As soon as the door was closed behind the other two, I shot a glance to Luke. It was like he was about to bubble over and burst with pent up anger and there wasn’t anything anyone could do to slow him down.

“Luke, come on.” I reached out a hand to him. “You need to get some rest. You’ll be no good to him if-”

“I can’t rest,” he shot back at me. “You think I can just sit there and do nothing when I know that…”

He trailed off and stopped himself, like he was trying his hardest to remember what Anton had told him before he’d left. Then, he closed his eyes.

“Let’s make up a fire,” he suggested, opening them again, his voice softer this time around and taking me by surprise. “We need to get warm.”

We’d all been so distraught and shell-shocked, none of us had managed to get that far once we’d found the place, despite the fact that I could see my breath, like a white cloud in front of me.

“That sounds like a good plan.” I nodded cautiously, getting to my feet once more. “We just need to find some dry wood.”

Some of the tension seemed to leave his shoulders at the thought of something to keep him busy and he met my gaze. He seemed like he wanted to speak but then turned away.

He headed onto the porch and I followed behind, shivering as I watched him yank at the corner of a torn and weathered tarp. Two stacks of wood were piled there and we both began loading it into our arms.

We got a fire going – it smoldered out a couple of times at first, but after a few attempts, we finally got it to flare to life. He grunted with satisfaction, planting himself down in front of it, holding his hands to the blazing hot flames to warm them. I did the same, and for a moment, we sat there in silence, relieved for the moment of camaraderie in the midst of the bleakness that had been the last couple of days.

I stole a look over at him, watching the way the flames lit and danced across his face, his jaw, that smattering of dark stubble that had grown in over the last few days. I couldn’t help myself, and leaned over to touch him, to brush my fingers against his cheek. He closed his eyes for a second, as though savoring the feel of me like that, and then opened them again and looked at me. His gaze was impassive, unreadable, and I found myself shivering under the intensity of it.

“I’m so sorry for what happened with Rafe,” I murmured, knowing I was pushing my luck by bringing it up, but knowing that I couldn’t ignore it for another moment. “We’ll get him back, Luke. We will. I promise you that.”

He closed his eyes again, as though the words coming out of my mouth physically stung him, and he didn’t reply for a moment. For a second, I was sure that I’d overstepped my mark, that I’d gone too far and upset him by reminding him of the dire predicament one of our own was in. But, to my surprise, he looked up at me once more and began to speak.

“I can’t lose him,” he replied, his voice so low at first that I couldn’t make out what he was saying. When I realized what it was, my heart twisted hard in my chest and I felt so bad for him, for this man who only wanted to protect the tiny circle of people he loved.

“You won’t,” I assured him, even though I wasn’t sure how much my word counted for by now. He managed the tiniest smile, the corner of his mouth quirking up for a moment. And then he looked away, back into the fire, taking my hand from his face and holding it between his.

“Ever since we were kicked out of the pack when we were kids,” he began, hesitantly, as if he was sharing a secret with me. “Ever since then, I’ve been so paranoid about losing them. Of losing any of them. We’re a team. A family.”

He fell silent again, looking into the fire, as though the flames held the answers to the questions that he seemed too afraid to ask even himself.

“But Rafe, especially,” he admitted. “He was so trusting, even after we were first kicked out. Him and Ethan still wanted to believe that people were inherently good. Anton and I had to step up to protect them as best we could at the time, and I knew it wasn’t enough, even then.”

“But he survived,” I pointed out. “You all did. You all…you’re here, you’re still family. Still together. And Rafe will be with you again soon…”

“I really hope so,” Luke replied gruffly, picking at a loose thread on the carpet. I could tell that he didn’t believe what I was saying, but he didn’t let go of my hand. I wasn’t sure if it was for my benefit or his, but I appreciated it either way, the gentleness of his touch at odds with how rough around the edges he often seemed.

“When I left my old pack,” I began slowly, not sure how exactly to frame this. “I was…I was so stuck, I was so alone. The friends I had back there, I felt betrayed by all of them…”

“You’re not exactly making me feel better about the nature of our people, you know.” Luke shot a wry smile in my direction, and I shook my head.

“No, I know.” I bowed my head. “I just wanted to…I just know how it feels, when it’s like you have nothing left in the world and you don’t know where the fuck you’re going to go from here. But you’ll find a way. We all will.”

“I have to believe that’s true.” He squeezed my hand and I felt this surge of desperation. Total helplessness that, whatever happened, I knew I couldn’t fix this. Not here. Not tonight.

“Luke, you know I’m going to do anything that I can to help him, don’t you?” I promised him, even though I knew my words probably didn’t mean a whole lot to him by this point. I wasn’t sure what I could do, what I could say, that would make him feel better. Instead of using words, I led with my heart, leaning close and pressing my lips to his.

It was a tentative caress, more a comfort than a come-on. To my surprise, he responded at once, groaning as he slanted his mouth over mine, his hand sliding up the small of my back until he was gripping my hair. It was quintessential Luke. No finesse, just feeling, as he dragged me against him roughly, his fingertips digging into my waist as though to make sure that I was really there, that I wasn’t going to blink out of existence on him.

