Vote Then Read: Volume II

by Lauren Blakely

  Her one goal was to make it impossible for Alec or anyone to orchestrate a cover-up by the time she was done. The cave existed. Vin was murdered. She’d find the proof.

  It was up to the FBI to figure out who had abducted Alec, but if she handed them the cave, they’d have reason to look at someone—anyone—other than her.

  “Tell me some good news, Lee,” Alec said after he shut off the loud engine of the ATV to answer his vibrating phone.

  “I found her. She’s out of cell range now, but I have a location where you can start looking. I sent the coordinates to your GPS.”

  “I owe you.”

  “No charge for this. Just find her. She’s in danger, Alec.”

  Alec knew this better than anyone, but he hadn’t told Lee the details. “What makes you say that?”

  “During the flight, I went through all Chase Johnston’s stalking data. He was sending reports on her activities to someone. I haven’t figured out who received them yet, but this wasn’t a sicko with a crush. She was under organized surveillance. Just like she claimed.”

  And Alec had ignored her, yet another reason for her to distrust him. For her to flee.

  Another way in which he’d failed her and Vin.

  She still didn’t know Chase was her stalker. He’d planned to tell her after Gandalf was delivered, but she’d been asleep by the time the cat arrived. And later, well, he’d had other things on his mind.

  “Have you submitted your findings to the FBI?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. An agent is guarding Johnston’s hospital bed. When he wakes, he can tell them who he was reporting to.” He said good-bye to Lee, then opened the GPS app. He tucked the phone under a strap on the console and started the engine. There were no roads between him and Isabel’s last known location, but at least with the ATV, he didn’t need them.

  He drove in as straight a line as the terrain allowed, and an hour after he set out, he reached her car, parked at the terminus of an abandoned logging road. He circled the vehicle. The ground was still muddy from Friday’s rainstorm. Easy to spot her boot prints where she’d entered the forest.

  One hand on the hood told him the engine was still warm. She’d had to drive the long way around to get here, whereas his route had been more direct. He’d been delayed as he gathered his gear for the hike and contacted Lee, but he’d made up time with the ATV. He guessed she had a fifteen- or twenty-minute head start.

  Isabel might know these woods, but Alec knew tracking. No way in hell was she going to find the cave without him.

  Isabel scanned the thick woods. She’d been here just five days ago, but already the rain had changed things and she couldn’t find the ATV tracks. In all likelihood, thanks to the rain, they were gone.

  She’d searched her pack for her notebook—the one in which she noted everything about her search for the cave—and came up empty. She’d had it Friday night, after she returned home from the jail. She’d entered the data in the computer after Alec left. The notebook must have been taken at the same time her computer was stolen. But how had they known about the notebook? Or the data on her computer, for that matter?

  Without her notes, she had only memory to rely on, and the area she’d covered on Thursday had been large. The lighting had been different, early afternoon versus morning, and wind and rain had shifted things around. She’d find the cave, of that she had no doubt, but she was likely to spend a fair amount of time duplicating Thursday’s effort because she couldn’t be certain if she’d explored a particular area or not.

  This part of the subarctic taiga forest was difficult to traverse with limited sight distance due to the thick undergrowth. Bears could lurk almost anywhere, and it felt strange to hike in silence after months of mindless, endless, relentless singing.

  Everything sounded sinister in the silent forest. The crack of a stick—likely an animal alerted by her footsteps—immediately brought to mind the men who’d abducted Alec.

  Alec had been abducted by Raptor operatives. She had no doubt about that. Especially after being attacked inside the compound last night. She had a few key suspects, and they were all currently at the compound. They had to be, to oversee the closure. They couldn’t be here. Which was why this was the perfect time to search for the cave.

  Ahead she saw a shape that looked familiar—a moss-covered stump she felt certain she’d seen on Thursday. In fact, it might be the one where she first noticed ATV tracks on the spongy ground cover to the south of it. She aimed for the stump, skirting around a thick cluster of conifers, her gaze on the trunk ahead, wondering if it was the right tree.

  If only she had her cell phone. She could check the photos she’d taken. But that, too, had been claimed by whoever had abducted Alec.

  A noise to the right startled her. She turned, reaching for her bear spray.

  In a flash she was on her butt on the damp, squishy forest floor, her bear spray in the grip of the man straddling her legs. Only her heavy backpack kept her from being pinned flat to the ground.

  She stared into the coldest, angriest topaz-blue eyes she’d ever seen. “You are not nailing me with pepper spray a second time, darling.”

  26

  Alec didn’t know whether to kiss her or handcuff her. After running off without telling him she deserved the latter, but the feel of her hips between his thighs had him more than eager for the former.

  She held his gaze in a silent stalemate. “Let me go,” she finally said.

  “Not until you tell me why the fuck you took off.”

  She shoved at his chest. “Because I don’t trust you not to cover up the cave.”

  Even though he’d expected her to say that, his anger still spiked. He released her and stood. “See now, there’s a big difference between you and me, because I don’t have sex with people I don’t trust.”

  “Angry sex.” She stood and brushed off her pants. “I don’t see why trust is a prerequisite for angry sex.”

