Ransom by Callie Rhodes

Chapter Thirteen

In the bright light of morning, the events of the previous night seemed almost like a dream. Gretchen stretched her arms high above her head. The slight soreness in her muscles was proof that her intimacy with Ransom had been real and not a fantasy that had blown away in the night like wisps of clouds.

Ransom was definitely real….and awake.

When he saw that she'd finally stirred, he came over and wordlessly picked her up off the ground, carrying her like he had that first night. The steady heartbeat that reassuringly pounded against her ear as he brought her down the mountainside banished any doubt of what they'd shared.

Amazingly, all of Gretchen's senses seemed to have brightened and intensified overnight. The sky looked clearer. The birdsong in the highest boughs of the evergreens sounded crisper. Even the fresh green scent of dewy moss was deeper.

And then there was the feeling of Ransom's body—his strong hands wrapped around her curves, the power radiating from his arms, the slow and steady rise and fall of his breath. It was enough to make Gretchen's head spin.

Unfortunately, Gretchen's tumbling thoughts left her little time to enjoy the sensual bounty surrounding her.

Ransom might be cradling her with care, but she realized he hadn't said a single word to her. He was just staring straight ahead, expressionless.

Well, this was embarrassing.

Here she was silently rhapsodizing about the magical night they'd shared, while he was clearly feeling awkward about a one-night stand.

Gretchen got that. Hell, she'd experienced it plenty of times herself—heading for some random guy's door, inching backward while pulling on last night's clothes, making just enough clumsy small talk to not feel rude before bolting and starting the walk of shame back home.

Sure, it was more than a little hurtful that Ransom felt that way. Just as it stung to know he didn't share her opinion of just how special last night was, but she understood.

She tried to make it easier on him with a bit of light conversation. "Where are we going?"

He grunted before tersely replying, "The river."

Okay…maybe conversation wasn't the best route after all.

Gretchen stayed quiet the rest of the way, Ransom following the sound of thundering, rushing water. When he set her down on the bank of the river, she saw that they were near the base of a mountain, and across a deep green pool was the most incredible waterfall she had ever seen. It spanned nearly the entire width of the pool and was at least three stories tall, sending millions of water droplets sparkling like diamonds, its sheer force almost impossible to comprehend.

Gretchen gasped in wonder, but Ransom seemed unmoved by the sight. "You can take a bath here," he said briskly before turning around.

"Wait—where are you going?"

"I'll wait in the woods until you're finished, and then I'll carry you back up to the cave."

Okay, now Gretchen was really confused. Until this moment, there had been none of this stilted formality between them. He told her what to do, and she did it; if there was something on his mind, he came right out with it.

Besides, after the things they'd done last night, it seemed a little late to worry about her modesty.

"Hang on, Ransom. What the hell is going on?"

"Nothing."

"I thought alphas didn't lie." Gretchen didn't bother to hide the edge in her voice. Never mind that she seemed to have developed a taste for submission when it came to sex; the rest of the time, she wasn't going to put up with being shut out.

"We don't," Ransom snapped. "And I'm not."

"Yes, you are." Gretchen put her hands on her hips and glared at him. "I've been down this road more than enough times to recognize when a guy is acting weird the morning after, and trust me, you are acting really weird."

That got Ransom's attention. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth tightened as he studied her. "Exactly how many trips on this road have you taken?"

Seriously? "Enough to know when a guy is trying to slide out the front door before my alarm goes off."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Fine. If Ransom was really going to make her say it, Gretchen wasn't about to hold back. But she retreated a few steps into the water first…just to be on the safe side. The chilly water stung all the way up to the bend in her knees.

"If you want to tell me that last night was just a fling or a mistake you regretted the minute you woke up—or even if you want to tell yourself that you were just blowing off some steam, then go ahead. God knows I've heard it all before."

Ransom didn't look abashed in the slightest, his mouth set in a grim line. "So there were at least three before me. Any others?"

This guy was really too much, Gretchen thought. He was giving her the silent treatment because he was jealous? Yeah, he'd been forcibly celibate for eight years, and that would probably leave anyone with some mixed emotions, to say the least. But Gretchen wasn't about to apologize for being a healthy, independent young person trying to have a little fun before the government outlawed that, too.

"First, none of your business. Second, it's not like I was keeping score or carving notches in the headboard. And third—" Why was this pissing her off so much? But Gretchen wasn't the least bit interested in answering that question. "Why the hell should you care? You've barely said two words to me all morning, and now you can't get away fast enough."

Ransom blinked, and some of the tension left his face, replaced by confusion. "You think I'm trying to get away from you?"

Gretchen could feel her face reddening. She couldn't believe he wanted to have this discussion while she was standing in the middle of the river. "You literally just said you were leaving me here. What else am I supposed to think?"

Instead of answering, Ransom watched her, his eyes narrowing with that now-familiar glint, utterly self-assured and faintly predatory. And as if a switch had been thrown, Gretchen felt a hot rush of slick run down her thighs.

