dangerous. But if he had Adam, she’d come to him.

  “Let me go. I’ll find out what the guy knows, get Adam, and bring him to you. You know I can do it.”

  Darren had seduced a very well-known playboy who didn’t want anyone to know all those gorgeous women on his arm were nothing but window dressing to hide what and who he did behind closed doors. Danny Radford refused to appear on Brice’s show when ratings were declining and Brice needed the boost. After Darren got the goods, and the pictures to prove the kinky shit he liked, Danny Radford happily appeared on Brice’s show. More than once. Every time Brice demanded it.

  Brice liked making people bend to his will. He wanted the pleasure of watching that asshole cop squirm, go against his protective instinct, and give up the information Brice wanted but he’d be hell-bent on keeping secret. Brice couldn’t wait to break him.

  “I need you to be ready to go once I have Ashley and Adam back.”

  “Let me help you.” Darren wanted to prove his love and loyalty to his idol.

  Brice would normally use that, but he wanted to be the one to put his family back together. “Do as I say. I’ll be back soon.” He needed to prove to Ashley that he had what it took to keep her and Adam and be everything she needed and wanted.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Earlier today Ashley Swan entered a Bozeman hospital emergency room carried by a man identified only as a DEA agent who found her passed out and near death on his property two days ago during a massive snowstorm.

  Video of Beck carrying her into the emergency room and her in the wheelchair played on the side of the TV while the ten o’clock news announcer continued.

  Ashley escaped a house of horrors miles away. Sources say the house belonged to Brice Mooney.

  The video switched to the house going up in flames earlier tonight. Ashley’s stomach soured even as she inwardly cheered the destruction of the place that had become her living hell.

  The retired After Midnight talk show host is believed to have set the fire to prevent investigators from serving a search warrant and gathering evidence against him.

  He moved there after Ashley appeared on his final show. Speculation is that Brice kidnapped Ashley and has been holding her there as his prisoner for nearly a year. While everyone in Hollywood suspected she’d run away from the limelight, her closest friends and business associates believed foul play, but their pleas for an investigation went unanswered, despite the L.A. police department stating unequivocally they’d looked into the matter but found no evidence to corroborate their claims or lead them in a direction to locate Ashley Swan.

  Now the Oscar-winning actress actually is in hiding while police hunt for Brice Mooney after he walked out of the Montana sheriff’s department before he was arrested for multiple counts of kidnapping and assault charges that may put the once-beloved superstar interviewer behind bars for life, if they find him before he flees the country to avoid answering the heinous charges against him.

  Coming up, with warmer weather temps expected over the next few days, we’ll see clearer skies and runoff filling creeks, steams, and rivers, so be aware of rising waters and flooding in some areas. Let’s go to Allan with the full weather forecast.

  Ashley sat up from leaning against Beck’s shoulder while they watched TV after he snuck her out of the hospital and brought her home. But not before he stopped and got her the promised burger and fries she didn’t really want anymore. Her hospital visit left her drained and anxious after bringing up so much of the past. Beck let loose the arm he’d gently draped over her shoulders to hold her close. She should feel safe, but didn’t with Brice on the loose again.

  “I spent the day getting all the evidence I could gathered up for the cops and Brice walks out of the station without anyone trying to stop him and destroys evidence.”

  “They don’t need the house to prove what he did to you.” Beck spoke softly and gently, sensing her rising anger and panic.

  “Don’t need it? I wanted them to see, to understand, that inside that beautiful house with all the pretty, expensive things, he hid me away in a room built to destroy me from the inside out.”

  “He didn’t destroy you.”

  “He tried. Again and again and again.”

  “You survived. Again and again and again.”

  “He’s out there. Free. Able to hurt me or someone else. That’s not right.”

  “The cops have doubled their efforts. They want to find him just as much as we do.”

  “Yeah, to save their pride for letting him get away.” She knew that wasn’t fair, but her anger ruled her tongue right now.

  “He’ll go down f
or what he did to you,” Beck assured her in that same soft, definite tone.

  Deflated of her anger and filled with a sense of uselessness because she couldn’t do anything to find Brice, she hung her head and sighed out her frustration.

  Beck’s hand settled on the back of her neck and squeezed her tight muscles. The warmth and his restrained strength unknotted the tension in her neck and belly.

