by Lynn Burke
“Nice to meet you,” he said, his deep voice sending another bout of goosebumps over my arms. His pale eyes—blue, I realized closer up—skittered over my face as though searching out my thoughts.
Even though he’d clearly been surprised when first seeing me, the stranger had shut down all emotion on his face.
Dakota stepped forward, and I tugged my hand away from his.
“My wife, Dakota,” I said, putting my hand on her lower back, suddenly feeling the need to let him know she belonged to me—or perhaps I needed a reminder that I belonged to her.
“Wife.” A frown flitted over Elijah’s brow, so quick, I thought maybe I imagined it. “A pleasure,” he murmured, but didn’t offer his hand.
Dakota’s lips parted as she stared at his mouth, which rose in a sensual smile as he studied her wind- and sunburned face.
I cleared my throat, and she glanced up at me, her greenish eyes unsure. Hesitant, as though fighting off her obvious desire for the dark stranger.
Smiling down at the love of my life came easily, even if only to reassure her. She had been mine since the seventh grade. My one and only, and three months earlier, she had vowed before a Justice of the Peace to love me in sickness and in health, in good times and bad—and bad they had been ever since.
We had planned a honeymoon in the Bahamas, but I lost my job the day after we got hitched. Finding another job had proven impossible since then, and were it not for her support and love, I probably would have jumped off a bridge.
“W-would you care to join us for breakfast?” Dakota asked, turning back toward our unexpected company.
Dakota’s breathless question furrowed my brow. “I’m sure he’s just passing through,” I said at the same time his low, rumbled, “I would love to” pebbled my skin again.
Dakota’s unsure smile didn’t reach her hazel-green eyes, and being the sap that I was, I dipped my head in agreement as she peered up at me in question, once more giving her anything she wanted, everything that I could.
“We’re just having instant oatmeal and some dried fruit,” Dakota said, bending to rummage in my pack and putting her ass on display.
In my peripheral vision, I caught Elijah enjoying the view, too.
Again, not an ounce of jealousy slithered over my skin, but I forced a frown and cleared my throat, feeling the need to show who the alpha was on the small, treeless hill we’d camped upon.
His gaze flitted to mine, and fuck it all to hell, I was the first to turn away. An intensity resided in his eyes, like an ancient wise-one who could read souls and futures. The power in his gaze wasn’t something new for me—I’d been too fond of fortunetellers in my younger years.
One had called me a beast, curiosity in her watery eyes.
Another had claimed an aura of blue like she’d never seen wrapped me tight in its embrace, one she claimed would be overtaken by a much darker one. She hadn’t been able to tell me what the vision meant.
My foster mother had laughed, but Dakota hadn’t when I’d told her the next day at school. She had claimed to have a sixth sense of sorts about people, and I hadn’t laughed at her when she said she felt as though she ought to know something about someone—or felt something about them—but couldn’t figure it out. Like a hazy picture in her mind, but no matter how hard she focused on them, she couldn’t discern whatever teased her brain.
Occasionally, I still caught her double-taking a person on the street, her gaze narrowed, eyes thoughtful, but she never spoke of whatever she sensed anymore. She preferred to capture a snapshot of them on her camera. Dozens of pictures sat on her laptop, her “strange” file of random people who meant nothing to her, but she still felt connected to.
Older, and no longer a fan of the fantastical, I never wasted money on fortunes or palm readers, but Elijah looked at me in a way that made me want to ask if he could see the future I’d always dreamed of. Enough money to allow Dakota to live in luxury, even if she claimed to not want it. Enough of a cushion that should I ever lose my job again, we wouldn’t have to worry about the electricity being turned off in our one-room apartment. Enough cash on hand so dinner would be more than boxed mac and cheese—even if we both loved that shit.
Dakota stood and handed me the oatmeal packets and one of the tin coffee mugs we’d already used and cleaned, her attention on Elijah. I wondered how badly her fingers itched to pull out her camera and capture him.
