by Bethany Kane
Contents
Title Page
Also by Bethany Kane
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Epilogue
Special excerpt from Exposed to You
Bound to You
Bethany Kane
Heat Books, New York
Titles by Bethany Kane
Addicted to You
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This eSpecial is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
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BOUND TO YOU
A Heat Book, published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Heat eSpecial / June 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Bethany Kane.
Excerpt from Exposed to You copyright © 2012 by Bethany Kane.
Cover design by George Long.
Cover photograph by Shutterstock.
ISBN: 978-1-101-57393-8
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Chapter One
John Corcoran sat at the dented oak table in his isolated cabin and listened, head cocked, to the sound of a sex siren singing.
He’d always considered himself to be agonizingly sane. Now, for some inexplicable reason, on a sunny spring afternoon when the Shawnee National Forest rustled and twittered with new life, he’d decided to go crazy.
What a fucking inconvenience.
He stood and watered down his sculpture before covering it in plastic. He reached for his cane and coat as he left—it would take him a couple weeks of milder weather to break his muscles of the familiar habit of grabbing his coat. He left the door open long enough for Enzo to exit with him. The sun felt warm on his skin as he strode through the yard, listening for the elusive sound of siren song.
He extended his hand and Enzo was there. He dug his fingers through the fur at his neck and gave him a rub. Enzo wasn’t one of those trained sight dogs that sold for tens of thousands of dollars, but he was as good as one, as far as John was concerned.
“Hey, Enz? Did you hear—”
He went dead still. Enzo also halted, and then gave a plaintive whine. John was glad to hear his friend have a reaction to the distant song echoing in the canyon. It was comforting to have another living being with him in his madness. A shiver ran beneath his skin and his cock twitched next to his thigh. Clearly his hallucination was hiking uphill because she sounded slightly breathless.
“What the hell?” he mumbled. It seemed a little strange to him that his madness would be of the wild-eyed, sex-starved variety. Sure, he’d been isolated up here in these hills for three weeks, but . . . really? He gave a bark of laughter at the thought, and Enzo stirred.
The singer couldn’t be who he thought she was, but he was beginning to suspect the woman was real, nevertheless.
No—it had to be her. He took another stride. Some people never forgot a face, but John never forgot a voice. Especially not that voice. Especially when it was singing that particular song.
He stalked toward the perimeter of his yard, sensing Enzo’s increasing tension as he neared the forest. The cool air beneath the large tree’s canopy struck his face. Sure enough, Enzo batted his thigh with his nose and gave a soft growl of warning.
Again, the sultry song echoed from the forest, but he caught only a few notes this time before they dissolved and melted into the air.
John hesitated. He’d been on the forest trails countless times as a youth when he’d come to stay with his father during the summers—only when a companion was there, but still. He knew the paths and the lay of the land on his property as well as anyone in the forest. When he entered the woods with a sighted person, he led the way. Always.
“Come on, Enzo.”
His companion growled another warning. Enzo applied pressure against his thigh, trying to sway him from entering the forest. John was a strong man, however, and in the rare case that he resisted Enzo’s wisdom, he always prevailed. He plunged into the woods, knowing he was a fool but still unable to resist.
He sensed the tall trees towering over him, reassuring sentinels on a mild spring day. The farther they penetrated the woods, however, the more John grew worried. He paused on the path and yelled a warning. The female was quickly headed toward territory that most of the residents of Vulture’s Canyon and the Shawnee National Forest steered clear of by a mile.
He muttered a curse. Enzo answered with a growl when he stalked farther into the woods.
* * *
Jennifer Turner paused in her vigorous ascent of the hill, her hiking song halting mid-lyric. Had that been a shout she’d heard echoing through the canyon? She waited, slightly breathless from her exercise, but the only sounds that entered her ears were that of robin song and the squeaking sway of the top branches of the tall sycamore and oak trees. She pulled her thermos from the pocket of her jacket and took a long swig of cool water.
She loved the forest, the openness of it, the freedom, the adventure of what could be just over the next hill. Besides, hiking provided a great workout. Her hosts in Vulture’s Canyon, Rill and Katie Pierce, had advised against wandering off the forest preserve’s paths, but Jennifer had an excellent sense of direction. Her mother used to say she’d been born with a compass in her brain. Jennifer had a way of reading the trees and the land, sensing clearings and finding deer paths to tread in the woods. She’d hiked countless trails out west, and hiked almost daily in Runyon Canyon, which was near her home in Hollywood Hills.
