by Em Petrova
What would she do after this was all over? When would it be over? She knew what she was getting into by offering to guide the team, yet she had life concerns that wouldn’t wait—such as burying her father. She didn’t even know his last wishes. Only thing she knew was where to find his will in the bottom drawer of his dresser with other important documents such as the deed to their cabin and the ownership records for their planes.
Plane, she reminded herself. The Hutton Husky lay in a twisted mangle of wreckage, all because of that criminal.
So much hung in the air with no answers to be found that she shoved it all behind a locked door deep inside herself.
She’d lost herself more than a little last night. The need to be touched, to feel alive and real, had thrown all her good sense out the window, and now she had to face the man she’d slept with.
She slept with him not once but twice.
Lifting a hand, she scrubbed it over her face. Then she caught a whiff of Penn’s masculine woodsy scent on her skin and issued a low moan.
Dammit. What had she done?
Gained the most pleasure she had in her entire life, sure. But what had she done? What did she do now?
She had to crawl out of this tent and face him like the confident woman her daddy raised her to be.
She could do this.
I can do this.
She didn’t budge from her pallet and instead allowed her mind to drift over her night in Penn’s arms. How the hell did the man know all her trigger points and exactly how to drive her the craziest? She experienced the most intense orgasms of her life. Did the government train their operatives to touch a woman’s body like that?
A sigh rippled past her lips as she replayed some of the moments. His powerful thrusts…and God, his cock was huge. She’d always been on the side of the it’s-not-how-big-it’s-how-you-use-it argument…until now.
She had to quit thinking about this, put on her boots and face the music. Or in this case, the dark, smoldering eyes.
When she sat up, her ab muscles twinged. She’d worked muscles she didn’t know she had last night. After she tied her boots, she paused to roll up her bedroll and blanket. She opened the tent flap and stuck her head out first.
Then abruptly pulled it back inside.
Oh God. They were all out there, and her burning face would betray her even if she managed to squelch all her noises the previous night.
A low chuckle sounded, and she knew one of them was laughing at her. Three, two…
She exited the tent and straightened to her full height, shoulders straight and chin in the air with all the decorum she could muster.
Three of the men crouched on the ground, eating what looked to be oatmeal from MRE pouches. Lipton stuffed a sugar cookie in his mouth. Penn and Broshears stood facing her, making her wonder if Penn hadn’t been staring at the tent waiting for her to emerge.
She completely ignored the man.
“Ahem.”
“Hep, even when you clear your throat it sounds Southern,” Lipton told him.
“Heard a few sounds coming from your tent last night, Captain.” Hepburn shot him a grin.
“There were shadows moving too,” Gasper spoke up with a cheesy grin of his own.
Damn. Shit. Hell. Cora groaned, wishing a nice sink hole would open up in the land right about now and suck her inside.
“Dude, how are you even standin’ after all that?” Lipton’s tease got all the guys laughing.
Cora jerked her gaze to Penn—and found the idiot grinning like a teen who’d just scored with the prom queen.
Oh. My. God. She wanted to die now.
Seeing he wasn’t in the least concerned that his team knew what had taken place between them shocked her even more. She expected Penn to want to cover up their actions. It wasn’t befitting of…well, a man in his position. Instead, they all laughed and jested about his ‘moves’ while her cheeks scorched as if she sat on the face of the sun.
“Our guide looks plenty warm after being in that tent.” Lipton’s gaze landed on her burning cheeks.
“I’m glad you’re all bonding over my embarrassment,” she huffed.
Penn walked to his pack and pulled out a drink pouch. He tossed it to her, and she caught it out of reflex. “Better hydrate,” he said and the whole camp bent forward, clutching at their stomachs as they laughed their asses off at her expense.
She ripped open the pouch and sucked the strange energy drink down as though six men weren’t aware that she’d been loved and loved thoroughly. Once the pouch was empty, she crumpled it and tossed it back at Penn. It hit the snow, but she didn’t wait to see if he picked it up because she turned and stalked into the bush for a minute of privacy.
Damn men. Had Penn disclosed all the naughty details? She’d gut him if he did.
When she found a spot of solitude, she unfastened her pants and began to push them down her hips to relieve herself, but she didn’t get that far, because a cold blade pressed into her throat.
“Don’t scream,” a deep voice with a thick accent commanded.
Panic ripped upward through her gut and set off panic alarms in her brain. Her temples suddenly throbbed as blood and adrenaline hit her system.
Think, Hutton. Did she recognize that voice? Was he Ron Smith—or rather Yahontov?
The knife dug into her throat, and she felt her eyes bulge as terror stole over her senses. She couldn’t lose focus. She had to keep her cool to stay alive—and her father would want that. She must do it for him.
She smelled the blood on the man, along with a thick stench of infection. This was either the injured shooter or Yahontov, but either way, he wouldn’t last long with an infection of that degree out here in the bush.
“You’re hurt. The wolves are tracking you,” she told him.
“Shut up, bitch!” The blade sliced into her throat, and a scream ripped from her lips, cut off when he whipped her around to face him and replaced the blade with his vise-like fingers around her windpipe. She choked out and couldn’t draw another breath inward. She struggled.