Turning my back on them and the bleak thoughts of our existence the previous three months, I squatted back down, emptying the oatmeal packets into the two bowls and coffee mug.
Hiking for a mere four days—when we’d planned on being out for a week—and I’d about had it with the camp food. Jerky, canned tuna, and beef stew, dried fruit, the whole-grain wraps she’d insisted on… I was so damn ready for a bloody steak and fluffy baked potato, loaded with all the good stuff.
“So where are you from?” Dakota asked, sitting cross-legged onto the ground beside me. She’d tugged on a sweatshirt, big enough to hide her braless, aroused state.
Elijah sat on my other side, his closeness warmer than the bed of coals and small flames in front of me. “I live about two miles from here,” he said, pointing toward the southeast as a waft of his scent rolled over me—fire and brimstone, spice and sex.
I stretched my neck side to side, fighting off my swelling dick.
“I didn’t think anyone lived anywhere near here,” Dakota said, a smile in her voice. “Your own Castle in the Clouds?”
That sensual smile played on his lips again, and I clenched my jaw and focused on pouring boiling water over the dry oatmeal. “Something like that.”
I handed Elijah one of the steaming bowls and a plastic spoon.
“Thank you.” His full-on smile weakened my knees, and I sat with about as much grace as a two-year-old on skates.
At least I didn’t spill my cup of maple and brown sugar oatmeal. “Just out for a stroll?” I asked and spooned up a mass of the grossest breakfast food on the face of the damn planet.
“Something like that,” Elijah echoed himself, his voice softer with a hint of the smile lingering on his lips. Perfectly formed lips … with a soul patch, something I’d never been able to grow.
I tore my gaze off his face and shoved the too-hot oatmeal into my mouth. The burned tongue at least kept my twitching dick from swelling to the point of needing my hand or Dakota’s.
The fuck was wrong with me? Dakota was all I had ever wanted. Hell, I’d never even thought about another woman that way—let alone a guy. From the first time I saw Dakota in middle school, I’d known she belonged to me, and I to her. Like magnets, we drew each other in, and tearing us apart at the end of every school day had proven painful for me. I found out later it had felt the same for her.
The first time we kissed, the longing for happiness that had haunted me every day faded as true joy flooded through me from the gentle brush of her lips and the sweet taste of her breath. And the first time we’d had sex? We had only been fourteen, but the stars aligned, the off-its-axis world I’d known beneath my foster parents righted.
I’d found heaven buried deep inside her warmth.
It would be another four years before I could light out from where I’d spent my childhood, though. Four more years of verbal and emotional abuse. Four more years of being told I was a worthless piece of shit, being reminded I was unloved and unwanted by the people who had created my sorry ass.
Whoever the hell they were.
I had no desire to ever find my real parents. They hadn’t wanted me, so why the fuck go looking for them?
Dakota felt the same. Like me, she’d grown up in a foster home, clueless as to her parentage and desirous of someone to call her own.
Peas and carrots, just like Forest Gump had claimed of him and Jenny.
Maybe that’s why we’d connected on such a deep level.
“Are you heading toward Mount Washington?” Elijah asked, and I glanced over at Dakota. The trip had be
en her idea, and we’d been walking our feet sore up and down mountains I couldn’t remember the names to. Washington, though, that had been one hell of a sight.
“We’ve been there already.”
“Heading back to civilization, then,” Elijah said, deducing we made our way out of the mountains toward the south.
“I wouldn’t mind getting lost up here.” The longing in Dakota’s voice pulled my gaze back to her face.
Getting lost, disappearing from the woes of real life, sounded fine by me—if we’d been somewhere way farther south. Somewhere a bit warmer than where we’d been trekking the last couple of days. But Dakota loved the mountains. Who was I to say no?
If it lay within my power, everything Dakota longed for would be placed at her feet.
My love, my life.
Mine.