She found herself smitten with the Shawnee National Forest. It reminded her of the woods of her youth in Kentucky.
Something caught her eye through the thick foliage. Sunlight sparkled on a stream in the distance. She pocketed her thermos. It would be nice to sit in the sunshine at the edge of the burbling spring.
“Stop. Don’t go a step farther,” a man yelled. “Come back, just the way you came.”
She had a fleeting image of something long and black clutched in his hand.
She turned and sprang toward the forest stream. The last thing she needed was to be isolated in the forest with what appeared to be some rifle-carrying Deliverance-type guy. Her heart seemed to lodge in her throat when she heard the sound of leaves crunching behind her. He was coming after her, and fast!
Her gaze flickered around in rising panic. Should she try to get ahead of him and find a place to hide? No, it was too late. The sound of his footsteps echoed nearer.
“Stop, damn it!” he bellowed.
Her feet slowed, but Jennifer wasn’t sure why. Had it been the hint of frustration in his voice or had she been instinctively following his authoritative command? Before she could decide, the ground collapsed beneath her feet.
Horror seized her entire body as she began to free-fall, freezing the breath in her lungs. She flailed with her hands and gripped desperately when something slid through her palms—a vine or root of some kind. She tightened her hold and her body jerked in the air; her fall had stalled for a partial second before she heard a snapping sound and was falling once again.
She slammed into hard earth, the impact rattling her brain. Rocks pelted her. She couldn’t draw breath as she blinked dirt out of her eyes. A curse rattled the air. Through a disoriented haze she saw a shadowed figure suspended from the top of a column of sunlight speckled with dust and debris.
It took her a moment to register pain, but when it came, it was sharp and brutal. She cried out, shock and discomfort making her lungs work again. She sat up partially, propping her upper body on her elbow.
What the hell had happened?
She coughed and wiped soil and bits of leaves out of her eyes and off her face. It was pitch-black beyond the column of sunlight. She heard the trickling sound of the stream, but louder now.
It suddenly struck her what had occurred. She’d fallen into some kind of soft spot. She was currently twenty or so feet below the ground, and water from the spring above was somehow flowing between rocks into the chamber where she’d fallen. The man had also fallen into the soft spot as he’d chased after her, but had halted his plummet by grabbing on to a patch of intact ground.
She knew a moment of ambivalence. If the man fell as well, at least she wouldn’t be alone in this nightmare. If he didn’t reach solid ground again, however, there would be no one to contact a rescue team.
“Hold on!” she shouted in rising panic.
She heard the sounds of rocks crumbling and soil sliding and another curse, this one sounding resignedly pissed.
Jennifer scuttled back in alarm, ignoring the aches in her shoulder, ribs and hip. He landed with a muffled thud and rolled. Despite his large, solid body and hissed curses after impact, she had the random thought that he’d landed much more gracefully than she had.
Jennifer didn’t know what to do. She’d been running from him just seconds ago, and now she was stuck with him in some dark hole beneath the forest. She peered around. It was very dark outside of the stream of dusty sunlight. An invisible force pressed down on her lungs. The dark was Jennifer’s worst fear. She couldn’t breathe.
Do not even go there, Turner.
She gathered herself from falling over the edge into all-out panic and had another look around the dark hole. If there was anywhere to run, she couldn’t see the path. The rough-looking lumberjack guy seemed a better bet than the unknown terrors of the pitch blackness.
“Are you okay?” she asked shakily.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, wandering around on private property?” he asked in a beleaguered fashion, as if he was continuing the conversation from when they first saw each other in the forest and the earth hadn’t just swallowed them both. He sat up and started brushing dirt off his shoulders and hair.
“I didn’t realize I was trespassing,” she said irritably. She tried to sit up all the way and groaned.
“Don’t move. Just stay still for a moment. Lie back.” Through a haze of pain she saw his large shadow hover over her. She felt his hands moving over her upper arms and shoulders. He eased her back to the ground and removed her scarf, carefully placing it next to his knee.
“This shake hole has been collapsing slowly, apparently,” he said as his hands moved over her shoulders and neck. She had the strangest impression he was reading her flesh with his fingertips.
“Shake hole?” she asked, eager for the distraction of his rough voice.
“Sinkhole, shake hole, same thing. This area is riddled with them. It was a good thing this one had already started to collapse.”
“Good?”
