3. Hunting Cabin

The hunting cabin was located down a dirt road cut through thick woods, and Sarah was praying that Aston Martin designed their sportscars' suspensions and skid plates as well as they did their speedy engines.

Her truck would have been fine bouncing down the dirt road, of course. Granted, her Ford would've given up its ghost after the first hour if she'd tried to drive it from Kalona to New York, but it would have crawled over these basketball-sized rocks embedded in the trail without a sputter.

Yeah, Rock-Land County, New York. She got it.

Riding in the car was like sitting inside a black egg.

The night was dark. The cabin was dark. The forest around them beyond the car window was dark.

Dark-dark-dark.

The car's headlights were a movie projector throwing a film of stumps and rocks that bumped under the tires on the dark screen ahead. Massive tree trunks slid to the sides of the trail as they neared.

Finally, straight manmade lines drew themselves on the night air, and then the headlights' glare filled a wooden porch and the cabin wall behind it with light.

Blaze stopped the car, and his exhausted sigh worried Sarah. She asked, "Were you too tired to drive?"

"We made it," he said.

She needed to be more assertive about splitting the driving. When they'd stopped for a fast-food midnight snack and gas in Nanuet, she should've pressed the issue.

When Sarah opened the car door, a light on the bottom edge spread illumination on the gravel and her boots as she stepped out. She stretched her back, twisting until it cracked in the middle.

The humid smells of plants rotting into rich earth filled the air, unlike at her farm, where the soil humus was spiked with acrid chemical fertilizers that smelled like vinegar or nail polish remover, depending on the month.

Flashing sparks of fireflies wrote glowing curves in the darkness. One flashed and faded out, then another flashed, then another.

Fatigue was making her loopy.

That morning, they'd walked out of the Four Seasons Hotel in Cleveland and been shot at. That afternoon, they'd saved a foal stuck in the mud.

Yesterdaymorning, she corrected herself, because the day had flipped at midnight.

But she hadn't slept since, so it still felt like that morning.

It had been a long day.

And now they were standing in front of an honest-to-goodness log cabin in the woods.

Logs,like the round trunks of trees, stacked and notched on the corners where they nestled together.

Very Laura Ingalls Wilder, although the big woods with her little house had been in Wisconsin, not just over an hour's drive from New York City.

The air chilling her arms was a lot cooler in the mountains of Rockland County than in New York City, and the cold wafted through the knit sweatpants and tee shirt she wore and sucked the warmth from her skin.

Blaze left the car's lights on to illuminate the cabin's front porch while he called his friend. Through the still air hovering around the hunting cabin and the occasional rustle of the wind in the trees, Sarah heard the voice on the phone, "Will," tell Blaze the key was hidden in a tree with a rotted-out knot just off the house's back corner. She waited, her working boots crunching on the gravel driveway, while he fished around in the brush with his phone's flashlight and came back, holding up the key in victory.

Blaze said, "He says the cabin is rustic, so I'm not sure what we'll find inside."

She wanted to shake her head in dismay at the city boy, but even that was a lot of effort for that time of night. "Blaze, sweetie, I'm a farm girl. Rustic is my middle name. When I was growing up, we had ice on the inside of the windows for months during the winter."

He fiddled with the key and the doorknob. "Well, it's June, so we probably won't have to contend with ice."

"From the lightbulb burning by the front door, I'm assuming it has electricity. I'm just hoping there's a faucet and a hot plate to boil some water for a bucket bath. I still have Pennsylvanian mud in unmentionable places."

His wry smirk and glance away while he retrieved their duffels from the trunk and slung them over his broad shoulders was the cutest. "Yeah. Me, too."

"I wish my brother had waited to do a treason until after he'd let us shower at his place."

"I wasn't going to say it, but the showers in his apartment are fantastic."

"Oh, way to rub it in."

He pushed open the door warily and flashed his cell phone's flashlight inside. "Let me go first."

Right.

Sarah checked out the woods in the spillover light from the car's headlights just in case she needed to bolt into the darkness.

