by Lexi Blake
It was a laughable thought. Though not, it seemed, for Nell. She gave him a bright smile and reached over to touch his arm. “I will. I’ve been in the activist world long enough to know how bad it can be out there, but it’s worth it. We have to fight for the world we want.”
He stopped, his hands in the middle of turning the ignition. Fight for the world we want. It was a child’s ideal—that the world could be changed. The world was the same shit hole it had always been, and he was responsible for making sure idealists like Nell didn’t realize that truth. If she was forced to face reality, all those ideals would crumble and she would be just like the rest of them—selfish, needy, and willing to trample over anyone to save her own neck.
It was his job to make sure she never knew that truth about herself.
He turned the engine to his earth-killing vehicle over and eased it into reverse, snow crunching under the tires. He had to be careful. The mountains were beautiful, but like everything else in the world, they were deadly as well if not handled with caution.
“So what do you teach, Henry?”
Assassination 101. South American Coups. How to Change Your Identity in Five Easy Steps. “I teach history.”
Nell’s smile lit up the cab. “Wow. That’s exciting. I love history. What type do you teach? British? I love British history. I can’t decide which age I would rather have lived in. The Dark Ages were full of things to protest. I mean it. What a time to be an activist. Except they kind of burned all of them at the stake. The Victorian Age was better, except if you marched for women’s rights, you often got labeled a whore. I guess this really is the best time to be an activist. Everyone still hates us and thinks we’re annoying, but we no longer get lynched or drawn, hanged, and quartered. Wow. History is kind of bloody now that I think about it.”
He turned slightly and gave her a grin of his own. He actually kind of liked the way her brain worked. He was used to careful conversations where each word was a pointed gun, but Nell rambled on, giving voice to her every thought. “I specialize in the history of war.”
Her smile disappeared. “I bet you eat meat, too. Don’t you?”
“I can be persuaded to try a salad every now and then.” He wasn’t willing to completely scare her off yet. Being this close to her, he could smell the shampoo she’d used on her hair. Nell Finn smelled like sunshine, and he was so used to the gloom. It was a bad idea, and he rarely had bad ideas. She was going to get hurt.
He was still going to have her. Maybe even today.
It was his vacation, after all.
“You’ll need to take a left at the stop sign when you’re down the mountain,” she explained. “Our cabin is near the river. We’re a little isolated.”
Everything was isolated in Bliss, though the valley he’d passed seemed to have plenty of cabins. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to be so far from other people?”
She shrugged. “I like the peace and quiet. It’s nice after the city and all those hospitals.”
“Why were you in the hospital?”
“I wasn’t. Mom was. She has leukemia. We met Pam Sheppard in Denver where she was being treated, and she convinced us to give Bliss a try. I think my mom was hoping she could find a family for me.” She was getting emotional, her nose flushing. She wouldn’t be able to tell a lie to save her life.
“Your mom is your only family?” He understood what it meant to be alone.
She turned slightly, a grin forming. “Unless you count the vampires on another plane of existence. Sorry. I can joke about it now. My mom has certain quirks in her personality, but she’s perfectly harmless.”
Her mom was certifiable. “Is she schizophrenic?”
“No.” Nell huffed. “Delusional, perhaps, but she doesn’t hear voices, and she’s never been violent. She’s a loving mother and a very kind friend. I blame her artistic temperament, but CPS in Atlanta didn’t see it that way.”
He made the left turn and the land became flat, moving toward the valley. “You went into foster care.”
He didn’t like that idea. She was too soft to handle it. A woman like Nell would need someone strong to protect her. Foster parents were a crapshoot. He’d had a couple who cared, but several who had seen him as nothing more than a paycheck. A vision of a young Nell being forced into that life assaulted him.
“Not for too long. My mom complied with everything they asked her to. She immediately went into counseling and started saying all the right things. I remember when she was finally able to pick me up. She smiled and was so calm until we were two blocks away and then she broke down. She hugged me and begged me to forgive her. I was eight. She didn’t talk about her family again around anyone until we got here.” Nell stared out the window at the trees passing by. “It’s funny. In some ways I feel like I got my mother back when we came here. She and this guy named Mel argue all the time about who’s worse. Evil faeries versus aliens. They tried to call a town hall meeting and take a vote to see which one would win, but the mayor is too afraid that he’d then be forced to enact a safety plan, and that could get expensive.”
The town sounded a little off, too, but that didn’t bother him. He would likely find the place wildly entertaining—like reading a comedic book or watching a movie. He would sit back and let them entertain him.
And he would let Nell entertain him, too.
She chattered on as though silence was something to be ruthlessly beaten back. Bishop preferred silence, but he found her voice rather pleasant, soothing even as she talked about how she’d left her place in Denver to come to this remote small town and how she was trying to be a writer.
He didn’t have to talk. It was refreshing in a way. He could sit back, and she would take care of that part. Every now and then she would ask him a question about himself and he would sidestep it, turning the conversation back to her.
All he had to do to keep her talking was point out some terrible thing that was happening in the world. Nell had a plan. She had letters to write to dictators and corporations to protest.