For God's sake, this was getting out of control. It was a good thing that she was about to be submerged in the freezing water.

Ransom started moving toward her, never taking his eyes off her, as if he'd completely forgotten his promise to wait out of view. Gretchen half expected him to throw her over his shoulder and take her back without her bath as punishment. The trouble was she didn't even know which part of what she'd said had set him off.

She kept backing up until the water reached her chest and the current pulled at her body.

Ransom stopped just in front of her, his arms hanging at his sides. The water barely reached his thighs.

"Put yourself in my shoes," he said quietly. "I spent eight years in a cage, unable to touch or talk to anyone. Fulmer took away my dignity, my independence. He denied me the simplest human needs. All I experienced was pain and loss. And all that was left for me was survival."

Gretchen swallowed, unmoored. Somehow she'd gone from irritation to an empathy so deep it was almost as if she herself bore the mark of his trauma.

"It was like being trapped in that damn cave, except there was no way out of it. I never saw the sky. They fed me like an animal. After a while, my senses went numb. I stopped caring about anything but destroying Fulmer." He was standing so close that Gretchen could see the tiny flecks of copper in his dark eyes, like the spokes of an ebony wheel. "Then you came along, and it was like suddenly stepping out into the sun. It was overwhelming. Blinding. Just your presence –it started to melt the pain away. I don't know how, but it brought things I thought were lost forever."

He closed the distance between them, all awkwardness gone, and ran his wet fingers down her arms to grip her wrists. Even that simple touch left goosebumps in its wake.

"Being with you feels so good, better than I ever imagined anything could. As if you warm me from the inside, but I've been cold for so long that I almost didn't recognize that feeling. Like I was suddenly alive again. But I got careless, Gretchen." The copper flecks blazed, and he spat out what sounded like an accusation. "You made me hope."

Gretchen felt torn in every direction. That speech was the most moving thing she had heard Ransom say—had heard anyone say—but it also left no doubt of his conflicting impulses, the reckless danger simmering just below the surface. For some reason, though, its primary effect was to send her into a dizzying spiral of lust. She ought to be offering him comfort and sympathy, convincing him that he had everything to live for—but all she could think about was having him inside her again.

And that was dangerous because if Gretchen indulged her raging desire again, she couldn't pretend to be in control of anything anymore. No man ever talked about her with such passion, telling her that she was what took away his pain, if only for a little while. No man had ever made her feel that she mattered so much.

The fact that beta soldiers were trying to kill her had probably skewed her reason. It magnified her responses, and it was a bad idea to trust any of her perceptions right now…and yet it was taking every shred of Gretchen's self-control not to throw herself at Ransom and beg him to fuck her.

So when he heaved a sigh, his shoulders sagging and the light draining from his eyes, Gretchen felt like a pebble he'd thrown into the current, twisting wildly toward nothingness.

"The thing is, it was only ever an illusion," he said bleakly. "This sun I thought was sent to bring me back to life—this woman who came out of nowhere—you were never truly meant for me. I'm only a visitor to your world, Gretchen."

"Ransom—"

"I'm not who I was when I was taken," he insisted. "I'm not—whole anymore. And there's only one way this ends. That beautiful sun is going to set. You're going to leave me forever. And that hope—that illusion of hope—it'll disappear like it was never there at all."

Gretchen wanted to deny, to argue, to prove Ransom wrong…but she couldn't because the truth was that she was feeling it too, the approaching darkness that had nothing to do with the danger they faced. She just hadn't been able to put a name to it until now, trying to convince herself that she'd just been hit by the blues that always followed a one-night stand.

But that wasn't it at all.

For the rest of her life, no matter who she brought into her bed, who she tried to love, to trust, there would always be a memory standing in the way, a bar so high no beta man could ever reach it. Gretchen knew to her core that one would ever touch her the way Ransom did—physically and emotionally.

The connection between them was real, and it was deep, and what was more, it had been there from the very beginning.

Why else would she have run back to him after he'd told her to leave? Some part of Gretchen knew from the start that he wouldn't harm her. That he was what she was meant to find. Not just a story, but someone who saw her for who she was, maybe for the first time in her life. Ransom understood living in another's shadow. He'd felt the same guilt and pain, the toll of having to fight every single day.

Their struggles weren't the same, but their souls were locked in the same war. One in which the betas in charge were trying to extinguish the fire that burned inside each of them.

"Ransom," she said, "what if it doesn't have to be over just yet?"

She hadn't meant to say it, and she caught her breath at the knowledge she'd revealed more than she intended.

But the look in his eyes told her he already knew. "It will be worse. If we keep doing this, we're just asking for more pain later."

He was right. Gretchen knew that, and yet the stubborn yearning in her heart refused to be doused. Forget about later, it insisted; all that matters is now.