Every time the floorboards inside groaned with Blaze's weight, Sarah's legs twitched as she repressed the instinct to take off running into the woods.

He leaned out of the door and picked up the duffels with one hand. "Clear. I'll turn off the car."

Inside, Sarah flicked on a light switch, and a lamp glowed by two armchairs in front of a stone fireplace. A mini-kitchen with some countertops, a small fridge blocked open with a brick, and a coffeepot occupied a corner of the one-room cabin, though cut-in walls in the back corner suggested a bathroom.

And along the back wall, there was—

Sarah bit her lip in a giggle because she was tired and had read too many fanfic serials online.

—Again, there was only one bed.

Blaze walked in behind her and dropped their duffels. "I'll check the utility closet to make sure the well pump is on."

The cold air inside the cabin was the same temperature as the night, and a shiver ran over Sarah's arms. She grabbed herself to stop the shakes.

Blaze whipped his head around to stare at her. "You cold?"

She shook her head. "Me? No. I'm fine. Just a chill."

"I'll build a fire first. Will said there's no furnace or space heaters because the electricity is barely one step up from an extension cord run from the neighbor's line a mile away."

He shouldn't fuss over her. Sarah was perfectly capable of building a fire and doing all the things that needed to be done. "Oh, you don't have to—"

His command was immediate. "Stop."

"Okay."

Weird how that word knee-jerked out of her mouth.

Blaze told her, his voice lowering to bass, "Sit in that armchair and wrap the quilt around yourself until I get this fire going."

"Yes, sir," Sarah grumbled as she started to trudge across the room.

Blaze's arm around her midsection yanked her backward.

Sarah found herself plastered over the boulder of his chest, a very warm boulder that felt like it had been soaking up sunlight on a hot summer afternoon, and his heat infiltrated her clothes.

He said, "Be a good girl, little kitten, because I'm not too tired to turn you over my knee and spank you for insubordination. Now say yes-sir like you mean it."

"Yes, sir?"

With one hand, he palmed her ass cheek, digging his fingertips into her sweatpants and ample flesh there. "Still a sassy little brat. Try it again, and say it like you're a submissive good girl, like you would beg for my cock in your mouth or your ass, or else I'll show you how awake I am. Navy SEAL school trained me to run flat-out for four days without sleep while carrying a boat."

Too many danged dirty scenes that Sarah had read on those online websites flipped into her head. "I need a shower."

"I don't care."

"I still smell like Starlight the Horse."

Blaze shoved her stomach against his pelvis, and the thick rod of his arousal was evident through his pants. "I said, I don't care. I'll fuck you until you're unconscious, and I'll wash your body when I'm done with you."

Yep, that was right in line with the stories Sarah liked.

Not that she wanted such an aggressive man in real life. Of course not. All the SnipSnaps and NewTubes warned women about the red flags of overly possessive men who would use your body and leave you gasping.

Yeah, that sounded just awful. She certainly should try to avoid that.

Blaze growled, "Now say yes-sir, and go sit down in that chair and wrap that quilt around yourself while I build a fire, or else I'll start your very long night by spanking your pretty little bottom until it's a beautiful shade of pink and feels like it's on fire."

This seemed—this seemed like Sarah should be the one who blinked. "Yes, Sir."

As she stepped back, his arms around her parted, and she walked the few feet across the split logs of the floor and swaddled herself in the turkey red and federal blue quilt lying over the back of it.

From being pressed across Blaze's scorching chest and now wrapped in the blanket, her shivers stopped. The warmth from his body and the quilt slowly chased the chill out of her boots, too.

Blaze crouched in front of the stone fireplace just a few feet from where the quilt was wrapped around her boots. She said, "I can build the fire."

He crumpled newspaper and threaded it through with pine needles and wood shavings from crates on the far side of the fireplace. "No talking."

"But I can—"

"You can build the next one."

Thus mollified, Sarah snuggled farther into the quilt some other woman had made as if anticipating a cold person would need to wrap up in it. Blaze quickly constructed a log-cabin configuration, which seemed appropriate, and then opened the flue and lit the bottom of the pile with a long match from a can on the mantle.