Would she protest him if he didn’t give her a proper orgasm? He wasn’t particularly worried. He intended to make sure she was perfectly satisfied, right down to her Birkenstocks.
“That’s the cabin.” She pointed through the windshield to a small cabin by the river. It was a real, actual log cabin with a postage stamp of a front porch and a neatly kept yard. He pulled into the gravel drive. She was right. It was isolated. The drive wasn’t even paved.
“Where does the road go?” There was a dirt road that led away from her cabin toward another mountain.
“It leads up to Elk Creek Pass. There’s not much up that way. There’s a ski lodge and a bar called Hell on Wheels, but I’ve never been to either one. I know the gentlemen who run the bar. They’re very nice.” She opened her door and slid out.
He needed to train her. It was his job to open her door and hers to wait until he could help her out, his hands sliding over her curves and keeping her balanced. He was a little disgruntled as he followed her, but he held his tongue.
The cabin was old, the chinking in need of work. About the only thing that he’d seen that looked new on the place was the mailbox. It had been painted with gold and green, the name “Finn” done up in pretty flourishes. It was also not where it was supposed to be. Someone had forcibly removed the cheery mailbox, and it had ended up on the porch. He picked it up as Nell pushed the ruined door open.
“I think he must have kicked it in.” Nell seemed good at stating the obvious.
He examined the door. Cheap. Thin. Possibly built in the fifties when he would guess the cabin had been built. He stepped inside. The whole place was complete chaos.
The couch had been slashed, the small coffee table broken. Broken dishes littered the tiny kitchen floor.
This was an act of pure hate. Someone hated one of the Finn women. The question was which one. He studied the place, trying to keep a cool professional distance, but it was hard. He’d seen violence
over and over again, but something about the thought of Nell having to face it with nothing and no one but her mother at her side sparked a certain anger in him. They were two women, one of whom he suspected was very ill, alone in the world.
He turned and someone had used spray paint to ruin the paneled fireplace.
Die Bitch
Not grammatically correct and a bit rude in his opinion. Inelegant. The paint was a wretched purple. He’d probably gotten it on sale. There wouldn’t be many places that sold paint out here. Yes. He could figure this out.
“Do you have any violent ex-boyfriends?” He sifted through the pile of magazines that had spilled from the broken coffee table. Mostly news magazines, with some arts and crafts manuals sprinkled in. The Finn women were serious-minded. No tabloid rags for them.
Nell frowned, reaching down to pick up a legal pad. “Callie thought I should keep things the way they are until Rye gets a chance to look at it. I can’t stand the mess.”
“He’ll need to take some pictures, but you don’t have to be here for that. Could you answer my question?”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “About the boyfriends? No. I don’t have any boyfriends I would imagine could do this. There haven’t been that many, but they were all selected for their beliefs in nonviolence.”
So she’d dated wimps. It didn’t surprise him, but it made him wonder if she’d ever had really good sex. Probably not. She probably wore shapeless dresses that she’d chosen for the cruelty-free nature of their fabric. He would be shocked if she’d ever had a real orgasm. She’d selected her lovers based on their political beliefs and not on whether or not they could make her come. He was damn straight sure he could make her come. “How about your mother?”
Nell shook her head. “My mother hasn’t had a boyfriend. She claims my father was the only man she could ever love, and he died when I was very young. I don’t remember him at all. I often wonder if losing my dad is what caused her to drift into her fantasy world.”
He wasn’t about to go into all the ways her mother was insane. “Do you have any idea who could have done this? Who have you pissed off lately?”
She had to have pissed off someone. She’d pissed him off in the very short time he’d known her. Of course, she’d also gotten his cock hard, and that meant something to him.
Her gorgeous lips turned down. “Any number of people. Look, I protest a lot of things. I believe in standing up for what’s right.”
She was a cute idiot granola girl. Yeah, he got that. “Do you have a list of the companies or people you’ve protested in the last year or so?”
If he had a list, he could figure out if her protests had actually cost someone money. The loss of money could make a person hate pretty damn quick. The faster he figured out who was after her, the faster she could have perfectly worry-free sex.
Nell nodded. “I can print out my schedule for the last year. I’m very organized. I’ve been thinking about using the Internet to bring activists together.”
“You should do that. I’ll take the printout, please,” Bishop said as he walked around.
The cabin couldn’t be more than seven hundred square feet. He counted two whole bedrooms and poked his head into a bathroom that wouldn’t hold more than one person at a time. In the smaller of the two bedrooms, there was a single bed with a pretty pink-and-white quilt that had been slashed to pieces. He could see the room as it had been, pulling back the chaos and forming a picture in his mind of the way Nell’s room should be laid out. There was no question the room was Nell’s. She would never take the larger room. She would have given that up to anyone she was living with.
She needed a keeper.
It was easy to see what she valued. Books. They were torn and damaged, but she’d lined her walls with books, and not just nonfiction. He caught sight of some racy covers in the midst of the chaos. Romances. So she wasn’t only interested in intellectual pursuits. She had a romantic side. He could use that.
Underneath a pile of shredded clothes, he saw a hint of pink fur. He reached down and pulled out a teddy bear. Worn and old, it was a sad-looking little thing. Its middle had been torn open.