"You can't let Fulmer steal more joy from you," she said in a rush. "Ransom, neither of us knows what's going to happen tomorrow. We don't even know what's going to happen an hour from now. For all we know, we may have been picked up by their spy satellites, and Fulmer could be ordering Air Force jets to bomb the whole damn river." She took a deep breath and squeezed his hands. "If these are our last moments alive, do you really want to spend them thinking about what he's stolen from you when we could be…"

She felt it, the quickening in his pulse, the stirring of his blood. But then Ransom threw off her hands and stepped back from her as if the last shreds of that hope he talked about were poison in his veins.

Just as she'd voiced the things she didn't mean to say, her body took over her will. The strange feeling she'd woken with, that deepening of her senses and steadying of her purpose, urged her to act on her heart instead of her mind.

It was as if she was watching herself from the side as she slowly unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it onto a rock. The bra she'd put on two days ago in that bland hotel room, sensible pink satin with a tiny bow at the clasp, was the next to go. When she shucked off her skirt, her hips moved seductively, following a script written by the desire darkening Ransom's expression. She saw him swallow and let her eyes drift down to his swollen cock pressing against the front of his damp pants.

"Gretchen—" he said in a ragged voice.

In answer, she hooked her thumbs in the sides of her panties and slide them down a few inches, and then slipped her finger under the lacy scrap and into her sodden, aching pussy. She'd never understood the power of her slick before, the pleasure it could confer, and she pulled out her fingers and slid one into her mouth, locking eyes with Ransom as she swirled her tongue around it.

Ransom made a strangled sound that sent an answering tremor through Gretchen. She pulled her panties off and threw them toward the rest of her clothes. Despite the temperature of the water, her skin was on fire, and the shock of it against her burning cunt sending shock waves of pleasure through her body.

She needed more. She cupped her hands in the river and released the chilly water on her upturned face, turning it up to the sun as the water sluiced down her breasts, tightening her nipples into hard pebbles. Again and again, she doused herself, spinning in the water and laughing from the sheer joy of it.

The next thing she knew, Ransom came for her, his strong arms wrapping around her, crushing her against his warm, smooth chest. Beneath the surface, she rocked her hips against his, searching for the pleasure she craved.

Ransom carried her further into the water, swimming with strong, sure strokes, back toward the deepest part of the pool, until they were directly in front of the pounding falls.

"Breathe in," he said, and her body responded before her mind caught up. And then he pulled her under.

It was the strangest sensation, being underwater while the waterfall pounded them from above. Its roar was muffled in her ears, and the percussive force moved along her body from her head to her toes. Then they surfaced on the other side in a sparkling cavern tinted the green of the mossy bank, one wall lined with glistening vines cascading down the rock face and the other formed of rushing water.

It was too loud to hear each other. It didn't matter. Words could never convey what passed between them as Ransom took her roughly around the waist and lifted her onto the carpet of wet moss lining a partially submerged outcropping.

She said his name anyway, then screamed it when he lowered himself into the water and forced her thighs apart so that he could taste her. The slick that rushed out of her in a torrent rivaled the falls themselves, bringing with it a spasm of pleasure that seized every muscle in her body. This was the promise of what was to come—not just this time but over and over and over, into a future in which nothing mattered but this…them…together.

And though the lie was as treacherous as it was pretty, Gretchen threw herself willingly over its edge. Ransom's tongue and lips and teeth were doing things to her that coaxed impossible sensations from within her until she was digging her fingernails into his shoulders and bucking against his face like a wild animal. She started to come, throwing back her head and screaming. The falls swallowed the sound, giving her permission to let go completely, to give herself over to him until there was no her anymore, only them, together. She came and came and came. At some point, she ended up straddling his lap, rocking against him.

He held her so that nothing bad could ever happen to her, giving her the freedom to keep losing herself. It was the purest freedom Gretchen had ever known, this place where no one could see, and no one could hear, and no one would ever find them. In a place like this, they could be together forever.

She was nearing the height of her most powerful orgasm yet, clawing and biting and screaming, when Ransom's roar split the air, louder even than the mighty falls. He spun her around so her elbows rested on the soft moss, and she faced a mass of purple trumpet flowers.

Ransom plunged inside her one more time, all the way to her core…and Gretchen broke.

They came together, the power of his seed pulsing in time to her rhythm, and she fought the immovable rock and kicked at the depthless currents, blinded by ecstasy.

Again he began to swell, and there was no denying it this time. The pressure filling her was as exquisite as it was impossible. More, more, more until she swore they would be locked together—inseparable.

What happened last time had been only a promise—but this knot was a declaration. Ransom's own body was marking her, making her his, and Gretchen's soul submitted as though it had been waiting for this moment all her life.

But before that could happen, a deafening crack sounded. A second later, the warmth of Ransom's touch was replaced by the icy sting of frigid water. Gretchen barely had time to suck in a breath before he took them into the dark depths, stroke after powerful stroke moving them under the falls and along the silty bottom. Through the murky green, she saw starbursts cloud the water where they'd been making love.

They surfaced under the cover of a fallen log, gasping for air among the blackened branches, as the granite face splintered above them.

Only then did Gretchen realize what was happening. They'd been found.

Those weren't starbursts; they were bullets