by Em Petrova
“I think it’s safe to move now,” she whispered into the silence.
Penn’s chest, plastered to her spine, heaved. Slowly, he peeled himself off the tree. Her thigh muscles ached from bracing herself so tightly on an angle to resist the skid, and now they quaked like two Christmas jellies.
He released her, and she wavered before getting her footing. Her mind whirled with all that happened to her. And here the plane crash seemed like a lot. She shook her head, trying to clear it while listening to Penn shoot off commands to his men.
“Sound off, goddammit! Lipton.” He paused. “Lipton?”
Cora clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking. Staring at Penn’s face, she saw the weight of leadership close him off completely behind a granite mask. He suddenly swiped a hand over his face and moved to the next name, which gave Cora reason to believe Lipton had answered.
By the time he reached Gasper, she was beginning to believe all had survived.
“Does anybody have eyes on Gasper?” His rough tone spoke volumes about how much he cared for his teammates.
After what felt like an hour but could only have been minutes, Penn dropped his head and closed his eyes as if in prayer of thanksgiving. “Beckett. You got him?” Whatever the man responded with had Penn nodding.
Cora unlaced her fingers to hold onto his arm. “They’re all okay?”
“Accounted for. Jesus Christ, I don’t know how but everyone managed to survive that.”
“It can only be your training,” she said.
“Or dumb luck. Is it safe to move or are we going to get hit by another wall of snow?” The strain of the situation had carved a deep line between his dark brows.
She looked up the ridge toward the higher elevation. “There’s always more snow. But my guess is it’s okay to move.”
“It won’t be easy to regroup. We’re spread out all over, and by the sounds of it, Gasper might have a broken ankle.”
“Oh no.”
He looked to where the camp had been. The peak of one tent rose out of the thick snow, and the rest were nowhere to be seen. “We’ve got what we’re carrying and nothing else.”
“I know ways to survive.”
He met her stare. “Now that the storm let up, I’m calling for—” He went quiet, listening hard to the voices in his ear. She watched his mask drop over his rugged features, confessing nothing of his emotions or what was going on.
“Restrain him. If you can get him to talk, do it. We need every bit of intel we can get.”
Cora was left to search Penn’s eyes for answers. He set his lips into a line and his jaw appeared to be unmoving stone. “Give me your pack, since I no longer have more than my day pack.”
“I can carry…” She trailed off, seeing the look on his face. She slipped the strap off her shoulder and handed the backpack to him.
He let the straps out all the way to fit it around his thick shoulders and then clutched her by the arm. “What do you suppose the best path down is?”
She blew out a breath, assessing the landscape that had changed in a matter of seconds. “Stick to the trees. The open areas will have the deepest snow.”
He nodded.
“What are the locations of the others?”
“Two were wiped off the ridge with the avalanche…and a third man who isn’t Xtreme Ops.”
Her heart started to pound. “Yahontov?”
He shook his head. “Someone else who’d been about to jump off the ridge after his buddy rather than be captured by us. The snow hit him first and carried him down to the valley.”
“And he’s alive?”
“Yes. And there may be more survivors, so we need to watch our backs.” He adjusted his grip on his weapon as he said this.
Cora had to admit as they picked slowly down the ridge, sticking to the trees, that she wanted this ordeal to be over. She didn’t regret offering to guide the team—not at all—but she wanted to regain some sense of normalcy to her life. In days she’d gone from a pampered daughter to being in the thick of the most danger imaginable.
She hadn’t fully ingested that her father was gone let alone being dragged at knifepoint to camp, living through an avalanche or anything left to come. There was also the not-so-small point of having the best sex of her life with Penn.
After a long hour of walking, it was clear that the route was impassable. “This snow’s deeper than you are tall. We can’t chance it,” Penn said.
The crampons they wore on the ridge to dig into the ice and rock would be worthless now, if any of them still carried them.
“We could make snowshoes from branches.”
He cocked a brow. “You know how to do that? Or course you do.”
She smiled.
“And yes, I still think you’re bad ass, Cora. I know it’s been worrying you since that man caught you.”
She lowered her eyes to the ground and once more felt the sting of his knife blade biting into her throat. “Thanks, Penn.”
“Every single one of us has gotten into a bad situation one time or another. It doesn’t make us lesser—it makes us human. Before we try out your snowshoe idea, let’s try this way.” They turned and headed across the land.
After another hour of walking, she felt her energy stores drain completely. “I need to stop,” she told him.
He examined her close, obviously assessing her condition. What did he see to make his eyes spark that way?
“Sit here and I’ll see what I’ve got for rations. Do you have a canteen in your pack?”
She nodded.
“Drink it. We can always boil snow for water.”
She unzipped a compartment of her backpack that he lowered to the ground and located her canteen. As she drew small sips, she lifted her hand to her throat for the first time and felt the dried blood of a scab formed.
He eyed her, jaw set again. “I’d like to kill that motherfucker for marking you.”
Her stomach tumbled at his words. The threat shouldn’t sound so hot, but hearing such an oath coming from the big, hardened special ops captain set her blood humming in her veins.
