by Bianca James
The man giving the orders entered Jarrad’s peripheral vision. He looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t work out why. The man hooked his meaty hand under Jarrad’s chin and lifted his head up to the light. Jarrad hunched and closed his eyes to the blinding light.
“Does this one look sedated to you? Give more. Give more . . .” He waved to hurry the other man along, plainly terrified that Jarrad might burst out of his restraints and tear him apart with his bare hands.
But there was no chance of that. The drug had rendered Jarrad dormant and weak as a kitten. He’d let Elle down.
As the oversized steel needle painfully penetrated deep into his shoulder muscle, the last thought through Jarrad’s mind before the drug dulled his human senses as well was…what did they want?
Somehow, the cartel had found out that the Bear Mountain Men were somehow special and could be used for their own purposes if properly motivated. They hadn’t come to kill them. They’d come to capture them and their soul mates.
Elle could hear what was going on, despite the cloth sack over her head. She pieced together the puzzle at the same time as Jarrad and realized that she was still of value to her captors. But what happened when she had served her purpose. It felt as though a heavy weight was crushing her chest, choking her breath as she thought of losing her baby and Jarrad. Forever.
But the pain was not for her alone. She felt the tears on her cheeks as she thought of Jarrad’s pain at losing them all while he remained in captivity.
Then her pain was cut short by the deafening roar of a gunshot.
Chapter 22
With air support from Spider and his new toy, Erin felt ready for anything. Finally she was playing the role of the covert secret agent she’d always dreamed of. Fighting evil and saving the world. Bear Mountain was a part of the world, wasn’t it?
“We only get one shot at this,” Jack warned, the curved stock of his H&K nestled in his shoulder, ready to fire.
“I’ve got it,” Erin snapped back.
“No need to get the cranky pants on. I’m a professional. I do this for real. You’re a…”
“A what?” she challenged.
“Reporter?” he ventured weakly.
“Nosy Parker”
“What?” He quirked a brow innocently.
“That’s what you called me, wasn’t it? Nosey Parker? That’s what they call me at work when they think I can’t hear them.”
“Well, right now Miss Parker, you’re my only backup. Spider can keep our flanks covered, but I need you to help me sweep the room when I go in.”
“I still think me not having a gun is a bad idea.”
Jack let out a patient sigh. This was about the tenth time she’d mentioned that. The girl had some serious firearm issues.
“All you have to do is be an extra pair of eyes and call ‘eleven o’clock’ or ‘nine o’clock’ or wherever the hell I have to shoot. I’ll sweep the right side of the room, you call out the targets on the left. Easy. Got it?”
Her lips pouted like a petulant child but she nodded in reluctant agreement.
“Okay, then. We’re Oscar Mike.” Jack confirmed.
“We’re what?”
“Oscar Mike. ‘On the Move,” he explained.
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to say ‘on the move’?”
Jack shook his head. Women…
Everything happened at the same time, but also like it was in playing in slow motion.
Jack gently tested the door handle.
Unlocked.
They were getting cocky. Too reliant on their guards to keep them safe. He doubted they’d had military training and if they had, it was second rate. At least he had that advantage in his side, even if he was outmanned and outgunned.
Quietly, he levered the handle and gently shouldered the door open, both hands holding his weapon in firing position.
Erin saw him. He was standing next to the head of a woman strapped to a bench, her head covered in a black sack. She was about to call ‘ten o’clock’ when the man drew his pistol faster than she thought possible and fired.
Jack had drawn a bead on a rail thin, dough faced man with a syringe in his hand. The man dropped the syringe in his haste to raise his hands in the air. Pointing a H&K machine pistol close range at someone can have that effect.
Movement caught his attention on the other side of the room.
Just as Erin started to call out to him, Jack turned his head and started to bring his weapon to bear on the hostile target.
That’s when he saw Elle. Between him and the shooter. He didn’t have a clean shot.
Elle! The baby!
He had to trust his instincts. He fired. Two rounds in quick succession hit the gunman in the shoulder, enough to throw his aim high. High enough to miss Jack and Erin and that’s all that mattered. He hit the floor, trailing blood down the wall against which he’d been thrown from the impact, his shoulder a bloody ruin.
In the distance, they heard a few sporadic bursts from the Mi-28’s cannon. The sound of the bursts was moving away. Chasing the remaining cartel goons off the mountain. Their mountain.
Dough face had recovered his wits enough to make a dive for Jarrad’s abandoned weapon in the corner of the room.
Before Jack could bring his weapon around, Erin leaped toward Jarrad’s gun, sliding the last few feet along the floor like she was stealing home plate. She snatched the weapon out of reach of the runty little Russian, Armenian or whatever the hell he was and poked the barrel right in his face.
“Go ahead, make my day, you little fucker” she snarled through bared teeth.
She looked over to Jack. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve so wanted a chance to say that, pretty much my entire life.”
Jack wasn’t about to argue with a woman, especially a woman holding a gun.
Chapter 23
Cassie saw them first. Her heart nearly burst.
