Mountain Refuge (Mountain Mutineers #1)

Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Brooke

T he gruffness in Elijah’s voice sent a shiver down my spine. For all our sexy times, the secret encounters away from the kids, Elijah had never taken off his shirt. The couple of times I’d started to take off his shirt, he always stopped me. When I asked him over the summer if he was embarrassed by his physique—which I felt was a logical assumption based on some of the comments he’d made about his lack of muscle and body type—but he claimed it wasn’t.

The conviction in his voice now puzzled me. He had nothing to be ashamed of, but I got the feeling he thought this was a reveal of some sort.

I wondered if he’d pieced together that I’d already seen him naked during my care for him the first night he’d stayed at my cabin. While I hadn’t looked at him in a sexual way, I had seen him. And I liked what I had seen.

I brought my hands down and bunched the hem of his shirt into my fists. He raised his arms as I lifted the material up and over his head. I dropped it onto the rock beside us. When I saw the apprehension in his eyes, I realized just how nervous he was. I still didn’t understand but wanted to make him feel more comfortable. I quickly unbuttoned my shirt and placed it on top of his.

My sports bra was not sexy or fancy. Like everything I wore, it was practical. Elijah knew I did not own lingerie. He also was aware that I didn’t shave that often. When it had just been me in the mountain, what was the point? Who was I shaving for, the bears? Since he’d come back into my life, I had started to take more care with my feminine hygiene. I might not own a skimpy, slutty outfit, but I could still do my part to make myself look nice for him. I still drew the line with makeup, nail polish, and high heels.

I was sitting on his lap, which was a relatively intimate position in and of itself. It surprised me when Elijah moved me to kneel beside him. He got up onto his knees. Again, it seemed like he was bracing himself for something.

My eyes gazed down over his chest and abdomen. He’d gained both weight and muscle over the winter and through the summer. While I had not minded his softness, I was also not complaining about his new definition.

And then he turned.

I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to realize what it was I was looking at. At first, I didn’t understand and couldn’t place the crisscrossed lines marring his back. They weren’t birth marks or stretch marks.

The white raised lines were jagged and non-symmetrical. He did not have a tan. Unlike the other men on the mountain, Elijah did not remove his shirt outside during the summer. The paleness of his skin only seemed to accentuate the angry lines.

With a careful hand, I stretched forward. He flinched when my fingertips made contact with his skin, though I knew it wasn’t from pain. These lines were not new.

“What happened?” I knew what my brain was telling me had happened, but I didn’t want to believe it .

During my first year as a detective, I came across a case involving a couple heavy in the BDSM scene. The woman had been so submissive that she would not speak to me without her partner, her Dom, present. I saw scars and even a brand on her. What I’d had trouble wrapping my head around at the time was that everything done to her had been willing. She’d consented to it all without coercion. The man, her Dom, loved her with a fierceness I’d never seen before—even in my own marriage. He was protective and possessive, but he was not cruel.

It had been another man, who was not a Dom in their scene, who had believed the woman’s submissive nature meant she was submissive to all men. The woman’s Dom had killed her attempted rapist, but not before he’d beaten and flogged her within an inch of her life.

I did not want to press charges against the Dom, but the law stated he was in the wrong by killing his partner’s attacker. As I put handcuffs on that man and read him his rights, it had been the first time I’d questioned my chosen profession.

The last time had been when I’d discovered evidence of Tyler and Kate’s affair without having suspected a thing prior.

I thought about that woman from time to time. I knew that the charges against the Dom had finally been ruled a justifiable homicide, but he’d still been arrested, jailed, and separated from the woman he loved during her most vulnerable time. When I checked in on her during his absence, I saw the scars that now littered her body. Though her clothes covered most, I knew that her breasts and buttocks were heavily marred. The scars that were visible, though, looked a lot like the ones I saw now on Elijah.

Someone had flogged him. From the shame and his need to hide the scars, I knew he had not been a willing participant. Aside from her attack, the woman submissive had gotten pleasure from the pain. It had been a power exchange between herself and her partner—a man she trusted and loved.

Elijah and I had talked a lot about our past experiences. He knew more about Tyler, especially the good times. I even talked about Kate and the mischief we’d caused as kids and teens, best friends.

I knew that Elijah hadn’t had a steady girlfriend since entering the employment of Belle and Lucas’s birth father. He hadn’t even taken a single day off since Belle had started to become subjected to some of her birth father’s attentions. The only person he’d felt he could trust for years had been the kids’ half-brother, Trenton. There had been no woman in his life in years.

And he’d never been in love.

We hadn’t said those words. I knew I was the hold up. The last time those words had crossed my lips, it had ended in catastrophe. I did not want that to happen again, which did make me cowardly.

