I grip the wheel tighter. Lust is one thing, any man with blood in his veins would want her. But this…tenderness drumming through me is a whole another beast.
Already, the jeep smells like her. Jasmine and something else, something softer underneath it, floral and warm. It has no business clinging to the interior, clinging to my nostrils, claiming my space.
I'm losing my mind and I haven't even spoken to the woman yet.
Fuck. What did Aiden get me into? This was supposed to be a simple extraction and drop off.
Aiden Sorenson—my military buddy, one of the few men I'd trust with my life—runs a high tech security company now, handling real-time and high-tech security for assets like billionaires, sheikhs and royalty. Recently, he acquired a wife and a child, and a life that looks nothing like mine. When he begged me to take the job, quoting a forced marriage and an unwilling bride, I jumped in like the sucker I am. The bastard definitely knows my weak points.
Pluck the bride out of a wedding from location A and drop her off at location B—simple, straightforward job. Until I walked into the church and saw her—white dress, dark hair, standing in the middle of flying bullets, looking like a lost sheep.
One look at her and I was so lost that I missed details I shouldn’t have—shooter count, entry points, who the actualtarget was. She made me sloppy before I even knew her name. Now I’m stuck with her and the bare minimum details that I insisted on with Aiden.
By the time I found my jeep and tossed her into it, she seemed to thaw from her dazed state. Started screaming about leaving her brother behind, begging me to take her back.
As if that was possible.
Thanks to my bad hip, she even squirmed out of my hold and made a run for it. Until she tripped on the torn hem of her dress and hit the concrete hard. I hauled her up and got her into the jeep before she could fight me again.
No one chased us but I had to get out of there. I hated injecting her with a tranq once we were on the road but I had no choice — she was screaming about her brother and trying to grab the wheel.
Except nobody was waiting at the drop point.
I sat there for two hours watching the light die, the woman unconscious in my passenger seat, and waited for a pickup that never came.
Aiden's people are reliable as a Swiss watch, usually. The silence told me everything I needed to know. The job had blown up in ways neither of us had anticipated. Protocol said one call on the burner. I'd made it. No answer.
So I made the only call left—mine. Bringing her to my haven.
My cabin’s the one place in the world that’s entirely mine—no people, no noise, no ghosts except the ones I brought there myself.
I wish I was enough of a bastard to just leave her somewhere and be on my way.
Turns out I'm not. Already, I can feel my emotions getting invested in her, in her story. In her wellbeing.
Who had forced her into the wedding with that oily-looking old man? Where was the brother that she was desperate toprotect? Why had no one come to pick her up? Had she been the target of the shooting?
I slam the heel of my palm against the steering wheel, forcing my brain to cut off the question.
This is why I don't do this anymore. Why I don’t get involved with people even on the surface level.
Her head lolls again, this time towards me, her cheek dropping towards her shoulder, and that stupid thump hits my chest again.
Despite the rational warnings, I reach out and cup her cheek, supporting her neck.
I’m so fucked.
3
IRIS
The first thing that filters through the heavy feeling in my head is the smell.
Pine. Woodsmoke. Something else underneath it, clean and dark and familiar in a way I can't place yet. Also safe.
A groan falls out of my mouth as I try to cling to it.
The world is soft at the edges, tilting gently like I'm on a boat. There's movement—steady, purposeful—and the sensation of being held against something very large and very hard and very warm.