“Rosie, they’re here,” she called out.
“All of them?” Rosie asked hesitantly as she emerged from the diner’s kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Well…yeah, you could kind of say that. They seemed to have picked up an extra, by the looks of things.” Cassie scurried to the door, hurling it open and ran toward Jack. Jack had come back to her. Like he promised.
Cassie hated being kept from the action, from her man. She was determined that this would be the last time. From now on, they were a team and whatever Jack had to deal with, she’d be at his side.
“Who’s that?” she asked, nodding her head toward Erin, who was walking closer to Spider than Cassie thought she really needed to.
Jack laughed. “You’re going to love her. She’s another city girl who knows how to shoot and look after herself and…”
Cassie gestured for him to continue.
“Promise you won’t get mad?” Jack winced at the thought of that.
Cassie planted her hands firmly on her hips and fixed him with a harsh you better get on with it stare.
“She saved my life,” Jack said it quickly, as if that might lessen the impact.
It didn’t.
“You were in that much danger and you wouldn’t let me help? But it’s alright for her to save your ass?” Cassie pointed right at Erin, her eyes blazing with fury and a touch of jealousy.
Jack recognized that look. Nothing good ever came after that. He was about to man up and come to Erin’s defense when Erin squeezed Spider’s fingers briefly then broke away toward Cassie.
“Hi, I’m Erin.” She offered her hand to Cassie who had little choice but to shake it. “I’ve heard so much about you, Jack hasn’t stopped talking about you the whole way back.”
Jack had no clue what she was talking about. He’d hardly said a word the entire walk back to the town.
“I’ve been dying to meet you,” Erin added as she threw her arms around Cassie, giving her a solid hug and a peck on the cheek.
Jack stared in amazement. The fire in Cass
ie’s eyes dulled and she returned Erin’s peck.
“So what’s this I hear about you saving my man’s life?”
“Oh, that…he does exaggerate, doesn’t he? You should be so proud of him. All of them,” she looked around at her new friends, “they did an awesome job saving Elle and running those Eastern European fuckers off the mountain for good.”
“That’ll cost you a quarter in the swear jar,” Rosie called out from the steps of the diner. “This is no place for that kind of language, young lady.”
Erin looked to Spider for guidance. She had no idea who this woman was or if she was serious.
“She’s with me, Rosie. Don’t be giving her a hard time.”
“Maybe that’s why I’m giving her a hard time.” Rosie winked at Erin. The old lady’s eyes gleamed with mischief, despite her age and stooped stature.
“Ya’ll look like you could use some good cooking and coffee. Maybe something a little stronger, too.” She held the door open for them and waved them through.
Hot coffee cups warmed the cold hands that cradled them. Eggs and bacon were piled onto plates to feed the famished army. Tales of bravado and war stories threw back and forth across the table as they interrupted, adding their own version of events to each other’s stories. They were just like any other family. But they weren’t any family. They were a family of mountain men and their soul mates even if they weren’t related by blood.
But they may as well have been. They had chosen to be together and stand together when one of their own was threatened. Their friendship had been forged under fire in the heat of battle and there is no closer relationship than that.
Even Erin felt it. She felt at home with her new friends and when Spider nudged her under the table with his knee, she noticed that he left it pressed against hers long enough for the meaning to be clear. He felt it, too.
Suddenly Minion Kevin and her sneering co-workers seemed a world away. So far, in fact, that she felt no affinity with them whatsoever. This was her home, now. She’d found her family.
If they’d have her.
Chapter 24
Spider took his hands away from Erin’s eyes. “Okay, you can look now.”
“What is this place?” she asked. She was in awe looking in every direction trying to take it all in.
“This is my special place,” Spider confided with her. “Where I can be alone and enjoy my own piece of forest.”
“It’s . . . beautiful.” Erin was almost lost for words.
“Rosie brought me here when I was first discharged from the Navy when they downsized. All I’d ever known was flying and navy life. I was totally lost, like the structure of my entire existence had been pulled out from under me.”
Erin let the silence hang a beat before placing her hand on his elbow, motioning him to continue his story.
“I drifted. Did odd jobs along the way to pay for food and board, but I never stayed anywhere long enough to put down roots. Then I came here.
“I don’t know how, but I think Rosie knew that I was unsettled and needed some stability. I boarded with her above the diner for a time, then next thing I knew, she’d loaned me a cabin in the mountains. Winked at me and told me she knew I needed my own space. But she never mentioned it again.
“Next thing I knew, the rescue service decided we needed a rescue helicopter up here and they asked me to fly it. I’m pretty sure Rosie had something to do with that, too. She’s got some political muscle or something going on. Not sure I even want to know.” He smiled when he recalled how he felt being offered the opportunity to fly rescue missions in this pristine mountain wilderness. Like a dream that had finally come true.
But that wasn’t Spider’s only dream.
He wanted a soul mate. Just like Jarrad and Jack had found their soul mates here on the mountain. He wanted a family of his own and someone to come home to every day. Until now, that had eluded him, although he’d always been happy for Jack and Jarrad. There had been no envy, but a sense of longing when he saw what they had.
