by Marla Monroe
He turned back over and tried to remember what the woman had felt like when he’d been wrapped around her in an attempt to quell her shaking and keep her warm. He hadn’t taken advantage of her weakened state to feel her up, but the imagination was a wonderful thing sometimes. She’d felt like she’d be very curvy with plenty to hold on to in the heat of the night. She was somewhere between five foot three and five foot five by the way she’d fit against his much longer body. It had seemed like she was dwarfed by Lance.
The more he thought about her, the more he wanted to know about her. Where she was from, how old she was, what she smelled like when there wasn’t the scent of river water in her hair. Most of all, he wanted to know what her fucking name was.
Chapter Four
The first thing Vella became aware of when she swam back to consciousness was how warm she felt. Instead of the frigid cold of the water where she had been sure she would die, she was surrounded by warm skin that wasn’t just her own. With that thought, her eyes flew open wide.
“No!” she screamed and struggled to sit up.
“Easy, honey. No one is going to hurt you. Just relax. You’ve been sick,” a calm voice from her right told her.
“We pulled you out of the water. Remember? You’ve been real sick,” a deep, raspy voice said from her left.
Vella panted with the effort to breathe and regain control of her racing heart. She struggled to keep from fighting them since they weren’t hurting her and vaguely remembered waking up and talking with them at some point. She hadn’t been afraid then. Were they telling her the truth, though? Was she safe with them? Slowly she began to calm down and relaxed back onto the blankets. It was then that she realized she was naked, and holy hell, they were, too!
“Whoa, honey. Everything’s okay. Your clothes were wet and torn up from your trip down the stream with all of those rocks. We had to warm you up fast or you would have died,” the man on her right told her. Was he reading her mind?
“Who are you?” she asked, looking from one to the other while gripping the covers tightly to her chest.
“I’m Lance, and that’s Carver.” The one on the right spoke again.
“What’s your name?” the one called Carver asked.
Vella licked her dry, cracked lips. “Vella Lockhart.”
Carver seemed to sigh when she said her name. Did he know her? She didn’t recognize him, but then she couldn’t see much of the man other than his face.
Thank God! The man is naked. If I could see any more of him, I’d probably turn three shades of red and embarrass myself to no end.
If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought Carver had just said, finally, but that had to have been her imagination, right? Why would he be that happy to hear her name? She wasn’t someone famous or anything. Vella sank deeper into the makeshift pallet of blankets.
“Just relax. No one is going to hurt you. You’re safe with us,” Carver told her.
“H–how did I get here? I don’t remember,” she confessed.
“We carried you here. We had to find somewhere that we could get you dry and out of the cold. The cave was the first place we found,” Lance said.
“I—” She hesitated. “Thank you for helping me.”
“Are you thirsty? Do you want something to drink?” Lance asked her seconds later.
She almost said yes but remembered that all of them were naked. She didn’t want him getting up like that. She had her back to Carver but was facing Lance. He had a nice face, slightly long with a hint of facial hair, as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days. When he started to move as if to get up, Vella quickly answered him.
“N–no thanks.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes. I think I got enough water to last me for a while,” she said, trying to make a joke out of it.
“Are you hurting anywhere?” Carver asked from behind her. “You had to have gotten pretty banged up as fast as that current was taking you. I’m sure it knocked you into some of the rocks we saw.”
Vella wiggled her toes and moved her legs, finding that though she did have some rather sore spots here and there, nothing seemed broken or out of place. Her left hip hurt the worst and felt like it would have a pretty large bruise on it. She didn’t want to say anything though. They might want to check her.
“No. I don’t think so.” She kept her voice even and let out a slow breath when they didn’t immediately start pulling the covers off of her.
“We’ll look you over later,” Lance said. “I’m going to warm up some food. You need to eat something to get your strength back.”
“You’ve been pretty sick. We weren’t sure you’d make it at first,” Carver told her in that gruff voice of his.
“Not sure what there is left. I’ll check and you can choose,” Lance said with a smile. When he started to crawl out of the blanket cocoon they had made for her, Vella panicked.
So much for forgoing the water.
Lance was getting up anyway. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying he’d put something on before she opened them again. It hit her as she lay there that she was now alone and naked with an equally naked Carver. She was afraid to move, worried that she’d touch something she didn’t want to feel against her skin. There was no way she could handle feeling a man’s dick against her naked skin and not be affected by it. The question wasn’t if she would react at the contact but how. Would she scream and try to crawl away, or would she melt at the touch of his hard body? The man felt as if he were a solid stack of muscle behind her. Despite her experiences in the past, Vella wasn’t afraid of men, just wary of whom she allowed near her.
“Relax, Vella. I promise you that we aren’t going to hurt you. Lance will fix something hot to eat, and you’ll feel better in no time.” Carver’s soothing words sounded good to her, but his gruff, sexy voice awakened things she didn’t want to think about right then.
“We’ve got chicken noodle soup or chicken and rice,” Lance called back to them. “What sounds good, Vella?”