"I suppose building a fire is one of those survival skills they taught you in SEAL school," she said.

"And I was a firebug as a kid."

"Hmmm, a pyro. Given your actual name, why am I not surprised?"

"Maybe it was the magic of my name. My grandfather was named Blaise, spelled the traditional way with an S. My parents changed the spelling. They thought they were modernizing it, but my father was probably trying to make it sound intimidating."

Sarah watched him frown as the kindling in the fireplace glowed red.

"He was always concerned with scaring people so he could get his way. He drove an enormous black pickup truck so cars would scatter on the road ahead of him. And of course, he had a high-speed pursuit vehicle for the SWAT team at work."

Blaze sat in the chair across from her and rifled through a small bag to find the two handguns he'd taken from her brother and the other guy back in Logan's New York City apartment, and he frowned as he inspected them.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

The angry set of his mouth didn't change. "They're both loaded, and there's a round in the chamber. I'd hoped they weren't. The safeties were off when I took them away from Logan and Micah."

Sarah didn't need an explanation. "It's my fault. I should have known Logan wouldn't be on our side. My father told me Logan was bad a million times."

Blaze shook his head. "It was the right decision, even though it produced the wrong outcome. Looking back, there were other signs I might have given more weight to, like Logan tracking my phone and Mary Varvara Bell always seeming to know where we were."

"That's not your fault," she said.

"A few days ago, Logan said he was in Moscow, and I didn't realize Moscow was a red flag."

Sarah had been to Moscow every year when she was a kid. "Not everyone who spends time in Russia is in a bratva."

"But when someone from our high school, the Swiss boarding school Le Rosey, goes to Russia, it's for the Russian mafia. We visited our friends' dachas on the Black Sea during every school break. The Russian students were all from organized crime families."

"Well, maybe some of their parents were just politicians," she ventured.

"That's the same thing in Russia. Logan must have gotten mixed up with Mary Varvara Bell and the White Russian bratva, and now he's sucked Micah and Tristan in. This operation was to snare me, too. I can't believe I was so stupid."

Blaze pulled his phone out of his pocket and used his thumbs to tap furiously on it.

"Are you texting him?"

"Hell, no. I'm resetting my phone to its factory settings, and then I will download just a GPS app but not even sign in. I assumed Twist was tracking me through the location-sharing app, but I have no idea what that asshole might have downloaded onto my phone at any time over the last several years. I can't trust him. I can't trust any of them. I have been a fucking fool."

"You weren't foolish. Logan has been your friend your whole life."

He shrugged one shoulder, half-dismissive. "Since we were thirteen, anyway."

He must have felt as betrayed as she was, maybe even more, and the hollowness in her heart devastated her. "The last time I saw Logan, I was seven years old. Even my dad was talking about events that happened fifteen years before. He didn't have any loyalty to me, but he did to you."

Blaze nodded.

Sarah said, "I'm sorry."

He fiddled with the guns like he might find something different about them, and the skin around his eyes creased like he was squinting while staring into the sun. "It's a revelation of his character, not a change."

"He might have changed since you were in school together. That was a long time ago, too. Years."

Blaze nodded. "I didn't realize Logan didn't have my back anymore. In high school, we were inseparable. We had to be. The rich kids jumped on every damn opportunity to fuck with us. The teachers and counselors didn't do shit about it. The rich kids' parents donated too much money to piss them off."

"That's unfair."

He shrugged. "If you were running an ostensibly non-profit school, who would you send to detention: a kid whose parents' names were on the new ski dorm at Gstaad or were in negotiations to sponsor the school's new private jet, or the penniless kid with dead parents?"

Sarah sighed. "And that's not right."

"I was a financial dead end, and the school knew it. The other kids were cash cows, and the kids knew it. They knew they could beat up the scholarship kids every damn day, steal our books, trash our computers, rip up our hard-copy homework, and no one would give a shit."

Her own high school squabbles paled. "Oh, Blaze. I'm so sorry."