“You’re going to be my shield when we walk into camp. Then you’re going to give me some supplies. Understand me?”
She was about to pass out. Sparkles flitted in front of her eyes, speckled with black furry splotches.
“Do you understand, bitch?” he demanded.
Somehow, she managed to nod.
He released his stranglehold on her neck and whipped her forward with his knife at her throat again. This time she felt the heat coming off him in waves—the man was fevered, about to expire, and she only needed to survive long enough to walk into camp, where she knew all hell would break loose as the Xtreme Ops team ended this man and saved her.
“Walk!”
She did, putting one foot in front of the other. The toe of her boot caught on a snow-covered log, and she pitched forward. For a dizzying second, she knew with total certainty that she’d cut her own jugular with her action, but then she took another step and another.
Blood warmed her neck where the blade scratched through the first layer of flesh, but her injury was nothing compared to this man’s. Not Yahontov, she realized when he whipped her around to face him. This man was shorter and stockier than her father’s murderer and had green eyes. With every step she moved toward camp, she regained a bit more of her senses.
He limped. His left leg was injured and caused a hitching gait that made their walk not only hell but painstaking. She gulped back the rough dry sobs that raised in her throat. She would not cry or show her fear in any way. She would calmly lead this man into camp and let the special ops team do their worst to him.
Her stomach felt like a cesspool of bile, and her pants slipped down her hips as she walked. Hate and fury warred with her nausea and fear.
They rounded a cluster of trees she hoped would shield her while she relieved herself and the tent came into view. The tent she shared with Penn.
How to alert the team that she was here and
brought danger with her? If she so much as screamed, she knew he’d jam that blade so deep into her neck there wouldn’t be anything but darkness. Her head spun, and her feet stopped working.
He dragged her the last two feet as he stepped out into the camp.
Across the place where the fire had been, she met Penn’s gaze. His dark eyes penetrated into her—through her—and then dipped down to take in the fact that her pants were somewhere around her knees and she stood at this man’s mercy in her underwear.
“Nobody move or I’ll kill her!” the man bellowed. Spit flecked onto her face, and she grimaced as that bile bubbled into her throat. “Drop your weapons!”
Not one man did. It was six against an unarmed man who stunk of putrefying flesh and cheese. She heard the click of a weapon. Her captor’s hand shook as he pressed the knife upward, digging into her throat even more.
The first shot rang out, and she waited for the sting of the blade and painless nothing to claim her. Instead, a huge weight launched her backward off her feet and crushed her to the freezing earth.
When she pushed upward on her elbows, she felt the first rumblings of the earth giving warning before she heard it.
“Nobody shoot!” she screamed until her vocal cords shook.
The captor turned her direction with a knowing look. He knew what would come if they fired shots too—and it was his out.
Penn could barely see through the haze of fury building by the second. All he could see was Cora with her pants down and in that bastard’s grip. His knife at her throat had almost sent Penn into a blind rage, but he’d found enough presence of mind to stop before he attacked and ripped the guy’s balls out through his mouth.
“Don’t shoot! The ridge isn’t stable! We’ll go down in an avalanche,” she cried.
Penn automatically braced his legs as if that could stop him if the ridge decided to spit him off the side into the frozen river below.
The shooter’s pant leg was soaked with black blood, and his hands were covered in dried blood as well. But Penn didn’t like the wild look in his eyes the most. It was a look of desperation—he’d do anything to leave with his life.
Penn couldn’t allow Cora to be his means of escape.
In an instant, his brain kicked in. Past hostage situations blew through his mind, and he knew what must be done. He gestured to Lipton, who’d been close enough to take a shot at the man’s arm while Broshears sent her launching into the snow out of danger.
Broshears got to his feet again just as Penn sprinted across the camp, barreling full steam at the injured fugitive.
When fear won and a man found himself under siege, adrenaline kicked in. He’d seen more than one dead man walking—or running in this case. He set off through the trees with Penn on his heels and Gasper and Beckett flanking him. Hepburn cut around to the side to get a shot, but Penn waved at him to stand down.
Through the thick brush they chased him. The pines funneled straight to the edge of the ridge near the place where they’d cut upward to find the shooter in the first place. Running through the tightly packed pine trunks would be impossible.
“There’s no way out,” he bellowed to the fugitive. His leg wound had broken open again and was dripping freely, leaving a thick trail in the snow.
Penn pushed harder, faster, surging forward and closing the gap. As soon as he swiped out a hand to grab the man by the collar, the fugitive leaped.
Penn blinked at what he was seeing—the man’s legs without any ground beneath them. He kicked as he fell, throwing himself off the tall, jagged ridge to evade them.
Skidding on the snow, Penn stopped just short of following him, and he gripped onto a trunk to stop himself. He watched the man fall in what felt like slow motion. His head struck a rock ledge, and the boneless manner his body slumped told him long before he hit bottom, he was dead.
Hepburn pulled up next to Penn, breathing hard. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Penn stared at the dead man for a long minute.
“Take two men down and search his body.”
“What do I do with it after that? Try to bury him?”