He had been the last of the brothers I’d been with before I left the cabin that we had all called home for a brief while, and it felt right that he should be the first now that we were reunited. It was like coming home. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d been craving touch like this until he slipped his tongue into my mouth and pulled me on top of him. Any lingering doubts that had been at the back of my head seemed to vanish. For a while, we could forget. Comfort one another and reaffirm that we were here. We were alive and we weren’t giving up. The respite wouldn’t last forever but, damn it, I’d take it.

He pressed me closer with a groan, the two of us lying flat on the rug beneath us, the fire warming my skin where our legs intertwined and our bodies met as though they had been built to fit together. He wrapped his arms around me so tight that I could feel his heartbeat thumping through his shirt.

“Take this off,” I breathed in his ear, tracing the hem of his shirt, and he quickly leaned up and whipped it off, tossing it aside – before he lay down, he did the same to me, removing the shirt that they’d brought for me and letting it land next to his on the floor. He leaned up to kiss me again, our bare skin next to each other. It felt like I was feeding an addiction, the endorphins exploding in my head and every nerve ending beginning to prickle with excitement. He rolled on top of me, pushing me down, his hands traveling hungrily across my skin and down towards my pants. He hooked his fingers around the top and began to pull them down urgently, and I knew as well as he did which way this was going; I didn’t want to wait and neither did he, both of us pushing hard, bucking against each other, trying to drive ourselves together with enough force that we could push the bad thoughts from our heads for a while. I lifted my hips and let him yank off my pants, and he did the same, stripping down.

The heat from the fire was the only thing lighting us by then, but I could see everything I needed to as he bore back down on top of me and kissed me once more; I could make out the way his muscles strained against his skin, the faded-down ink of the tattoos that I still hadn’t gotten a decent look at. There was this urgency with Luke…no time to slow down, no time to stop and stare. It was just pure, hungry need.

He took his cock in his hand and suddenly he was pressing that massive, throbbing length against my entrance. And me? I was more than ready. Aching and wet, whimpering and shifting my hips to help him. First, it was just the smooth, broad head, breaching my tight folds. And then, all at once, with a mighty groan, he was inside me…filling me, stretching me almost to the point of pain. There was no time to catch my breath as his powerful hips pulled back and thrust forward again, seating that cock to the hilt.

“Ah, Luke!”

There was no slow and steady. No gentle caresses or reverent kisses. Our teeth clacked together as he mashed his mouth against mine again and took me, owning me with each thrust. As big as he was, it should’ve hurt, but something about the roughness of the way he was moving satisfied a craving I didn’t know I’d had – feeling our bodies crashing together like that was the only thing in the world right now, his warm skin against mine. I slid my hands down and sank my fingers into his ass, pulling him against me as hard as I could, letting him know that I could handle it…that I didn’t want him to hold back even a little.

Within moments, the two of us had built our pace to a frenzy, moving with each other in perfect harmony, me rocking forward as his hips moved like pistons, driving me relentlessly toward ecstasy.

Before I knew it, I was panting and clawing at his back and wrapping my legs around him and trying to take him even deeper, even harder. His breath coming in harsh gasps, he caught my bottom lip between his teeth and tugged hard, making me groan. I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the feeling of total abandon.

Holy hell, I had needed this worse than I could have possibly imagined. I was already getting close, edging towards a splintering orgasm with every movement. I knew he was, too, could tell from the way he groaned, all ragged and raw, his eyes closed and his jaw clenched. Seeing him so lost to this moment, knowing how much I was turning him on…feeling him all hard and thick inside me, my channel gripping him like a fist, it was all I needed to-

“Luke!” I cried out, the noise shattering the quietness around us; he let out this deep growl from deep down in his chest as he gripped my hips in a viselike hold.

Tremors rocked through me as I exploded around him and I dimly felt him stiffen above me. He surged forward one last time, burying himself deep as his thick cock jerked, filling me in hot, heavy spurts as my pussy clenched around him in fluttering spasms. I couldn’t stop. I could only hang on to him for dear life as the storm raged on.

Long moments ticked by, the silence only broken by the sound of our breathing as we came back to earth. I held him tight, savoring the warmth and the safety of his body as I waited for reality to set in once again.

Luke held himself inside me, until, reluctantly, he pulled away. The shock of the cold on my skin where he had been hit me like a slap as he handed me my clothes.

“Much as I would like to keep you naked, you’ll freeze, even with this fire.”

He managed a tight smile, and then leaned in and planted a soft kiss on my mouth. I kissed him back, and for one, last moment I could pretend that all of this wasn’t really happening, that it was all some awful nightmare.

But then he pulled away, and I could see the shadows on his face. The ones that I was sure matched mine. No matter how much we wanted it to be otherwise, we couldn’t escape from the mess I’d created.

Rafe was still gone, and we had no idea how we were going to get him back.