He was staring at the loaded guns in his hands. "But we stuck together. When the four of us were together, the Scholarship Mafia, no one would fuck with us. When I say these guys had my back, I mean we fought back-to-back, with a ring of rich kids throwing stuff and landing sucker punches."

Now that the fire had warmed the log cabin, Sarah leaned forward and shoved the quilt down to her waist. She reached for his hands.

Blaze dropped the magazines out of the guns' stocks and laid the weapons on the end table beside his chair. Without raising his gaze, he reached forward and held her hands, bowing his head over their grip.

His fingers chilled hers, his flesh cold under his rough calluses.

Blaze's hands had always been so warm. Shock, maybe? Oh, Lord, Sarah hoped he wasn't getting sick.

He said, "The lesson that the world is a fundamentally dangerous place has been drummed into me a million times, but allies are how you survive it. That's how SEAL teams work. We're force multipliers. We train local military personnel and command them. Our allies are everything."

She held his hands more tightly.

"The Scholarship Mafia was my bedrock. They were my last line of defense, and it's been breached. I'm alone out here."

"No, you're not alone. I'm here," she blurted, her heart breaking for him. Slapping her brother was at the top of her to-do list, right after she kicked those other two guys in the nuts.

With her steel-toed work boots.

When Blaze looked up at her, his dry eyes were wide open and hard. "Are you in on it?"

Confusion."I don't understand."

He precisely enunciated his clipped words. "Are you working with your aunt, your brother, Micah, and Twist to force me into a business relationship with the White Russian Bratva?"

The hot slap of shock was chased by a horrified cold drench. "What? No!"

"I won't hurt you," he said, releasing her hands and sitting back in his chair. His preternatural stillness looked like he was gathering himself before a violent attack. "I'll drop you off near Logan's building tomorrow morning before I lose myself in the world, but that's what happened, isn't it? You set me up."

"No,"Sarah said, the words tripping on her teeth in her haste. "Absolutely not. I swear to God. I swear to Mary and all the saints. I swear that I had zero contact with Logan until I walked into his apartment a few hours ago, and I've never met those other two guys, Mike and Twist."

"But Mary Varvara Bell is your aunt," Blaze said, watching Sarah like she was small, mousey prey. "You knew each other when you were on the Zoom call."

"Well, yes, but—"

"Your aunt would have masterminded the whole operation. She had your brother send me to you. It was all a trap, and I went racing off like Sir Fucking Galahad to save you from her fake dragons."

His unfair accusation zipped in her head. "That's absolutely not true. I didn't even have any contact with my aunt until both my parents were dead, and she was the only person in my extended family who reached out to me. And then she sent people to kill me."

He squinted at her like he was scrutinizing her mud-streaked pants and frizzed-out braid for clues. "But they didn't. They threw you in a car and then turned their backs so I could rescue you."

"They were going to shoot my horse."

"Because it invested me further to rescue the horse, and they didn't shoot it."

"Logan held a loaded gun on us both."

"But he didn't shoot, and he and Micah both got too close so I could disarm them."

Fury balled up the quilt in her hands. "Blaze, I lost my virginity to you. I would not take one for the team like that."

He broke eye contact and looked at the floor, frowning.

"I am a pawn in this," she told him. "I am a rat in a maze. Actually, you're the lab rat. I'm the cheese because they used me as unwilling, nonconsenting bait."

The scowl lines on his forehead deepened.

"Here's the situation from my point of view," she said. "You broke into my house and threatened me with an unloaded gun and a fake machete. The men my aunt sent didn't try to kill me, but you convinced me they would, and that's why I couldn't trust my aunt. You told me my estranged brother sent you, so I had to go with you. When we got to Logan's apartment, he and his friends pointed guns at you."

Blaze still wasn't looking at her, but his leg twitched.

She accused, "Maybe you're the mastermind, and you kidnapped me to be a hostage and force my aunt and brother to do something you want."

"But that's not true," Blaze said.

"And neither is your fabrication that I'm working with Logan and my Aunt Mary," Sarah said. "The truth is something else."

Blaze clenched his jaw and barely moved his face. "So what's the damn truth?"

