If I couldn’t warm the young woman up, we would both be in trouble. No doctor would scale this mountain until everything was dry, and from the sounds of the weather reports it didn’t look like it was going to dry up anytime soon. The last thing I needed was a dead girl on my hands because she got herself caught in some idiotic storm.
What the fuck was she doing up here anyway?
I bent down to tuck the comforter underneath her body, so her own heat wouldn’t escape. The fire was roaring now, blasting the cabin with heat. She rolled over onto her back and looked up at me, and that was when I noticed how beautiful she was.
She had dark brown hair that was plastered all the way down to her shoulders and hazel eyes that sparkled even though her lips were still the lightest shade of blue. She had soft features and porcelain skin that looked silken and warm even as she trembled. It took all the energy I had just to stand up and away from her. To get my body away from hers so she could warm up and get better.
I had been burned like this once before. By a woman with mesmerizing eyes and a thick gravitational pull. She wiggled her way beyond the bars of my heart and ran amok, draining me of my money and demanding so much more. She was a gold digger of the highest proportions, but I loved her still. I loved her with a flame that had warmed the deepest recesses of my mind. She had pulled me out of my hidey hole and had gotten me to explore the world. She convinced me to whisk her away to Italy so we could tour the vineyards and taste the most decadent wines the country had to offer. She begged me to take her to Germany so she could see her first-ever opera on the most prominent classical stage. She talked me into taking a three-week vacation to Bora Bora. All expenses paid with massages and spa services every day and night.
She drained me of my money faster than I could make it.
But still, I loved her. I loved her free spir
it and her spontaneity. I loved the minx she was in bed and how I could throw her body around for my pleasure. I loved how tight she was around my cock and how she would let me wake her up with my lips between her legs.
All fairytales have an ending, though. And mine wasn’t a Disney rendition. She burned me hotter than the melting point of steel before she left me shivering in the barren wasteland she had left behind. My heart was dripping blood by the time she was finished torturing it, and I vowed I would never allow myself to become that vulnerable again. I would never leave this mountain and I would never venture into town more than I had to. That kept things simple, kept me safe.
But it was her eyes that started it all. Those dazzling hazel eyes that sucked me right in.
Just like this young woman shivering by the fire I had made.
That wasn’t going to happen again. I was going through too much now anyway to become distracted. Our family land was in peril again. A thriving Washington company, Breathline Energies, was ready to give us any offer we wanted so they could drill some dumbass gas line right through the fucking mountains. Profit was all they were after. More money to line their pockets with no matter what they had to blast out of their way. My father was trying his best to communicate that to the company, but they weren’t getting the point. They were harassing my father and sending scouts into the mountains as well as blasting our family to any media outlet that would listen.
My brothers and I were tasked with watching out, so we could pop off warning shots if we saw anyone.
It was why I had been more alert than usual. It was why I wasn’t so quick to write off the sound of a car. If that company was truly desperate, it was possible they would send some poor fucking soul into the mountain range in this kind of weather just to do some tracking.
Was it possible they sent this young girl? Was it possible she was some sort of a distraction? If she was, then this company was sicker than I thought. But the more I studied her as I sat down in my chair, the more I came to terms with the fact that she wasn’t. She was just an innocent girl who had gotten lost and trapped in a storm she could’ve never predicted nor expected.
The question was, what the fuck was I going to do with her now?
Three
Ava
I laid there in front of the fire as the silence of the cabin overcame me. The rain was coming down in sheets as the wind kicked up. It howled against the windows and whistled against the top of the chimney, sending bursts of cold air down that had me shivering all over again. I closed my eyes and tried to will my body to stop shaking, but it wouldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, it continued to expand and contract at a rate that was mind-boggling.
“Travis Benson.”
His voice took me by surprise and I jumped. Why did that name sound so familiar to me? I turned over on the couch cushions and looked up at the man in the chair, his eyes cast down towards me. His hands rested on the arms of the chair as his legs relaxed, spread wide for all to see. I felt this warmth overcome my entire body as it slowly stopped shivering, and I decided to blame it on the flickering flames of the fire.
Anything else made things much more complicated.
“Are you thirsty?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I’m Ava Lucas.”
The man cocked his head, almost as if he was studying me. His eyes danced along my rigid form as I laid on the couch cushions and his hands began to grip the armrests of the chair. Was something wrong? Had I said something to upset him?
Shit, was this guy some kind of serial killer?
He didn’t look like one. There was a kindness behind his amber eyes that denoted a sense of compassion. Psychopaths weren’t capable of that, right? I mean, I was no psychologist or anything, but I was pretty sure psychopaths weren’t capable of caring. But I had nothing to go on. I had no idea where I was, I had no idea how far away I was from California, and I had no idea when this rain was going to let up so I could get the hell out of here.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“Kettle, Washington. Just outside, in the mountainous terrain,” Travis said.
“Great,” I said with a sigh.