“I’m all right,” she said softly.
Slanting a glance at her, he continued to search in his daypack. When he came out with a food ration, he read the label and shocked her with a smile. “Here. Your favorite.”
He passed her the MRE. She read the label and smiled too. “Pizza. Mmm.”
He drew out another for himself without bothering to read what it was before tearing into the packaging. Neither spoke as they prepped their meals. She drank the chocolate protein powder drink and worked on some breadsticks with cheese. None of it was bad, and she couldn’t believe how hungry she was. After her ordeals, she surprised herself, but stress took a toll on a body, and she put hers through extreme conditions these past few days.
When she lifted her warmed pizza slice to her lips, she caught Penn staring at her. “Wanna trade before I take a bite?” she asked.
“No. I’m fine with…whatever the fuck this is.” He lifted the packet to read it finally, and she laughed. “Says chicken tetrazzini, but I don’t know what that’s supposed to taste like.” He shrugged.
“What is your favorite meal? You never told us.”
He considered her question. “I’d have to say my momma’s meatloaf.”
Her smile widened.
“You making fun o’ my choice?” The drawl in his voice seemed to thicken.
“Not at all. My momma made good meatloaf too. My dad”—she wrinkled her nose—“not so much.” While it hurt to mention her father, it felt good too, like a balm, a warm fire she could always sit down beside and take a moment to remember.
Penn held her stare and then reached out to cradle her face. “I’m sorry for all you’ve been through. If I could airlift you out right this damn minute—”
She shook her head, aware of the warmth of his palm against her cheek. “I want to see this through. I want to know I helped avenge my father in some way.”
/> He leaned in, and she did too. When their foreheads touched, she closed her eyes and drank in the closeness.
“How’s the pizza?” he rumbled.
“Not half bad.” She opened her eyes and found him staring at her. The intimate moment stretched on for what felt like an eternity.
She waited for what she wanted most—his mouth on hers—but it never came. He withdrew and scuffed his knuckles over his jaw. Disappointment surged through her, but she bit the pizza to cover her reaction.
They weren’t out here for personal pleasures. That night together had been a fluke, a blip in time when she needed comfort and he had offered it in the best—hottest—of ways.
He went still. By now she knew that the tilt of his head meant one of the men was communicating with him.
“Keep interrogating him,” he ordered in a hard tone. Then he looked at Cora. “We need to go.”
“What’s happening?”
“Hepburn can speak Russian.”
She blinked. Of all the men who she would guess to speak Russian, it wasn’t the man with the deep Southern drawl.
“And?” she prompted.
Penn stood and began shoving items inside his pack. “He’s got the prisoner talking. He says they’re meeting a ship.”
Chapter Eight
Penn had a hard time reconciling the fact that he and his team had put Cora in danger.
Through association, she could have been killed, and he couldn’t allow that to happen again. He had to find a way to lift her out to safety. Too many variables to factor in, and he didn’t like playing guessing games with other people’s lives.
His first mistake as captain of Xtreme Ops was to take her on as guide. They would have faced challenges and setbacks without her help, but she would be sitting in some cozy building safe and sound. Grieving alone, that was true. But safe.
As she picked her path confidently through the deep snow by using a long stick to determine the depth before she stepped, he couldn’t stop looking at her. The luster of her skin and the rosy pink in her cheeks from the cold both enticed and tormented him. When she reached a massive rock to scramble over, determination lit on her face and a small crinkle appeared between her brows as she concentrated on making a good climb.
Suddenly, she drew up so fast she stumbled. “Oh my God!”
In one step he saw what she’d come across. He threw out an arm to push her behind him even as he brought his rifle up.
The wolf turned his head, revealing dried blood on its jaws as it tore at the flesh of the dead man. One look was all it took for Penn to fix the image in his brain. The shooter they hadn’t recovered but the wolf had been tracking the entire time, bearing a bullet wound through the artery in his arm, and a wolf taking advantage of a meal.
Cora gripped Penn’s biceps in a vise lock, her fingertips digging into his muscle even through the layers. She tugged on him to go, and he understood the wolf didn’t have interest in anything but feeding.
He stepped backward slowly, and she did as well. They eased off, but he kept his sights trained on the predator the entire time. Once they got a good distance away, he slipped an arm around Cora and drew her against his chest.
“Oh God, how awful.” Her voice cracked.
He cupped her head to him. “I wish you never saw that.”
“Me too. Did you see he used a tourniquet on his arm?”
“Yes. That’s why there wasn’t much of a blood trail.”
She dragged in a deep breath and released it in a puff of cold fog. When he tipped her head up to look at her, he saw the horror in her eyes, but they were dry. No tears.
Strong woman. The pride he held for his teammates extended to her as well. If Lipton, Broshears, Hepburn, Gasper and Beckett held a place of esteem in his heart, so did Cora Hutton.
She shed no tears following her ordeal with the shooter holding her at knifepoint. And this event, like everything else, she sucked up and barreled on with life.
“Let’s find another route down,” he suggested.
“Yes.”