"The truth is that I have nothing and no one left in this entire world who cares one whit about me, except for a recovering barn cat with anxiety issues, a livestock guardian dog, and those two alfalfa-scarfing idiots who live in the barn."

One side of his mouth twitched, an aborted smile.

"My aunt, the one person who I thought I might be able to call if everything went horribly wrong, used me for some plot and didn't give a darn or a heck if I died. I am utterly alone. I just want to go back to my farm where at least I have my cat, my coworker dog, my livestock, and my neighbors. They're all I ever had, no matter what I thought."

Maybe when she got back, she should call Tiffany Meeks and ask to go to church with her, and maybe she could meet someone so she wouldn't be so darned alone forever.

Her hands cramped where she was strangling the quilt.

"Hey," Blaze said. His voice was quieter.

Her hands and the red and blue quilt smeared like rain streaking a windshield.

"Hey," he said again, closer. "I'm sorry. You're right. It isn't us, it's them. Occam's razor, right? The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. The four of them—Mary Varvara Bell, Logan, Micah, and Twist—manipulated both of us. I don't think you were in on it."

A tan blur that was his hand reached across the quilt, and the warmth of his fingers pressed under her chin to lift her head.

She closed her eyes because she was sick to death of seeing suspicion in his.

Blaze said, "I don't think someone as honest and kind as you would double-cross anyone. Those guys selling me out shocked the hell out of me. I wasn't thinking straight. But the fact that they pointed loaded guns at me proves that they are the problem."

"I just want to go home, Blaze. I've been away from my farm for days."

"But it's not safe for you there."

"It's not safe for me anywhere. At least my neighbors and friends are in Kalona."

"They can't fight off the mafia."

"On the day when my aunt's goons showed up, my neighbors called me that morning to tell me that some guys were skulking around on their way to my farm. I can call my high-school friends, and we'll make sure no one sets a dog-gone foot on my property."

"But everything's being taken care of."

"I don't care if it's being taken care of. I just want to go home. You don't have to drive me. I can hitchhike or something."

Warmth covered her as Blaze's arms engulfed her, and his strong shoulder pressed against her cheek until she turned and laid her forehead against it. "I'll take you home, and we'll figure out how to keep you safe."

The strain of the last few days, coupled with Blaze's agonizing accusations, was just too much for Sarah, and stupid tears leaked out of her eyes, which made her miss her cat more. Muffintop purred and snuggled when Sarah had to let some grief out.

He said, "Don't cry. Please don't. It's killing me. I shouldn't have accused you of that. The whole world was crashing down on me, and I was trying to at least see the last blow coming, even though I knew it was going to kill me. At least I would've had the cold solace of being right before I walked out into the wilderness in Canada and lived the rest of my life as a misanthropic hermit because I couldn't stand humanity anymore."

Sarah could contemplate him doing that. She even understood the impulse.

"But I was wrong. I was wrong about you. You are the only light left in my life, and I can't imagine how complete the darkness would be without you. I'll take you back to your farm and make it safe for you even if I have to stand guard over you twenty-four, seven."

"It's okay. I'm sorry, too, that I said those things about you. The last few days are enough to make anybody paranoid."

Blaze's quiet chuckle was sad. "It's not paranoia if they really are trying to kill you."

"You don't have to stay on the farm with me. I'll be fine alone. I'm always fine, even if I am alone."

"I'll make sure you're safe. I have to do that, at least. I could stay for a while."

"You can't stay with me on the farm. You might be able to stay awake for four days, but you would have to sleep eventually."

"I slept last night at the hotel in Cleveland."

"No, you didn't. Every time I turned over, you were watching me. When I woke up and tried to sneak out of bed, you were already awake," she said.

"Well, yeah, but—"

"You weren't sleeping."

"I was resting."

"Resting is not sleeping. You didn't sleep because you don't trust me. You can't live with someone if you don't trust them enough to sleep. You didn't trust me enough to drive your car for half an hour even though you were too tired to drive safely."

Blaze didn't answer, which was good because Sarah didn't like lying.