“Um, chicken noodle, I guess,” she called back, allowing her eyes to pop back open. “I can’t believe you’ve got canned soup after all these years.”
“Before we hooked up, Carver had found an abandoned house set way off the road that hadn’t been touched,” Lance told her. “He’s been living off of it for some time now.”
“I thought maybe you’d been friends for a long time. I didn’t realize you didn’t know each other to begin with,” she said.
“No. We met a few months back in a cave a lot like this one. It had been raining, and it was washing the road away that I’d been traveling on,” Lance said. “When I found the cave, Carver already had a fire going. I ended up standing in the cold rain for a good three or four minutes just staring at him before he took pity on me and said I could join him.”
“You were afraid of him?” Vella hadn’t really seen him yet, but from the little she had noticed, he was a big man, and with a gruff voice that almost grated at times, she could see why Lance would have hesitated.
“Hell, yeah, I was afraid of him. He’s built like the Incredible Hulk and had the whole death stare down pat, but inside he’s just a gooey marshmallow.”
“Really?” She started to turn to look at the man Lance was talking about, but his quick chuckle stopped her.
“If you could see how he’s glaring at me right now, you wouldn’t believe that about him, but he’s a good man, Vella. He’d never hurt you. He grows on you over time.” She watched as Lance stirred the pan he’d poured soup into. “It should be ready in about five minutes, guys.”
“What made you think you could travel across the country all by yourself?” Carver asked her out of the blue, making her jump.
“I didn’t know if I would make it or not, but I had to do something.”
She felt him stiffen behind her. The warm skin of his chest felt good against her back. She wouldn’t allow herself to relax too much since it would put her ass in clos
e proximity to his cock. She knew enough about men to know that a naked woman pressed tightly against their body would get an unwanted reaction no matter how he thought about the woman. It was just nature, but it was a part of nature she didn’t want to deal with right then.
“But what could have possibly made you believe that you would make it?” he asked.
She sighed. “Honestly, I didn’t think I would get this far, but once I did, I was determined to make it. I believed I actually had a chance.”
“Hell, Vella. You could have very easily been killed by anything from a wild wolf to losing your footing and falling off a cliff.” Carver’s raspy voice drew an unexpected shiver down her body.
Vella didn’t bother to say anything. They’d already covered how she felt. If the same situation presented itself again, she’d make the same decision. Whether it be to go out on her own to escape the life she was being forced into at the commune or jumping into rapids to escape being used by a bunch of men then thrown aside when she was too broken to keep. Vella had heard about women like that, and she wasn’t going to end up becoming one of them. No, she’d made the right decisions from the beginning until now. Would she make the right one about Carver and Lance?
“How long have you been on your own?” Carver finally asked.
She hesitated, but they already knew she wasn’t with someone since she hadn’t asked for them when she woke up. They were being good to her and hadn’t touched her inappropriately the first time. She was fairly sure she could trust them for the time being. There was no need to lie. She really didn’t have anything to hide.
“About a month, I think. It’s been slow going since I have to be so careful,” Vella said, answering his question.
“How did you know where to go?” Lance called from the other side of the cave.
She hesitated, still not wanting to tell them too much, but common sense won out. It wouldn’t matter if she told them or not. If they didn’t want to let her go, she was stuck. She sighed and closed her eyes again.
“Like I said, some of the other women back where I came from talked about it all the time, wishing they had a way to get there. I just wasn’t going to stick around wishing for something that wasn’t going to happen. I made my own way.”
The man behind her shifted with a grunt then relaxed again. She could feel the heat from his body as he settled. Had he moved closer to her? Something about what she’d just told them had affected him. Would they prevent her from leaving now that they knew where she wanted to go?
“,” Lance said with a chuckle. “ It’s too dangerous to try and live out here anymore, even for men. People will kill you for a blanket or a can of beans. It’s time the rest of us start building a safe place for us and our families.”
“Do you have anyone waiting for you there?” Carver asked, interrupting his friend.
“No, not really. I know someone who was going there, but I don’t know for certain if she made it or not. She left a few weeks ahead of me, and I thought I might even catch up with her, but so far I haven’t,” Vella told them.
“We haven’t seen another single woman out here since we’ve been this side of the Mississippi River,” Lance said. “What’s her name?”
“Mona. She’s a year or two older than I am. She lost her husband in the flooding. He worked on one of those barges that moved up and down the Mississippi River.”
“What about you?” Lance called out.
“M–me? What do you mean?” she asked.
“Where are you from? How did you end up in a commune, as you call it?” Lance asked.
“I’m originally from Tennessee, near Gatlinburg, but we moved to Kansas when I was about twelve years old. When my parents died in the tornadoes, there was nothing left at all anywhere near us for shelter and safety. My brother and I moved back home to Gatlinburg where we had friends who we hoped would take us in. He found us a house to live in near the others. We had a pretty good garden going and my brother had found a cow we learned how to milk.” She smiled thinking about how much trouble it had been to figure it out. The poor thing had been miserable until they’d gotten the hang of it. She blinked a few times and continued.