“Because of the slow collapse, there’s soil and debris down here. If it’d only been rock, we’d be a heap of broken bones,” she heard him mutter. His hands were moving now over her shoulder blades, along her upper arms, down over her sides, skimming her breasts. She opened her mouth to protest, but there was something so detached—almost clinical—about his touch, that she focused her energy on panting shallowly, trying to catch her breath. He wrapped his hands just above her waist.
“Take a deep breath,” he said gruffly. “Nice and slow.”
Her panting ceased for a few seconds. She realized she’d been afraid to breathe deeply, guarding instinctively against the possibility of broken ribs. She followed his instructions hesitantly. It hurt, but there was no unduly sharp pain. Her lungs seemed to be fully regaining function after the shock of her jarring fall. She heard him make a satisfied sound, and he moved his hands yet again.
He palmed both of her hips and lifted her an inch off the ground. He gave her a tiny twist, shifting her lower body ever so slightly. “Does this hurt?”
“Everything hurts, to be honest.”
“You’re not screaming bloody murder, so that’s something.” He palmed the back of each of her thighs and gently bent her legs in succession, moving each knee toward her chest. She hardly reacted when he bent her left leg, but groaned in discomfort when he did the same to the other.
He straightened her leg and continued his examination—for it struck Jennifer suddenly that was precisely what he was doing.
“Are you a—” She paused to cough some dust and soil out of her lungs. “Doctor?”
“Chiropractor,” she heard him say through the darkness as he unlaced her hiking boots with rapid precision.
“The ground just gave way under me,” she said more to herself than to him. She gritted her teeth when he used both of his hands to slowly circle one of her feet, testing her ankle. It hurt, but not in the shooting-pain, broken-bone manner—more like in the she-was-going-to-be-sore-and-bruised-for-weeks variety.
“You shouldn’t have entered this part of the forest. This area used to be owned by the Black Velvet Mines. The original miners didn’t realize how porous the top layer of limestone is for about a three-mile radius. They eventually pulled out of this area and focused down south, but all the tunnels and caverns remain while the ground above them is eroding every year. Every schoolkid in a ten-mile radius of Vulture’s Canyon knows to stay away from here. A school bus could be eaten up by some of the shake holes in this canyon.”
“I’m not from around here. How was I supposed to know? There weren’t any signs.”
“There are signs. And blockades. You’d have seen them if you stayed on the forest preserve path. You decided to leave it though, didn’t you? You wandered onto my property.” He matter-of-factly stuck her feet back into her hiking boots. Jennifer cautiously sat up, this time successfully, and gently batted his hand away from a boot.
; “I didn’t plan on us falling into a big black hole,” she said half annoyed, half overwhelmed. “Trust me. This is the last place I’d choose to be.”
She began to retie her boot, pausing when she heard a dog bark from above.
“Get back, Enzo!” the man shouted so sharply she jumped. “Go get help.” She heard the animal’s whine. He cursed again.
“What’s wrong?” Jennifer asked.
“He won’t leave me,” he said morosely. “Enzo won’t go get help. I should have invested in a trained dog.”
“Your dog doesn’t have to go on a rescue mission. I have a cell phone right here in my pocket,” Jennifer said, the realization hitting her with a wave of relief.
He grunted. “Good luck with it. The service in these hills sucks. Add to that, we’re about twenty feet underground.”
Jennifer hit a button on her phone. The light from the panel immediately came on, illuminating the space to a surprising degree. She stared around, trying to make out the parameters of their trap. They were in a chamber shaped like a square with the corners rounded off, approximately twenty by twenty feet wide. In one stretch of the cavern, water flowed down a stone wall into a ground-level pool. The other two walls of the chamber were naked limestone, but at the fourth there was a large pile of debris, soil and splintered wooden planking.
“It looks more like a cave than a mine,” she mumbled. “Except for the wooden beams over there. That looks like a collapsed mine tunnel, all right.”
“There are plenty of caves hereabouts. The mines often hooked into them, for convenience’s sake. Easier to use what was already there to join tunnels instead of using dynamite to blast through rock.”
Her phone light reflected in his eyes when she glanced back at him. He knelt on his knees, his head about two feet above hers. He stared at her face. Something about his gaze felt different, almost like he was seeing straight through her. It was a little like waking up and finding yourself in a dark cave with a large, wild animal peering down at you.
It also struck her that he was good-looking, if you preferred the raw, rough, masculine type. Jennifer did—firemen, cops, forest rangers; uncomplicated, sweet, masculine to the core, demanding in bed, but singularly undemanding in other ways. She liked to take her men to her small vacation house in the San Gabriel Mountains and appreciate their physical attributes to the fullest in absolute privacy.