  “Oh, honey, you can lie to yourself all you want, but you can’t lie to me. By the time I was buried deep inside you, anger was the last emotion you were feeling.”

  Her pupils dilated, but she didn’t say a word, and he wondered which time she was remembering—in the firing range, when he took her from behind in the hottest, wildest fuck he’d ever had, or later, in his bed when they’d been chest to chest and she locked her thighs around him and moaned his name like it was a prayer or maybe her salvation.

  He sucked in a deep breath himself. The memories were nearly as potent as the real thing.

  “It doesn’t matter what I felt when we were having sex, not when I woke up to discover you’re using me to fix your campaign.”

  “I had nothing to do with that article, Isabel. I’m offended you’d think that given how clear I’ve made it that I’m nuts about you.”

  “I don’t know what to believe when it comes to you, Alec. I was ready to believe you cared about me—I even stopped by your office before I came out here—only to hear you plan to use quotes from the Sun article in your ads.”

  Shit. Naturally, she’d heard that and not the conversation where he’d fired his campaign manager and thrown away his future as a senator. He growled a curse and dropped his pack to the ground. They’d talk this out if he had to handcuff her to a tree to force her to listen.

  “I wasn’t referring to today’s article. I called the damn reporter and told him to print a statement that I did not agree with a single word in the article. I said Isabel Dawson is one of the most amazing women I know. I told him how you saved my life and I’m completely crazy about you and there is no way in hell I believe you had anything to do with my abduction. I went on to say that the concerns you raised about the safety of the compound were valid and I regret not listening to you sooner. I have no idea if there will be anything quotable in the next article, but if there is, I intend to use it because I won’t let that bullshit article become the only thing the world knows about you.”

  He finall
y dared to meet Isabel’s gaze. Her eyes were wide, her brow wrinkled in confusion. “Why would you do that? You told me losing is not an option.”

  He shook his head. “When I said losing is not an option, I was referring to planning to lose. I don’t plan to lose. Ever. At anything. But I’m not going to throw you under a bus to save my campaign. I fired my campaign manager because she gave the reporter background information on you—information Raptor collected when my attorneys were certain you were gearing up to sue me. I also fired the Raptor employee who provided Carey with the data.”

  “You fired your campaign manager less than eight weeks before Election Day?”

  “Yes.”

  She took a step toward him, then paused. “What about the cave itself? Say your campaign recovers from this. If the cave is found and it becomes clear that Raptor has been involved in dirty deals and experimenting with infrasound, it’s hard to see a way you can recover from that. People will suspect you. Or they’ll blame you for not knowing what your employees were doing. Plus you were tortured. Do you really think voters will be ready to accept you as fit for office?”

  He shrugged. “So be it. I lose. Hell, maybe my opponent is behind this, because it sure as hell looks like I’m in a no-win situation. But I’m not willing to change facts and cover up crimes to save my campaign. Do you really think I care more about the election than I do about the safety of soldiers who come here?

  “If you think that, then you still don’t know me. First and foremost, I was a soldier. When the bullets start flying, God and country go out the window. The truth is, I always fought for my brothers beside me. I would have died for any Ranger on my team, and they would have done the same for me. A few of them did die fighting to protect the rest of us. I have to live with that. Every damn day, I know that I’m here because some very good men—men far more deserving than I—are not.”

  He began to pace, the words pouring from him without his permission. Isabel had a way of doing that to him, triggering more emotions than he wanted to feel, making him admit more than he wanted to share. “It’s too late for me to fight for Vin’s life, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fight for the truth about his death. This isn’t just your battle, Iz. He was your actual brother, but he was a soldier, which made him a brother to me. And he was my employee, which made him my responsibility. I failed him once. I won’t fail him again by letting something happen to you, and I sure as hell won’t let his murderers go unpunished. I don’t give a flying fuck about the consequences for the campaign.”

  Alec’s words hit her in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of her.

  He stood before her in the misty gray light of morning, deep in the forest, a setting so similar to where they’d first met. They’d started as enemies, become reluctant allies, then friends, and eventually—or maybe inevitably—lovers, but she wondered if this was the first time she’d truly seen him.

  She’d been blinded by assumptions and beliefs formed when he first ignored her requests for an investigation, but now she saw the man. Wearing the same clothes he’d thrown on after he’d told her about the dream, he sported two days’ worth of stubble, and his hair, dark and just long enough to show curl, was a wind-blown wreck. He wasn’t the polished politician; he was disheveled, rugged, and the most impossibly handsome man she’d ever seen, let alone touched, tasted, and shared her body with. But it wasn’t the exterior she found so incredibly compelling.

  She stared at him in the dappled light of the forest sun. Before her was a merging of all his incarnations: Ranger, CEO, politician, but most of all, the man she’d spent the night with.

  It was time to decide, once and for all, if she trusted him.

  She took a step toward him—almost involuntary, like he was a magnet she was powerless to resist—and gripped his shirt, pulling his mouth down for a hard kiss.

  He cupped her face but resisted the tug of her hands, halting the kiss before it got started. His eyes probed hers.

  It was his move now. His turn to accept or reject.

