Mountain Captive by Cassie Mint
Two
Carver
She knows I’m here. Clever little princess. The first time I saw her tripping past my cabin like some lost city girl, I thought I was hallucinating. I’ve spent months, years, staring at surveillance photos of her and the rest of the Volkov family. At secret shots taken of her in her college classes; walking in the park with the family lackeys; through her bedroom window as she tugged a sweater over her head.
Maybe I stared at her photos more than the others. It doesn’t change anything. She’s still one of them.
The family who took everything from me.
I thought she was a figment of my imagination. A sign I’d been out here in the mountains alone too long, obsessing over my revenge plans. But when I ducked out of my back door and followed her on silent feet, I got another look at her.
I’m not insane. She really is here, the girl I’d planned to ruin along with the rest of the Volkovs. Wandering into my mountains like some lost little lamb. And she must be lost, with her overstuffed backpack tilting on her slender shoulders, and her brand new hiking boots scuffing through the dirt. I know with one glance that they’re rubbing her heel.
It’s too good to pass up, this opportunity. I’ve been making the Volkovs hurt for months, sabotaging their businesses and cutting off their ties one by one. But I never dreamed of this—that I’d get the Volkov girl in my clutches. At my mercy, just me and her. My cock swells unbidden at the thought, and I palm it as I follow her, weaving behind her through the trees.
It’s fate.
She’s so small. Delicate. Her lithe grace is clear in every light step she takes on the dirt path. And when she glances around, eyes wide and lips parted in fear, a vice constricts around my chest.
I want those eyes on me. So much I have to fight every instinct, forcing myself to stay hidden in the shadows and not step out onto the path and wave at her.
She’d only run. And then I’d have to give chase, and fuck, I’ve never been so hard in my life at that thought. At pursuing her like an animal as she crashes through the undergrowth, her eyes bright with fear…
My fevered imagination runs out there. Because when I catch her, despite the bitterness that’s soaked deep into my soul, I want her willing. Fighting me, yes, thrashing and grunting, but with the same dark excitement that grips me now. I want her wet and ready and desperate for me to take her, and… fuck.
This means nothing.
It’s a moment’s weakness, a physical reaction to the way her hair tumbles down her back and her ass jiggles in those leggings. It’s not her—she is a Volkov. Part of the family that destroyed me.
And she will pay.
* * *She pitches her tent in a clearing, flush up against a boulder. It’s a smart move—she’s harder to sneak up on this way, and I know from the quick, harsh breaths inside the tent that she’s not sleeping. She’s too wary. Too afraid. I climb the boulder in slow, silent motions, pulling myself up and over the rock with languid power. And when I crouch above her tent, close and quiet enough to hear her frightened breathing, I’ve never felt so alive.
Primed and poised. As attuned to her as the mountain lions are to their prey. This is the most intimate experience of my life, and I haven’t even looked her in the eyes. I hover above her, the mountain breeze tugging my hair back from my forehead, and consider my options.
I could speak. Break the silence. Say just her name in a low caress, and wait for her to lunge out of the tent into the clearing in a panicked haze.
Or I could drop onto the tent from above. Tear the fabric open with my bare hands and carry her kicking and screaming back to my cabin.
Or I could befriend her. ‘Accidentally’ meet her tomorrow in the light of day, when her guard is down and she’s ready to trust again. Play the friendly local guide, and lure her back to my cabin willingly.
The options swirl and catch in my brain, each of them tempting me one by one. They all offer unique potential. But as I mull over my choices, her breathing softens and slows beneath me in the tent, until finally she slips into sleep. Her deep, heavy breaths mingle with the rustling and scurrying of the forest, and I find myself lingering just to listen to her.
She’s not what I pictured.
Out here, unprotected. Her eyes shining bright with unbridled joy as she soaks in the beauty of the mountains. And that vulnerable hitch in her breath when she sensed she was being followed…
She’s no mobster’s ice princess.
Natalia Volkova is something else. Something more.
She’s a puzzle to solve. A question to answer. And I will solve her—as I use her for revenge.