Chapter Three
Dakota
The tension between Jon and Elijah was like a livewire, sizzling and snapping in the open air. I hadn’t been able to hide the instant connection I’d felt with him, one far beyond what I’d sometimes feel for complete strangers, that ringing in my ears like I knew them, or rather, something about them hid from my mind like a fuzzy pane of glass when I tried to figure it out.
No, with Elijah, it was an all-consuming need to touch, to taste, and I knew that Jon had noticed. He could read me like an open book, always had.
Guilt like I hadn’t experienced in years twisted my stomach. I’d hurt Jon by my reaction to the pale-eyed stranger, and like an idiot, I’d invited him to stay for breakfast—without thinking it through. Jon must have wanted to kill him for looking at me the way he did, and maybe he’d want to leave me deep in this forest from the pain I saw on his face.
I’d promised Jon—and myself—to never hurt him again. The first time had almost been the end of us, something I couldn’t bear to think about. Jon was my life and had been since we were young. There had never been a doubt in my mind that we were meant to be together. Best friends as children, bonded by a similar home life, but we became so much more as we had grown into adulthood. Our bodies changed at the same time—mine much later than most girls. A late bloomer, but perfectly in tune with Jon’s squeaky voice and filling out.
I hadn’t ever considered another man, hadn’t ever wanted anyone else’s touch—until the crystalline blue eyes of one Elijah Tolzman met mine. Instant attraction. Instant need unlike I’d ever known flooded through me.
What the hell? He was the opposite of Jon, bulky with muscles as compared to the lithe, swimmer-like body I’d had wrapped around me all night. A rugged mountain man—although his carefully groomed facial hair and the styled hair atop his head spoke of refinement. He spoke with clarity, enunciating every word, his manner impeccable. If I believed in time travel, I’d swear the man had come from a century earlier.
And I wanted to capture his beautiful face from every angle, stolen images for me to ponder on.
Forcing a smile and making small talk by our campfire about killed me, but I’d welcomed the man and couldn’t very well be a bad hostess. How long would Jon be disappointed in me? Would I be given the chance to prove myself to him? Assure him of the love and faithfulness I’d pledged to him a few weeks earlier?
We discussed the peaks Jon and I had climbed, and the ones I still wanted to see and take pictures of. I had always loved the White Mountains, and as with everything, Jon agreed to do what I wanted when it became clear we had to cancel our trip to Bermuda.
But, would he forgive me this time?
I fought off tears all through breakfast while faking a smile, my body and mind at war with the arousal I couldn’t stop. Soaked panties and hard nipples … all because of one dark stranger whose presence alone pulled on me like a damn moth to a flame.
The crisp, morning air hinted at an approaching storm—the dark clouds that crept slowly toward us from the southeast, matching my mood, my unsettled emotions.
Elijah glanced at the horizon then at the double sleeping bag Jon and I had slept in the night before after stargazing while enjoying our usual pillow talk. “Do you have a tent?” he asked.
I squeezed my thighs together against the desire his voice alone swelled inside me.
“Yes,” Jon replied, tucking an escaped strand of hair behind his ear, “but you know what they say, ‘If you don’t like the weather here in New England…’”
“Wait a minute.” Elijah finished the saying with a smile, his attention still on the approaching clouds. “Last night, they said the storm would pass south of us, but that appears to not be the case. And, with the flash flooding and dangerous winds they said accompanied the storm…”
“Maybe we ought to hike out of here,” I said, setting my scraped-clean bowl aside, sudden unease making my feet itch to move.
“You’ll be soaked long before making it back to civilization, regardless of what trails you take,” Elijah said, his gaze on Jon.
Jon shrugged. “Can’t be helped.”
“My house is less than two miles away,” he reminded us. “You’re welcome to wait out the storm there.”
Jon scanned the mountains and rocks around us as my mouth dried at the thought of spending more time with Elijah. “You really live out here?” Jon asked. “I thought this was a national forest.”
“It is, but my ancestors lived here long before the government made this protected land. We’re the ones who sold most of it to them, in fact.” He spoke without any hint of bragging in his voice. “I’m the last of my line and have been able to keep the retained land in seclusion. The only way in and out is by a private road that I keep gated.”