“Mr. Snugglebunny. I know. It’s a bear, but I was into bunnies back then.” A sad smile lit her face as she took the pathetic-looking stuffed animal from his hands. “As far as I know it’s the only thing I have left of my father.”
He studied the toy. It was an odd thing. It wasn’t fashioned from mass-marketed materials. Someone had sewn the thing by hand. The bear had buttons for eyes and a black yarn nose. It was a piece of her childhood, and it meant something to her.
He couldn’t miss the tears that pooled in her eyes. “I think you can find someone to fix it.”
Her eyes were bright as she looked up. “Yes. Yes, I can. And I can fix the cabin, too. I was thinking I can probably get a new door in town, and I have a book on home repairs. I think it’s best if my mom stays with Pam for a while until I get the cabin back into shape. Is there any way you could drop me off in town?”
He felt his eyes narrow because she had plans. That was obvious. He was fairly sure that he wouldn’t like her plans. “Why?”
“Because I need to start scheduling the repairs.”
That wasn’t all she was planning on doing. She was hiding something. It was right there in the way she wouldn’t look him in the eyes. And why had she talked about her mom staying with Pam Sheppard and not herself? It was time to start herding Nell in the proper direction. He crowded her. It wasn’t hard in the small bedroom.
The minute she realized how close he was, she backed up, ceding the space until her back hit the door. “Henry?”
“How do you intend to pay for those repairs?” This cabin would require extensive repairs. Everything would have to be replaced. The door alone would cost hundreds of dollars, not to mention fixing the windows. He would bet a lot that Nell didn’t have that money.
Her face flushed the closer he got. Yes, she was aware of him, finally. That was what he wanted. “I don’t know that’s your business.”
“So it’s my business to take care of this for you, but not to know how you’ll take care of yourself? Is that how you work when you help someone out? You do one piece of the job and send them on their way?” He was playing on her sympathetic soul. And her body. He leaned in. She smelled sweet, like milk and honey. Damn, but he could eat her up. And there was no way to miss the way her nipples peaked under her sweater because she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Her voice was slightly breathless. “I think it’s nice that you want to help, but I don’t need it. I can fix everything.”
He loomed over her, well aware that he was using his height to intimidate her. “How, Nell? Do you have a job you haven’t told me about?”
“I have a computer I can pawn,” she said quietly.
He’d wondered what she’d intended to do, and still his freaking cold-as-fuck heart softened a fraction. All she’d talked about on the way over here was her writing. “I thought you wrote books.”
Her back was against the wall. She had nowhere to go, and that was just what he wanted. Her eyes had dilated. They roamed from his face to his neck to his chest, taking him in even as she spoke. “I do, but I have to admit, I don’t think I’m very good at it. I keep getting rejected, so I might as well get rid of the computer. Do you have to stand so close?”
There wasn’t a trace of irritation in that question. It had been asked with a delicious breathiness that let him know she was interested.
“If you didn’t want me to stand so close, you should have gotten a bigger bedroom,” he said, well aware his voice had gone low. He stared down at her, unwilling to let her off the hook for a second. Now that he was close to her, he was damn sure he couldn’t let her go. Oh, eventually he would. He would go back to his life and she would move on with hers, but for a week or so, he was going to be in her bed. He was going to be in her body. And he was going to solve a few of her problems. “You can’t pawn y
our computer. How will you keep up with your protests? How will you know what to protest in the first place?”
It didn’t make any sense, but he couldn’t stand the thought of her walking into some crummy shop and giving up her computer for half of what it was worth.
“I’ll figure it out,” she replied, her eyes round.
And selling the thing wouldn’t do any good. It would be a drop in the bucket of what she would need. “It won’t work, Nell.” He backed her against the wall. “Let someone help you. I can loan you the money.”
It wouldn’t be a loan, but she didn’t have to know that until he was long gone and she couldn’t find him.
“That’s not a good idea.” Her head tilted up. “None of this is a good idea.”
But her lips, those fuck-me, take-me lips, were trembling. Her hands were moving to his waist like she couldn’t help herself, and he didn’t even want to try to help himself. Everything about his life was plotted and planned and decided on for the best of whatever fucking mission he happened to be on.
He didn’t want to think. He wanted her. That was all that mattered.
“It’s the best idea I’ve had in a long time.” He moved his head just a bit because despite her words, she’d already gone up on her tiptoes to bring her mouth closer to his. It was the simplest thing in the world to lean over and touch his lips to hers.
So simple and so shattering. The minute he touched her, he lost control. She sighed against him, and the need to dominate her roared through his system. He pushed her against the wall, pulling her up so the only thing supporting her was his strength. She held on to him, clinging like she needed him in order to breathe.
He rubbed his body against hers, wishing they weren’t someplace cold. Too many clothes. There was way too much between them. He wanted to be skin to skin, his chest nestling against her breasts. He wanted to feel the hard press of her nipples poking at him. But for now, he simply inhaled her.
He’d been right. She tasted sweet, so fucking sweet. He wound his arms around her waist and felt her breasts crush against his chest as he licked her lower lip. “Open your mouth. Let me in, baby.”