  Beck shut the TV off with his free hand, gave her one last squeeze on her shoulder, then stood and held his hand out to her. “Come on, sweetheart. You’re beat. You need to get some sleep.”

  “I’ll take the couch. You can have your bed back.”

  Beck shook his head, his hand still out to her, palm up, his patience infinite where she was concerned.

  She took his hand and stood when he tugged her up gently. “You can’t be comfortable sleeping in that recliner or on the couch. You’re too damn big.”

  Beck stood with his back to the fire, his features dark in contrast to the bright glow behind him. He looked just like Dr. Lanning described. Formidable. “Does my size bother you?”

  “The opposite. It comforts me. I feel like nothing can get past you. You make me feel so safe,” she admitted.

  He slipped his hand beneath her hair at the back of her neck and pulled her into his chest. His cheek pressed against the top of her head. His heart beat slow and steady against her ear, though it sped up when she wrapped her arms around his middle and snuggled in close to him.

  “You are safe with me, Ashley.”

  The way he said that hit her heart like a love bomb that sparked a thousand stars and lit up her soul. Whimsy. Happiness. She’d missed feeling this way. And Beck brought it back to her.

  Beck stepped back, took her hand, and led her to his bedroom. He let her go beside the bed and went to the cold fireplace. She sat on the edge of the mattress, glanced out the huge windows at the millions of sparkling stars, and felt the wonder of all that big open sky. She’d missed the sky, the beach after a storm, a quiet morning under the trees in her backyard, walking down a crowded street unnoticed as she window-shopped, lunch with friends, and flirting with a sexy man. She actually had a hard time thinking of the last time she’d done the last. Now she found her gaze and heart only went to one man.

  Ashley stared at Beck’s back as he stuffed wadded newspapers into the crevices between the kindling and logs he’d laid out in the bedroom hearth. His wide shoulders blocked most of the fireplace. The muscles in his arms bunched as he worked. His back tapered to a really nice ass in jeans. He sat on his heels, but rose up on his knees to light the fire, giving her an even-better look at his ass and taut thighs. A soft glow highlighted him in the dark, and while the fire’s warmth spread through the room, another kind of warmth spread through her.

  Desire.

  The need to connect with another so deep and consuming you wanted to heed its call even when things seemed really bad. Here was a chance for something pure and good.

  Beck scratched at the back of his leg. She caught him doing it all the time. That and rubbing at one of the healed gunshot wounds on his chest and side. He needed comfort, a distraction, someone to be kind and loving, just like she did.

  “Is your leg bothering you?”

  Beck glanced over his shoulder at her, then back at the fire. “No. It itches when the skin stretches. I’m fine, sweetheart.”

  He used that sweet name more and more when he spoke to her and it made another spark of joy burst in her heart each time.

  “Can I see it?”

  Beck twisted and studied her watching him. “Sure.” He sat on his butt, the fire glowing hot and wild beside him. He pulled off his sock and dragged the hem of his jeans up his leg to bunch at his knee. He turned his leg so she could see the burn scars, red and white, puckered and smooth all up the back of his leg.

  She slid off the end of the bed and crawled over to him, sitting on her knees between his feet. She reached out, but pulled her hand back.

  Beck met her gaze. “You can touch it. It doesn’t hurt. Some of it I can’t feel at all.”

  She smoothed her fingers and palm up the back of his leg, her gaze following her hand over the smooth but rough skin. She met his steady stare. “Are your chest and side better?”

  “The exercise helps my shoulder. My side aches a bit when it’s really cold, but they’re both healed.”

  “Show me.”

  Beck’s eyes filled with heat, hotter than the blaze in the fire. “What are you doing, Ashley?”

  “Being brave.” She swept her hands up over his knees and down his corded thighs. His breath stopped with hers. She scrunched the hem of his shirt in her hands and dragged it up his lean body and over his head when he raised his arms. She tossed the shirt away, her eyes locked on Beck’s massive chest and the scar from a bullet that ripped into him. The thought of him hurt froze her heart and sent a chill up her spine.

  She leaned in and kissed the scar. Beck braced his hands on the floor slightly behind him, leaned back, and let her kiss the scar on his side. “Ashley.” He choked out her name.