“What do Jarrad and Jack mean when they talk about their soul mates? Is that like their wife or girlfriend or something?”
Spider paused before answering. It was as if she had read his thoughts.
“In Bear Mountain speak soul mates are nearly always fated. For every mountain man, there’s a special soul mate, just for him and fate brings them together. They can always tell their fated mate as first glance. They just know. Well, maybe not always and maybe not at first glance.”
“Men can be stupid sometimes,” Erin agreed.
Spider nodded, and then he started taking great interest in his shoes as he kicked at some rocks on the ground.
“Is it coincidence that both Elle and Cassie are…well…rather…”
“Pregnant?” Spider helped her out.
Erin nodded thankfully. “Yeah.”
“No, it’s no coincidence. That’s part of the magic of the mountain. Part of the reason we try to keep to ourselves and not advertise how special this place is. Can you imagine it being overrun and ruined by busloads of townies trying to have kids?”
“How’s your wound?” she asked.
“Fine. That’s another good thing we enjoy up here, virtually no illness and we seem to heal at a remarkable rate. Why?”
Before he knew what was happening, she’d jostled in front of him and reached up on her toes to crush her lips to his, hoping to carry on from where they’d left off previously.
“Show me,” she breathed in his ear before probing it cheekily with her tongue. “Show me how enthusiastic you can be.”
Spider effortlessly scooped Erin up in his arms, forcing a nervous squeak from her as she settled into his cradling arms. She was surprised at both his strength and his immediate response to her wanton proposal. He wasn’t the kind of man who needed to be told what to do twice.
Chapter 25
Trailing kisses from her ankles to the soft, sensitive skin behind her knees, Spider hoisted her skirt as he worked his way up. Her skin was soft to his lips and her scent was pleasing his bear, which growled openly as he showered her with kisses and nibbles. There were no secrets. Not any more.
“What if someone sees us?” she giggled. She was ticklish behind the knees.
“They won’t. We’re a territorial bunch. Nobody will come here. This is my ‘alone time’ space.” His words were muffled as he spoke with his lips parted against her thigh.
“Like a man cave, but without the actual cave…Oh, yeah. Right there,” she keened as he took a mouthful of her butt cheek and gently bit it.
His thumbs hooked inside her panty elastic and with deliberate, leisurely pace, he began to work them down her hips and over her thighs until that were a tangle mess at her ankles. She kicked them away, no longer caring if anyone should see them or not.
The scent of her arousal, freed from her wet panties, inflamed Spiders desire to take her. Right then and there. Out in the open, like a wild animal.
But he wanted his first time with her to be special. Memorable, for all the right reasons. If his bear was right and if she was his soul mate, then he wanted everything to be perfect. For both of them.
“Why are you stopping?” She was worried she’d done something wrong.
“Are you sure you want this?”
Her eyes met his. There was a heady dose of desire and primal hunger burning in his bottomless hazel eyes. Desires that mirrored her own, she suspected. The raw lust she felt at this moment was like nothing else she’d ever felt and she had never been more sure of anything. She felt drawn to him physically and emotionally. But right now, it was all about the physical pull she felt toward him.
She nodded firmly. Hell yeah.
He was teasing her and he knew it. She’d make him pay for this. But not right now. Definitely not right now. Not until after he’d satisfied her with his dexterous tongue. Maybe not even then. He kept teasing her with light flickers, brushing the tip of it across her swollen nub. Even when she
arched her back, he withdrew slightly, leaving her aching for more and just a little frustrated. More than a little, it seemed.
Reaching down, she clamped her hands around the back of his head and pulled him into her. Hard. She pushed her pussy hard in his face, crushing her desperate and needy clit against his lips and tongue. She’d had enough of his play. He’d stoked her fires and now it was time for him to make good on that promise.
With a rhythmic thrust of her hips, she set the pace and he obeyed.
Good boy.
He began to work his mouth over her pink bud to the same rhythm and her moans were a sure sign he had got it right. No more teasing. He wanted to pleasure her now and show her what a mountain man could do for his soul mate.
“Yes! Please! Yes!” she keened and moaned to his rhythm. Steadily, she increased the pace of her thrusts, matched by his increasingly frantic licking and sucking of her juicy morsel.
“Oh my…” The words refused to come, like they were no longer needed. Her body had taken over and she willingly surrendered to the pleasure that welled deep within her belly, sending liquid fire to the mound of her sex.
With a final push of her hips, she held Spider’s head still and let the waves burst from within her, pulses of orgasmic relief surging through every muscle fiber and nerve ending in her body. Her eye lids fluttered and she bit her bottom lip in an effort not to scream obscenities.
“Fuck me! That feels fucking amazing! Oh, fuck!”
It didn’t work.
She no longer cared what she said. The words came from her mouth, but they weren’t hers. It was as if some inner beast, some shameless, brazen minx had been unleashed within her.
“Eat my cunt. Drink my juices. I want my come to fill your beautiful mouth!” she wailed.