"You're a great guy, Blaze. These few days have been . . . amazing. But you can't trust me, and I want to go home and stay there no matter what happens. Even if they kill me."

Blaze's voice beside her ear was low and gentle. "What if they kill you?"

"I've already got everything all set up, just in case Charlie kicks me in the head or I get sick or something. When my parents died, the lawyer who did the inheritance set up a basic will. The animals all have new homes to go to with my friends, and my neighbor will get the land. No use turning the county into more of a hodgepodge patchwork quilt."

"That's very rational."

"I can change my will later if there's someone else to leave it to. When my mom died, the lawyer said we had to draw something up right then that afternoon, and I couldn't think of anyone. Saddling my friends with a low-yield farm miles from their own property didn't seem like a blessing. I should ask Tiffany or Abigail if they would want it, though. It was just too much to think about at the time, and no one wanted to kill me back then."

His thumb stroked along the edge of her jawline. "I won't let anything happen to you."

"You need to go back to your own life, Blaze. It's a lot more interesting than mine."

He kissed her, probably to shut her up, but it worked.

His soft lips touched hers, a brush of his mouth, and then his arms coiled around her.

Longing rose in Sarah's heart. As much as a good girl would push him away because good girls didn't, and good girls really didn't with guys they knew weren't interested in marriage and commitment, she wanted him one more time. Maybe it was just another interlude, but being held in Blaze's arms was the closest she'd ever been to feeling loved.

Maybe someday, someone would really love her, and she would look back at those stolen moments as mere physical passion and maybe with regret for not waiting for the real thing.

But the future wasn't guaranteed, as anyone with no living ancestors knew.

So Sarah leaned toward his gentle kiss, tasting his lips like sipping dew off leaves.

He cupped the side of her face with his hand as his other arm slid around her waist, dragging her closer to where he kneeled beside her.

Sarah's legs were still tangled in the quilt, and she tumbled off the edge of the chair. Blaze's arm was around her waist, so her fall was only an instant of levitation before he hammocked her body in his arms and lowered her to the quilt that had fallen around her boots.

The fire in the stone fireplace had caught the fuel logs, and warmth billowed out as he lowered her to the polished pine boards of the floor, spreading the quilt under her back.

"I'm still filthy with mud and horse smell," she said, fretting that her lack of showering would somehow make sex less pleasant for him, and then she was instantly pissed for that thought that rendered herself nothing more than a darn tissue.

Blaze muttered near her shoulder, "I'll turn on the well afterward and heat water. I'll bathe you so you're clean while you sleep. I always take care of what's mine."

Bittersweet yearning to belong with someone welled up, and Sarah held Blaze more tightly and stretched her neck as his mouth warmed the skin over her pulse.

Each stroke of his hands soothed away the terror of being the target of a loaded gun, caressing the shocked fear out of her muscles and grounding her attention in his hand darting under her sweatshirt to crumple the cup of her bra aside and run the rough calluses of his thumb over her tightening skin. When her back arched from the sensations rocking her, he shoved her sweatshirt up around her neck and took the bare peak in his mouth.

The nebulous vibrations of pleasure concentrated over Sarah's skin. She stretched and grabbed his shirt, pulling his shirttails out of his belt.

His shirt pleated up his back. Sarah slipped her hands around his waist, his back warming her palms. He bowed above her, and a deep sound growled from his throat. His mouth on her breast roughened, and he sucked harder, a pulling that drew sparks from under her skin toward his lips.

Random jolts of energy writhed her arms and legs as she tried to touch more of him, feel more of him. With the last bite on her nipple that oscillated between pain and sharp pleasure, he reared back on his knees and stripped her sweatshirt off over her head.

The fireplace poured heat over her naked skin, a scorch on her shoulder closer to it, and a chill on her other arm.

Blaze crawled down her body to untie her boots, loosening the laces enough to pop them off her feet and pitch them aside. Once they were gone, he grabbed the thick waistband of the oversized sweatpants she wore and dragged them and her underwear and her socks down her legs and off her body.