“What do you do in the winter?” Jon asked.
“Helicopter when the weather isn’t too bad, Humvee when it is.”
“You have power all the way out here?”
“Being off-grid these days is easier than most think,” Elijah said, pushing up to his feet.
I glanced over at Jon, who had tilted his head back to look at the man standing over us. A flicker of something I couldn’t name passed over his face, but it was far from anger or dislike.
“Want to take Elijah up on his offer?” Jon asked me even though his stare fixed on Elijah.
My gaze collided with Elijah’s atop Jon’s head, the moisture in my body pooling between my thighs. The man could prove to be a danger to my marriage if I wasn’t careful. “It’s up to you,” I half-whispered, tearing my attention away from the gorgeous stranger with the ungodly magnetic pull and slipping my hand into Jon’s.
He finally turned toward me, studying my face as he often did, reading me like the open book he claimed me to be. Did he see my hesitation or desire to take Elijah up on his offer? Did he see both? Blue eyes, darker than Elijah’s but no less potent in intensity, peered into mine, making the world fade around us. I found myself smiling as I always did when drowning in Jon’s love, and his answering double-dimpled smile melted my heart.
“Let’s go.” Jon squeezed my hand and stood, pulling me up beside him.
My heart thumping at the prospect of spending more time with the Greek god who had snuck up on us, I rolled up our sleeping bag while Jon put out the fire. In five minutes, we started southward behind Elijah—not following a trail.
“You’ve lived out here your whole life?” Jon said from behind me as I fought to keep my focus on the ground rather than the flexing ass encased in jeans ahead of me.
“Yes. I’ve explored every inch of this forest, these peaks.” Elijah swept his hand from east to west.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Elijah turned his head slightly, allowing me a glimpse of his strong profile. The straight nose, the full lips, that sexy as hell soul patch beneath the lower I wanted to lick—and capture in time.
I shook my head against the sexual urge and focused on picking my way over rocks and moss, thankful I’d packed my camera away from the impending storm.
Unease should have prickled the hairs on my neck—a complete stranger in the middle of government la
nd claiming to have a house close by and offering to shelter us from a storm. My mind should have gone to what anyone would have thought—the guy must be a psycho mass murderer, luring us into his lair where he would chain us up, torture us…
Rather than fear, pure lust slickened the inside of my panties, and I bit on my lower lip to keep a moan contained. What the hell was wrong with me? Had Elijah put a spell on us? Drugged my libido with pheromones to lure unsuspecting victims like my sexy book boyfriends in the paranormal romance books I devoured?
Shivers wracked my body, exploding goosebumps over my skin.
Make-believe, I told myself, focusing on his tight ass. He’s nothing but a hot man empathetic toward strangers in his mountains.
The wind picked up as we headed down a pass, and we started around toward the west, sprinkles fell from the dark sky, dampening the two men’s senseless chatter and my sweatshirt. A well-worn path with man-made rock steps took us higher into the mountain.
I pulled up abruptly as a stone patio opened in front of us. A wall of glass, sliding doors and windows lay beyond, reaching up the rock face, and I realized, my jaw dropping, that Elijah’s house was actually a cave. A very gorgeous, that must have cost millions, house in the side of a mountain.
“Holy shit,” Jon said from behind me.
I couldn’t see inside the windows, and as my head tilted back, my gaze scanning the rock cliff, I noted a few other windows set in stone, a couple with small wrought-iron balconies attached.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” I breathed, realizing that if we hadn’t walked up the mountain the way we did, I never would have noticed the house with its stone veranda. Like something out of Middle Earth, but bigger than anything a hobbit would need.
Elijah moved toward one of the glass sliders. Atop, etched in stone, lay writing unlike anything I’d ever seen.
“Welcome,” he said, sliding one door open and revealing a sunken living room and kitchen beyond. A familiar classical tune played softly from somewhere inside, strings filled with sadness, thickening my throat.