Page 50 of Breaking His Exile

He wanted to trace every line of that ink with his mouth, soothe the bruises with his tongue, learn her by taste and texture. There wasn’t the time or space here on this rock ledge, but soon he would.

He played his fingers through her, dragging her wetness up around her clit. Rainey bowed against his hand, a soft, strangled, “Oh,” escaping. He circled her clit again and a tremble went through her thighs. She was already close. He lowered himself down her body, intending to push her over that edge with his mouth…

Tilly growled.

Fuck.

Evander broke away from her. His body fought him—every nerve screaming at the interruption—but the part of him that had kept him alive was already moving. He rolled off her and came up with the rifle, bolt cycled, and put himself between Rainey and the open slope. Tilly stood, her hackles raised.

“Stay down,” he breathed.

She pressed herself flat to the rock and straightened her clothes. “What is it?”

“Maybe the mountain lion again.” He scanned the tree line below the shelter. Rain still fell in thin ropes off the overhang, the light gone flat and gray, and for three breaths nothing moved down there but wind in the pines.

Then it did.

Two hundred yards down the slope, where the game trail cut across the scree, a man stepped between two firs and stopped. Big through the shoulders. Dark hair plastered to his skull, a beard, a rifle carried low and easy across his body. He wasn’t hurrying. He crouched at the edge of the trail, laid two fingers to the ground, and read it.

Reading their sign. The trail they’d left coming up, hours ago, before the rain.

Evander’s whole chest went cold and still.

“Evander.” Rainey’s voice was barely sound. “Is that⁠—”

“Don’t move.”

The man below rose. Turned his head slowly along the slope, working the terrain, and Evander eased back from the shelter’s lip, out of the sight line, drawing Rainey and Tilly with him.

“Quite.”

He’d laid false trails and booby traps all over this mountain. This man had already walked past most of them to be standing where he stood.

“He’s tracking us,” Rainey whispered. “How is he — the rain⁠—”

“He’s good.” Evander kept the rifle up and his voice down to nothing. “Better than good.”

They had the high ground, but their cover would be broken the second they tried to run. If Evander fired from here, he got one clean shot before the man made the trees, and a miss put a trained rifle on the two of them with Rainey out on open stone. If they ran, they ran downhill into him. If they climbed, they skylined themselves on the ridge they’d just left.

None of it was a plan. All of it was a way to get Rainey killed.

Which left the only thing he was actually good at.

“Listen to me.” He turned enough to catch her eyes, and whatever she saw in his face killed the argument before it reached her mouth. “You’re going back to the cabin. Now, while he’s still working the low trail and hasn’t cut the switchback. You follow Tilly. She’ll get you home.”

“No. We go together.”

“I have to lead him away.” He pressed a field knife into her hand. “Take this.”

“Evander—”

He kissed her, quick and hard. “I’ll be back before dark.”

Her eyes shimmered with fear and unshed tears.

“Hey.” He closed the distance between them and took her face in his hands. Her skin was cold under his palms, slick with rain, and he tipped her chin up until she had to meet his eyes. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, songbird.”

“I know. And that’s what worries me.” Her hands came up and wrapped around his wrists, her fingers warm even in the cold. “Promise me you’re not going to let anything happen to you, either.”