Sarah curled up and grabbed his waistband, wrestling to unfasten his belt and pants while he crossed his arms over his torso and flicked his shirt away. He rolled away for the briefest of seconds while she twisted, staring, dazed, and shoved his pants down his legs and shed them and his shoes and socks with one motion. With a quick motion, he swung one knee over her hips and steadied himself with his hand on the chair as his gaze raked over her body.

The low-wattage glow from the solitary lamp and the flickering firelight painted pale gold on his skin, revealing the dark spiderweb of tattoos over his chest, both shoulders and arms, down his abdominal muscles and hips, reaching his knees.

As he stood on his knees above her, the yearning in her body turned to hunger. Sarah licked the deep furrow between his abdominals, first up to his rib cage and then down to the whorl of his navel and the coarse line of hair starting below it, nudging his arousal aside with her chin as she descended.

Blaze's fists tightened into hard knots, and his body stretched backward as she reached the root of his erection and then licked far, far up, back to the bulbous head of it.

As she took the top of him inside her mouth, the faint earthiness of his natural musk mixed with warm spices of cologne that seemed to impossibly linger on his skin. He groaned, and his massive thigh quivered under her hand where she'd steadied herself.

She pressed her mouth down on him, taking more of his thick length until the wider head hit the back of her throat, choking her, and then Blaze grabbed handfuls of her hair and pulled her off, scrambling to push her down onto the quilt. "Inside you. I'm going to fucking die if I'm not inside you."

The sonic vibration in her spine and body increased to a scream with wanting him, needing him, and she retracted her legs from between his thighs, trying to wrap herself around his body and his shaft and fill the aching need inside. "Please!"

Blaze twisted, grabbing the nearest duffel bag and practically ripping it open as he unzipped it, plunging his hand inside and coming up with a plastic packet before he chewed one side and ripped it open and jammed the condom onto himself and then was pressing her open, the heat and insistent hardness of him piercing her as she squirmed, lifting her hips and flailing at him, gasps of air roiling through her body.

Despite her pleas for now, take me, please now, his deliberate penetration of her body was slow, unrelenting. She ground her teeth at the almost unbearable stretching inside, and he murmured, "Good girl. You can take it. Take all of me. Yeah, fuck, that's a good girl."

Her arms and legs thrashed as she grabbed onto him, her heels slipping on the quilt and the wooden floor, trying to hold onto his shoulders and his waist because the intimacy fed the craving in her heart.

"You're mine,and I'm going to fuck you until you know that. I'm going to fuck you until you can't see anything but me. I'm going to fuck you until your entire body knows it's mine."

His body surged in hers, his rough pushes rocking against her clit. When the quilt shifted underneath her back, Blaze wrapped one arm around her shoulders and held her as he rammed her body with his, every deep thrust and ascending swirl tightened around Sarah, spinning and yet pinning her as she was crushed, and then pulsations boiled up her spine and flooded her body and mind and heart.

She clung to him, crying out and unable to hear herself, a scream into the silent madness of ecstasy.

When the raging storm inside Sarah quieted, as she floated back to the surface of consciousness and gasped a deep breath, Blaze was folded over her, his breathing ragged in her ear as he whispered what a good girl she was, how beautiful she was, how he was never going to let her go.

Without thinking about the repercussions, she whispered, "Do you mean that?"

His soft sigh answered too much, but he said, "Yeah, I mean it because I'm a possessive asshole who doesn't know where the boundaries are."

"But did you say it because you meant it, or is that just a thing you say?"

Blaze's big hand stroked her hair away from her forehead, but he didn't sit up. "I mean what I say, but I respect what you say, too."

The whole world was too much for Sarah to understand.

True to his word, Blaze cocooned Sarah in the quilt while he wrapped a fuzzy throw blanket around his waist and tinkered inside a closet built next to the bathroom's wall. When a quiet whirring began, Blaze ran water into a stock pot and set it on the stove. After a click, a blue flame sprouted underneath the pot.

Sarah called over to him, "I can get the water ready. You don't need to do that for me, and I can heat some for you while I'm at it."