  He continued to hold her gaze, unwavering. Reading. Assessing. His jaw set in a firm line.

  Heat flared in his eyes, and slowly, deliberately, his fingers slid up, into her hair. He twisted her curls around his fingers in a tight but painless grip, then slowly, lowered his mouth to hers for a hot, glacier-melting kiss.

  He pushed at the straps on her shoulders, loosening her pack. She squeezed the buckle at her waist, popping it open, and let the pack drop to the ground.

  In one smooth motion, he scooped her up and pinned her to the moss-covered trunk, the one she’d been walking toward. She wrapped her legs around his hips as the heat and slide of his tongue sent shivers down her spine. Thoughts of trust and reporters and campaigns evaporated as her mind went blank.

  All that existed was his tongue tangling with hers. She reveled in the sweet, hot flavor unique to him and tugged at his shirt. He leaned back even as he held her pinned so she could peel his T-shirt from him, revealing a feast of muscles and skin.

  He had the physique of a warrior, and the scars to prove he was no pretty-boy body builder. With her lips, she counted and traced each one, starting at his shoulder, where a thin white line bisected his clavicle.

  She wiggled until he released her so she could stand on her own feet as she explored. His nipples were hard and tight against her tongue. She dropped farther, aiming for a scar that crossed his hip and disappeared under his jeans, but he caught her, pulled her upright, and pressed her against the soft moss.

  “We really don’t have time—” he said, even as he pulled off her top, then cut off his own words when his mouth found her breast. He brushed her bra cup aside and licked her nipple, then sucked on it. Pleasure shot straight to her sex.

  He groaned and yanked open her hiking pants, while she unbuttoned his fly and freed his erection. He pulled her pants and panties down, but they caught on her boots. He grinned, ignoring the complex bootlaces, and slipped one leg between hers, then lifted her, opening her knees wide so he could slip his other leg inside the circle created by her pelvis, legs, and pants. Her thighs wrapped around his hips as he gripped her ass and pressed her back against the trunk. She was trapped, bound at the ankles by boots and pants, her bare sex pressed against his.

  She ground against him. “Condoms?”

  His eyebrows dropped, then he felt below her thighs for his jeans, and grinned. He plucked out a strip of condoms. “These are the same jeans I wore last night to the firing range.”

  She ripped one open and handed the latex circle to him. He held her up with one hand as he sheathed himself with the other. She gripped his shoulders and pressed her center down on his hard cock. “Get inside me.”

  He chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  He thrust into her in a single smooth stroke.

  “Oh yes.” She threaded her fingers through his hair and kissed him, venting her moan of pleasure into his mouth as he thrust a second time, triggering a delicious friction she needed more than air.

  He was thick, hot, and perfect in every way.

  She groaned again, this time loud, wild, unrestrained.

  That would scare any bears away.

  This was insane. And hot. And everything she wanted. He was the CEO of Raptor, and she was taking him deep inside her body, giving him the most private part of herself without regret or reservation.

  She leaned her head against the trunk and clenched tighter on his thrusting cock.

  His eyes drifted closed. He tilted his head back and let out his own guttural groan. She loved watching him this way. The tension that always hovered around him momentarily gone. He wasn’t thinking about his business, his campaign, his abduction, or the attacks on her. He was lost to sensation. To her. She held the power to make him surrender. And it wasn’t just sex. There was more to it than that.

  This was a hell of a lot more than a hot screw against a tree.

  His fingers slid between their bodies and pressed against her clit. Hi
s rhythm changed from fast and urgent to a leisurely stroke that sent immediate jolts of pleasure through her. His mouth found hers, and again, coherent thought vanished.

  Pressure mounted with each thrust. The friction of his fingers intensified the pleasure times a thousand. Sensation built. She whimpered and moaned in his mouth. She couldn’t possibly last another second without splitting in two.

  With one hard stroke, she crested. Orgasm pulsed through her. Not a short, hot flare. He kept her coming with slow, continuous caresses. His own growl of release mixed with hers as he came with a final deep thrust.

  Silence descended as he held her against the trunk. He nuzzled her throat, and she felt his body shake with silent laughter. “Holy crap. I didn’t think anything could beat the firing range, but I was wrong.”

  She laughed with him. She cradled his face, gazed into his clear blue eyes, then kissed him, sliding her tongue deep into his mouth.

  When the kiss ended, he leaned his forehead against hers. “There are a whole lot of things I want to say to you, but this, unfortunately, isn’t the time.”

  She nodded. This thing that was happening between them, she wasn’t ready to put a name to it, and it was probably more than she could handle. All she knew was she simply wanted to live in this moment. Forever.

  Except for the sharp knob that penetrated the thick moss and dug into her spine. She could do without that.

  She wiggled, and he stepped back from the trunk to release her, but then stopped. “It was way easier to get into this position than it will be to get out of it,” he said.

  She gripped his shoulders as he lowered her to the ground and, with some effort, managed to extract his legs from the circle of hers. She adjusted her bra and pulled up her pants. Clothed again, she stood to gather Alec’s T-shirt, which she’d tossed to the side of the stump in the heat of the moment. As she bent to pick up the shirt, something glinted in the moss, catching her eye.