“We’ll send word that the body needs to be recovered, but leave it.”
“Yes, Captain.” Hepburn’s drawl didn’t hold its usual pep.
Penn’s mind locked onto Cora as he turned from the ledge. That motherfucker had put his hands on her, and he hadn’t been made to pay near enough. A roar lodged in his throat, and he ran the rest of the distance to the camp.
He saw her sitting on a log holding a cup between her hands. Steam wafted from it, though she didn’t bother to take a drink. Kneeling beside her, Lipton looked up as Penn approached.
“Leave us,” Penn grated out.
Lipton stood and disappeared without a word. Penn didn’t need to look around to know that his men had left them alone and he could do and say as he pleased.
God, her hat had fallen off, leaving her head bare. Her blondish brown hair looked wispier to him, lending her a more vulnerable appearance. He remembered the bead of blood he’d seen well around that son of a bitch’s knife and dropped to his knees in front of her.
“Cora.” Hell, that wasn’t even his voice.
She continued to stare at her mug of low quality coffee ration nobody in their right mind wanted to drink. Her hands trembled, and he put out his to take the cup from her. He set it aside and pulled her roughly into his arms.
She felt brittle against his chest, like a bird fallen from its nest. What he wouldn’t give right now to hear her sass and no-bullshit attitude.
Cradling her head in his palm, he held her to him. “Cora. Hell… Angel, you’re all right now. I’ve got you.”
He expected tears like when she learned her daddy was dead, and it terrified him more that she remained dry-eyed and stoic. He withdrew to look at her face. Her eyes were wide and unblinking.
Shock—she’s in shock.
“Cora, drink this.” He brought the mug to her lips, tipping the brown, conspicuous liquid until it hit her lips and she sipped. His own hand tremored, and he steeled his muscles to keep it from doing so. After another sip, she twisted her face away.
He sat and pulled her into his lap. At some point, either she or Lipton had fastened her pants, but the glimpse he’d gotten of her blue cotton panties was branded on his mind. Even if she got past this event, he sure as fuck never would.
He smoothed his hand over her hair. “It’s okay, Angel. I’ve got you.”
“Penn, there was nothing I could do. I didn’t want to lead him to the camp, but I couldn’t think of a way out!”
He held her a step from him. “Jesus, Cora, do you think I’m angry with you? You had no choice but to walk or be killed.” He rocked her. Fuck, so much for distancing himself from this woman—he wouldn’t be able to let her out of his sight now.
She closed her fist on his jacket front, and he covered it with his own hand, squeezing tight as he breathed in the scent of her hair. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“Are you saying this for your benefit or mine?” The strength in her tone had him looking into her eyes again. The staring shocked expression in the blue-gray depths was lessened but not completely gone.
He cupped her delicate jaw. “Both, I think. Cora…” How to ask if that man raped her? Violated her soul with his black evil?
She looked into his eyes and seemed to understand what he couldn’t ask. “No. That didn’t happen.”
“He didn’t put his hands on you? Didn’t try to…”
She shook her head.
He made a noise in his throat that he’d never made before. “Thank God.” Flexing his arms, he drew her against him again.
“Penn?” she said after a minute.
“Yes, Angel.”
“If he had raped me, what would you have done to him?”
He met her stare. “I would bring him back from the dead to kill him with my bare hands.”
The earth vibrated. Clumps of snow dropped from th
e high tree branches.
Cora barely had time to react.
She threw out her arms. “Penn! The ridge! It’s gonna go!”
Penn’s expression hardened as he shot them both to their feet. “Avalanche!” he bellowed into this comms device to his team, probably blowing their eardrums in the process of making them safe.
The snow started to shift under their feet, and Cora reached for her backpack at the last second. She barely snagged the strap and threw it over her shoulder before they started sliding. She looked up to see the wall of snow coming for them.
“Grab a tree!” She did, and Penn wrapped himself around her and the trunk. She tucked her face down to avoid the worst of the blast of snow as it raged in a tsunami wave down the ridge. The thunder in her ears deafened, and she felt Penn lock his arms tighter, keeping them both riveted in place while the earth rushed by them.
From the corner of her eye, she saw their tents whip by, torn from the ground with the force. Next, a solid block of ice and compacted snow came from a higher flat above, breaking into large chunks as it cut through the trees.
Her heart raced. She’d never been in the middle of an avalanche before, but she’d seen a few from the air with her father. She’d heard of plenty of hikers and skiers losing their lives from such a disaster and thought of the five team members somewhere on this ridge. If they were trained in the ocean waters, were they trained to survive an avalanche? The key was not to be buried completely.
The bark of the tree cut into her cheek, but she hardly cared for her own discomfort when the team might not make it. She only knew them a short time, but she cared for them all.
Only fleeting seconds passed.
The rumble from above seemed to quiet, and down below them on the ridge, she heard a faint holler right before the quake of snow stopped. She heard another huge plop hit the valley below. She detected the cracking of ice on the frozen river. Then nothing.
Her arms quivered from holding so tight to the tree. She couldn’t imagine how Penn must feel. Minutes passed where neither moved. She listened hard and heard no more rumbles.