So, while I knew what I felt and I also knew what he felt, we had not said those words.

That wasn’t a bad thing. We had nothing but time up on this mountain. Even with the pending winter, there was no rush. It took time for both of us to rebuild the trust that had been broken in our pasts.

Trust that I knew Elijah had never placed in a woman before.

“He was going to punish Belle.” Elijah’s voice was cold, emotionless. Like he was trying to not feel the memory. “He gave me a choice: take her punishment or watch her punishment.”

I closed my eyes, utterly broken for this man before me. He did not see his own strength. Thought himself weak or lacking because he did not have the traditional bulk generally associated with an ‘alpha male’. I wondered if he would feel differently if he knew the term ‘alpha male’ was first coined in reference to chickens, which is also where we got the phrase ‘pecking order’.

Elijah was blind to the strength of his heart. He never spoke his boss’s name, but I did not need more detail to know who ‘he’ was that had threatened Belle and harmed Elijah. Flogged him.

The monster had tried to sell his own daughter, wanted to make her a child bride to seal a business deal. Should it really be that big of a shock that he would want to punish his daughter so harshly? I had to wonder too if he’d known Elijah would step in. Was the man diabolical enough to have never intended to harm Belle, knowing that Elijah would step in? Had his goal been to harm Elijah either way—emotionally by watching Belle be punished or physically by taking this punishment himself?

Because, of course , Elijah would take Belle’s punishment. That was where his strength lay, in his willingness to do anything and everything to protect his children.

I crawled forward on my knees, ignoring the bite of the hard rock beneath. I pressed my bra-clad chest to his back, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. I pressed my lips into the side of his neck.

I struggled with what words to say. Were there any that could make this right? He’d been tortured at the hands of his former employer to spare the daughter of his heart a terrible fate. Telling him ‘good job’ would be a mockery of his sacrifice and an insult. Telling him ‘I’m sorry’ seemed obvious and cliché.

Before I could choose my words, Elijah spun around. He grabbed me up in his arms, kissing me fiercely. I needed no time, reacting with equal vigor. Heat flooded my veins and pooled low in my belly.

I wanted this man. I needed him like I needed air to breathe.

It took some finagling to get my tight bra off. My large breasts were confined in the material and appeared smaller than they were when I was dressed. My nipples were already hard and begging to be touched.

Elijah did not disappoint. As he raised me up onto his bent legs, he ducked his head down and claimed one of my nipples. I let out a gasp, my belly quaking. My hands gripped his brown locks as I fought to bring him closer to myself. I pressed my own mouth to his temple. Wetness pooled between my legs and I felt the hard ridge of his erection.

Words spoken or not, I knew I loved this man with every fiber of my being. I’d rescued him from a frozen death and he’d saved me from a loneliness I had not realized was slowly suffocating me. I loved my mountain life, but I loved it even more knowing I would one day share my home with this man and his adorable children.

Our pants and shoes were quickly shed. Neither of us came prepared but we were not willing to let this heat extinguish between us. We were in the middle of the woods on a cliff face with nothing surrounding us but nature and woodland creatures.

Elijah placed our clothing out to cushion the roughness of the boulder beneath us. Then he rolled onto his back. I don’t know why I was surprised by this chivalrous position. He was taking the brunt of the hardness of the ground so I didn’t have to.

I straddled him. Alongside heavy kissing and petting came laughter and joy. I hadn’t had a man inside me in nearly ten years. Elijah, though, did not rush me or judge.

Instead, he brought my core up to his face and brought me to orgasm with his mouth. When he tried to continue, I stopped him to switch positions. Not willing to let him go on unreciprocated, I draped myself over his torso and took his erection between my lips as he made love to my pussy with his mouth.

It would have been safer for us to have brought the other to completion via our mouths and to not have vaginal sex. We had no protection and neither of us was prepared emotionally for a pregnancy. It was like the need to finally join together overrode any consideration or common sense. We moved together, completely in sync, as I moved around to straddle his hips.

I sank down on his cock, completely oblivious to the sounds of birds and critters, to the cool breeze that signaled the end of day. Our fingers laced together between us. I ground my hips down, trying to take him as deep inside of me as I could.

We never looked away from each other. Like our eyes were magnetized. We were utterly and completely alone…together. The forest could have caught fire around us and we would have never known.

There was him and me…and ecstasy. It was slow and passionate and filled with all the unspoken love we felt for each other.

At least we had the wherewithal to have him pull out as he ejaculated. As we lay there, curled around each other and catching our breath, all that mattered was each other.

We had maybe a month before the weather turned and winter would be upon us. That seemed like a lifetime away. For those few precious hours on the edge of the mountain, the rest of the world was nonexistent.