Blaze strolled across the cabin's one room and, bracing his hands on the arms of her chair, loomed over her. "I told you that I always take care of what's mine. Until we arrive back at your farm, you're mine. Now, rest there like the tired, sleepy good girl you are, and I'll be ready for you in a moment. If you're a naughty little brat, I'll tie you up in that quilt until I'm done heating the water."

Sarah was tired but a little shocked, too. "Didn't you use your ropes to rescue Starlight's colt?"

His blue eyes glittered with iciness, and his growing smile held a hint of evil. "Not all of them."

Oh, jeez, his grin was terrifying. Maybe it was better back when he didn't smile.

She snuggled down in the quilt for what seemed like just a minute, but it must've taken at least half an hour for that massive pot of water to boil.

More time must have passed because Blaze's short hair lay on his forehead in damp clumps, and he was wearing dark blue loose pants and a lighter blue tee shirt when he was standing in front of her.

Blaze lifted her in his arms in a bundle, quilt and all, and carried her to the cabin's small bathroom. The freshness of soap wafted from his clothes.

The six inches of clear water in the tub steamed in the cold air. He extricated her from the quilt and helped her step into the bath, then washed her body, first running the warm washcloth over her face and shoulders and then down her body, pausing to smooth the nubbly cloth over the peaks of her breasts. Placing her on her hands and knees, he massaged the rough washcloth over her ass and between her legs until her body was tightening with need again, but indeed, a part of her mind was relinquishing herself as Blaze washed her body because it was his to own.

When she looked up at him from where she kneeled in the tub, his gaze was sharp, and her body trembled.

He whispered to her, his voice hoarse as if he were keeping himself from raging, "Stand up."

Sarah complied, and he helped her step out of the tub with her fingers clenched in his fist, and then he wiped down her body like he was polishing every inch of her skin.

He wrapped her in a towel and led her out by the fire. In the warmth of the flames, he dressed her in the clean clothes he'd brought from his house, which were also too big for her but in black.

The tiny kit he'd given her with the toothbrush and a mini-tube of toothpaste was already lying in the bathroom on the small sink, and he left her alone.

After brushing her teeth and using the bathroom, she padded back out to the cabin's main room.

Blaze was sitting on the floor, his back leaning against the front door. "Take the bed."

That was ridiculous. "I'm smaller than you are. I can push the two chairs together or something."

"I said, you will take the bed. I don't want to spank you and leave you frustrated and unsatisfied, but I will."

Yeah, after that bath, mission accomplished. "You can sleep in the bed, too. If you don't want me to touch you, I won't. It wouldn't occur to me to reach over and grab you or anything. If I move around too much, Muffintop bites me."

"I'm standing guard."

"Does that mean you're not going to sleep at all again?"

"I will rest."

"I can take the first shift of standing guard." Sarah gestured toward the chair with the wadded-up quilt on it. The window behind it had turned a shade of dark gray instead of forest-night black. "I think I took a nap."

"Sleep for a while in the bed. After we've rested, we'll pack up and drive back to your farm."

"Sitting over there against the door isn't even the best vantage point. If someone breaks in, you'll be firing across the cabin toward me," she pointed out. "If you come over here to the bed, you'll have a proper line of fire away from both of us, with mostly log-cabin wall for a backstop."

Blaze's eyes darted left, then right, and then he sighed and stood, coming over to sit on the floor with his back against the bedpost.

Sarah flipped the quilt over Blaze and covered his legs even though he raised one eyebrow at her the whole time, and then she tucked herself into the bed. "It will take, what, two days to drive back to Iowa?"

"If we stop to sleep, yes."

Sarah reached for the lamp that Blaze must've moved beside the bed. "And then I'll go back to my own life, and you will go back to yours," she sighed, a wistful note infiltrating her voice that she hadn't meant to allow.

He lifted his head and turned to look at her, his ice-blue eyes serious as he studied her from where he leaned against the bed. "I don't want to go back to my own life."

She jerked the chain on the lamp, and the light fled. "Oh, come on. Your fancy pedigreed house is much better than a corn farm with one cow."

"Better?" he asked in the dark air. "I don't think it's better."