They circled to the left, farther out of their way but hopefully with no more chances of running into wolves. After a half hour of walking, gaining enough distance from what they’d witnessed, Penn saw some of the pinched expression ease from her beautiful face.
Her boot slipped as she jumped off a rock, and he caught her elbow to steady her. When she looked up into his eyes, Penn felt it—the deep pang of knowledge about his feelings for her.
If he was a visitor in Alaska, he would invite her on a date for pizza. He might make it an extended stay to spend more time with her. In his lifetime, he’d come across plenty of beautiful women—slept with many of them too. Socialites and mayors’ daughters. He’d had a whirlwind week with an ambassador in Paris while trying to sort out an American citizen’s role in a crime. But all of them faded to the background when compared to Cora. And none made him want to stay.
He might be based in Alaska now, but that didn’t mean he could dally with the woman. She deserved a man who was there for her, someone who could warm her at night and—
He cut off the thought. Allowing daydreams of Cora in another man’s arms would drive him fucking insane.
He wished to hell he wasn’t so possessive by nature, but now he understood his brother so much better. All those times he razzed Nash about his wife and child, or hell, his refusal to leave Texas where he was born and bred while Penn made the world his playground, hadn’t affected Nash one bit. His brother’s life was his family.
“You seem worried.” Cora’s quiet tone lifted the edges of his armor and worked under.
He considered her statement. “I’m never really worried.”
She threw him a glance before returning her attention to her footing while he surveyed their surroundings for danger. “You weren’t worried at all when the avalanche wiped out your men and some of them wouldn’t answer?”
“I knew they would sooner or later.”
“Ah. And when that man had his knife at my throat?”
His gaze dropped to the thin slash on her throat, superficial enough it didn’t require first aid, and yet he wished he could bear the wound instead of her.
They walked farther. After a while, she snorted. “Good talk.”
He let her take a few paces from him. He should put distance between them. He should damn well stop thinking of the impossible.
He shouldn’t be staring at her puffy round ass in those snow pants and getting hard.
But he knew what was beneath the thick cloth.
Closing the gap, he grabbed her arm. Whirled her to face him. And stared into her eyes. She issued a soft rasp of a sigh, and it was all the invitation he required—he kissed her. The soft cushion of her lips set him on edge even as it felt like coming home.
She dug her fingers into his nape, and he pulled her flush to his body, allowing her to feel every inch of his arousal. When she sucked in a gasp, he knew that she was more than aware of how much he wanted her. He just couldn’t let her know how he actually felt.
He took control of the kiss, bowing her over his arm to ravish her mouth. Each devouring sweep of his tongue made her respond with all the fire he knew burned inside this woman. She was so fucking amazing, and he didn’t want to end their time together even as he ached to have her safe.
Passion flooded his insides, wiping nearly everything else aside as he plundered her for long, tantalizing, cock-throbbing seconds.
When he jerked her upright and stared into her eyes, he realized how hard he was breathing and that his heart raced as if he’d sprinted for miles without slowing.
Confusion backlit her blue-gray eyes—eyes that gripped him by the heartstrings and the balls depending on her look.
He released her and waited for her to continue on their path to the ridge to locate the rest of the team. She didn’t ask why he’d kissed her just now or why he never answered her question. The stoic woman seemed to accept everything from dangers to male
advances.
He twisted his lips into a scowl.
“Have you ever been on this ridge before?” he asked for no particular reason but to hear her voice. Now what the hell was the matter with him?
“On the other side.”
“What’s on the other side?”
“A cave that goes deep into the rock.”
“Did you find anything there?” He moved up next to her.
“Besides gnawed bones of a lot of animals?”
He stifled a groan. “You went into an animal’s den?”
“Wolves, we thought, and yes, we did find something else. There are carvings in the rock from thousands of years ago, according to the man I was exploring with.”
“Man?”
She landed her stare on him. “Yes. I told you that I team up with various groups.”
“But you said a man.”
She set her hand on her rounded, puffy hip. His cock stirred behind his own layers of clothing. “Yes, I spent several nights exploring a cave alone with a man. Would you like details about him? A name maybe so you can look him up and satisfy yourself that he doesn’t have a criminal record?”
He grunted. “Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“I’m not the one giving you the third degree about people you work with.”
She was right. Dammit, he was losing his shit over this woman, in every possible way. He had to step on the brakes before he drove them both crazy.
“Did you video the markings you found in the cave?”
“You can find it on my YouTube channel. I believe some of the photos are also found in the Museum of the North in Fairbanks.”
He watched her set off walking again.
“Why is it you’re unmarried, Cora?”
She stopped again and faced him. “Why are you?” The sass burrowed into him, spiking his arousal.
“Because of what I do. I can’t bring a woman or a family into this lifestyle.”
Her expression didn’t reveal a hint as to her feelings about his statement. “Same.”
“You aren’t married for the same reason?”
“That’s right.” She started walking again, and he followed.
When he caught her by the hand and trapped her fingers into his palm, she swung on him. “Why are you asking these things, Penn? We made out. Had sex. Made out some more. We both know anything more between us will never work. You offered me comfort when I needed it most, and I’m grateful.”