“It started raining nonstop for days and days. There were a lot of mudslides from all of it, and we were afraid where we lived would end up under a ton of mud. Our neighborhood was at the base of a mountain in the Smokies. It had already happened to most of our friends, so we packed up and headed northwest.” She hoped they would leave it at that, but she knew they would want to know why her brother wasn’t with her.
It still hurt too much to think about, much less talk about. Years had gone by, but the ache it had left when he’d been killed remained. It had all been because of her, and that would never leave her heart.
“Where’s your brother now?” It was Carver who finally asked.
He must have felt her jerk at his words since he ran his down her hair as he spoke. “Never mind. You don’t have to talk about it.”
For some reason, that made her want to tell them anyway. Perhaps it was the comfort of another soul that seemed to care, or just that she was so tired and vulnerable at her weakest. She sighed and closed her eyes.
“A group of bondsmen, or bounty hunters or whatever they called themselves, killed him and took me from him.”
This time she felt Carver’s body jerk behind her. She wondered if he’d lost someone like that. Was there a sister or girlfriend, or wife even, somewhere out there, and was he looking for her? It made her sad for him and a little disappointed for her.
Oh, God. Where did that thought come from? I’m not interested in him or any man right now. I’ve got to make it to the survivalist camp where I’ll be safe before I think about finding a husband.
“Fuck!” Lance cursed. “Damn that’s hot. Food’s ready.”
“Just stay right there, Vella. I’m going to get up and put some pants on. Then you can sit up and hold the covers around you, and I’ll fix them so they stay up,” Carver said from behind her.
Vella remained perfectly still as the big man behind her slipped out from under the blankets, allowing a cold draft to snake around her body in the process. She shivered and pulled the material closer to her. A moment later, she heard the sound of a zipper and relaxed. Why, she didn’t know. It wouldn’t be hard at all for him to unzip his pants again, but he wasn’t going to do that. How did she know that? She just did.
“Okay. Let’s get you comfortable so you can eat.” Before she knew what he was going to do, Carver picked her up, covers and all, and carried her over to where Lance was sitting in front of one of the fires they had going.
Once he’d set her down and helped her wrap the covers around her, Carver sat on the other side of her and began dipping up some of the soup. Lance leaned over and handed her a bowl with a chunk of stale, torn-off bread they’d bartered for on the way to mop up any leftover soup with. She smiled her thanks and dipped the spoon into the bowl.
“So you were going to tell us about how you ended up in the commune,” Lance prompted her.
“A couple of days after they captured me, we were ambushed by some of the men from the commune. They managed to rescue me. I was grateful, and the first couple of years living with them wasn’t so bad. But the older leader died, and the one who took over had weird ideas,” she said around eating the soup. “When he decided that all the single women needed to stay with him and they slowly ended up in his bed, well…”
“Yeah, it does sound a little odd. Did the others seem like they were forced, or were they fine with it?” Carver asked.
She looked in his direction for the first time and realized that he was a big man. Lance seemed to be taller than him, but Carver was by far thicker, more muscled. He looked hard and unapproachable, but she had never based her opinion on how someone looked. If she did, she would have immediately moved away from him. He had light brown, wavy hair that hung nearly to his shoulders but was uneven and needed a trim to straighten it some. Lig
ht green eyes fairly mesmerized her when he caught her looking. It was then that she finally noticed the scar on his cheek.
Vella quickly looked away, embarrassed to have been caught looking at him. He was a very impressive man with a strength about him that she could appreciate. The fact that he’d put on a shirt told her he’d known she was uncomfortable around them and showing more skin would have made her even more so.
“How long did you live there before you left?” Lance asked, seemingly oblivious to the tension slowly building between her and Carver.
She jerked her head in Lance’s direction. “About four, maybe five years. I’m not really sure since the first year or so I was pretty freaked out and just trying to survive. Losing my brother had been devastating. We’d just lost our parents a few years before that.”
Lance nodded, a solemn expression silently telling her he knew exactly how she had felt. His expressive blue eyes seemed to suck her right in. He made her feel comfortable and at ease despite the entire situation they were in. With him sitting down, it was hard to tell just how tall he would be when he stood up, but he was a good three or four inches taller than Carver. She could see him as a runner or swimmer, maybe even a bicyclist. His sandy blond hair was short but not short enough to be called a military cut, or what she’d always referred to as a white-collar cut that Wall Street mongrels favored.
“What about you?” she asked, turning the tables on him.
Lance smiled. “I used to be a lawyer back in the day. I lived in Boston and helped people buy and sell property. Nothing exciting, but it sure beats this.”
“Really? A lawyer? I guess I can see it.” Vella pictured the man in a business suit and nodded. “Yep. It would fit.”
“I was a school secretary back home,” she admitted then turned to Carver. “What about you?”
“Biker. Not an average bone in my body. I was the Sargent at Arms in The Rebel Riders MC.” Carver didn’t look at her, just continued sipping the soup from his spoon.