  “I’m safe with you, Beck. You’re safe with me. I won’t hurt you. I just want to make you feel good. I want to feel good.” She kissed her way up his chest and found his hungry mouth. He slid his tongue along hers, but didn’t touch her. He let her lead, let her hands roam over all the tense muscles in his chest, shoulders, and arms. She lost herself in the feel and taste of him until he vibrated with all the need he put into kissing her.

  She leaned back just enough to look him in the eye. “Touch me, Beck. I want you to.”

  And just like that she let him loose to love her the way she desperately needed him to love her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, his big hand on her head, his lips fused to hers as he rolled, gently laying her on the rug beside him, his body half covering hers as he kissed her again and again. She settled back and sighed out her pleasure as her hands rubbed over the muscles in his back and down to cover his ass.

  Like following a map in his mind, Beck touched every place on her that sent ripples of pleasure spreading through her system and never once touched any place that might cause her pain. She wallowed in the desire Beck fanned inside her with every stroke of his hand, every touch of his lips against hers, down her neck, and over her chest.

  Like before, he waited for her to ask for more. Dissatisfied with the barriers between them, she peeled off her shirt. Beck helped her with the bra, replacing the soft cup with his urgent mouth and tongue sucking at her taut and so-sensitive nipples.

  His hand slid down her belly and back up. On the next descent, she rocked her hips toward his hand and called, “More.” He slipped his fingers down her leggings, over her mound, and between her legs, his fingers softly brushing her already-wet folds. “More.” She sighed out the word.

  Beck sucked hard at her nipple until it pulled free of his lips. He pressed his fingers to the seam between her legs and stared down into her eyes. “Ashley, if you’re not ready . . .”

  “Do you want me?”

  “More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my whole damn life.”

  She rose up and kissed him, pushing him onto his back. She sat beside him and showed him how much she wanted him, undoing the button on his jeans and sliding the zipper down over his hard length. She spread the denim wide and slid her hand over his thick, boxer-covered shaft, having a moment’s hesitation before she found the need for him far outweighed the past that wanted to steal even this from her. She wouldn’t let it and dragged the jeans and Beck’s boxers down his legs. She boldly took him in her hand. Warm, hard, smooth. She felt his need in the pulse against her palm and the ragged breath he let loose when she stroked him up and down.

  His hand smoothed up her thigh and down to her knee in the same rhythm she used on his hard cock.

  Unable to endure her pleasuring him, he rose up, took her breast in his mouth again, dragging her over his chest as he lay back down. She sighed and arched her back,
pushing her breast into his mouth. One arm held her in place; the other hand dragged her panties and leggings down her legs. She kicked them free when Beck couldn’t manage, too distracted sliding his hand up the back of her leg, over her ass, up her back, then back down over her rounded bottom until his fingers found her wet center and one finger sank deep inside her and stroked in and out as her hips rocked against his hard length pressed to her belly.

  “Condom,” Beck said, laying a trail of kisses from one breast to the other, trying to hold on to her and set her away so he could get up for what he’d said.

  She held him close, pulled his hand away from her slick center, shifted and sank down an inch on the head of his hard cock. She stared down at him, felt his whole body vibrate beneath hers wanting to join them together. He knew she had birth control. He didn’t have to worry about getting her pregnant. She didn’t have to worry about anything with Beck. In all things, he’d protect himself. He didn’t need to protect himself with her. She didn’t want anything between them.

  “Me and you and nothing but what is real between us.”

  Beck thrust into her, drew her down, kissed her softly as his body moved inside her, against her, around her. Their lovemaking was raw and open. No barriers. No hesitation. No taking without giving everything. She lost herself in him and the moment. He went under with her, and when they rose to the pinnacle and found that pure bliss, she collapsed on his chest wrapped in his arms and knew true peace and heaven for the first time in her life.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The fire died an hour ago. Beck could barely make out Ashley’s beautiful face on the pillow next to him as she slept in his arms without a single nightmare disturbing her rest. She needed it after they made love in front of the fire. His body stirred just thinking about it. She was everything he wanted in a lover but never found. Open. Honest. No trace of self-consciousness. No hesitation to take what she wanted or give herself over to him, knowing he only wanted to please her. After all she’d been through she found it within herself to give him that gift.