CHAPTER SIX
Dawn arrived. Noah watched it come through the open picture window. Streams of light cascaded across the shiny wood floors. It had always given him peace while being here. Another day alive, breathing. He couldn’t say that about his friends. Tanner, Hunt, and Blade. All call names. He’d again, revisited that night in his dreams.
He figured his mind was trying to make it come out differently. It never would. He’d somehow come out of it alive. He also came out enraged. They’d been set up by their own superiors. They all knew too much about a certain mission. He’d gone over it many times in his head. Why did they suddenly feel like any of us would talk? We all had kept our missions and outcomes to ourselves.
This was why he’d gone into hiding. The very reason why he was up here on this mountain, alone for the last three months. He ran a hand over his eyes. He sat up and looked around at the log home. He’d been perfectly fine with staying here until he could find out who had really set him and his team up. He’d been on back to back missions for 2 years. He’d needed to take a break. Besides, he’d been forced into hiding by the very organization that had employed him.
He wasn’t alone anymore though, was he?
Suddenly, he felt a smile grace his lips. Dammit, that woman was something else. He had to admit. He’d met no one like her.
How he’d had his mouth on her and fingers inside her before he could fully wake was a mystery to him. He was always cognizant and controlled. Now suddenly, he was losing his temper, then turning into some gentle caregiver…Then, grabbing her up and getting lost in her. No, not all the way in her. Though he would love to feel that. I bet her pussy feels like a velvet vice. It felt like it to his fingers. To have her squeezing his cock as she came all over it?
He suddenly stood up. Fuck! Maybe she was right…he would get blueballs. Again, he laughed aloud at the last thing she’d said last night. He could picture himself trying to suck himself off. His laughter grew. Damn, what sex and fun he could have with her. With her sass and along with the way she did as he commanded? Fuck, he could spank her for that sassy mouthing off and fuck her at the same damn time and she would revel in it.
He tried to stop having these thoughts. He needed to remember that SHE needed to remember. He couldn’t just start fucking her and playing with that luscious body the way he wanted to. This could be more dangerous for him in the end.
How could she be dangerous though? She certainly wasn’t a soldier of fortune type. She had no weapon that he’d seen while climbing that ridge. So, she wasn’t an assassin. However, she could be a tracker. A private dick? He shook his head at each guess. None of them fit on her. Sure, she didn’t know who she was but he could read people. It had been ingrained into him and a natural sense he’d already had even before the service.
He now turned his head as he heard a noise that didn’t belong. He looked over at the panel on the wall. No flashing red light, so it wasn’t a parameter threat. His fists clenched as he stepped out of the living room and into the kitchen archway.
There, Miss Sass stood in a large shirt and only a large shirt, her creamy thighs peeking out of the sides. Her back was to him as her long chestnut curls hung down over the shirt.
Damn. He could just stand here and watch her all fucking day.
She was whipping up eggs, it looked like and humming to herself.
It was so domestic, so natural. He felt stunned, as he knew he wanted her to stay this way. Like what if he could keep her? What if she never remembered? Amnesia was 50-50. She may never remember. He brought himself up short. What the fuck was he thinking? Daydreaming was more like it. Wishing she would never remember, so he could have her here for all time? God dammit, what was the matter with him?
She turned to grab a pan on the other counter. Spotting him, her mouth formed an O and she dropped the bowl to the floor.
He stared at her reaction.
“How in the hell do you do that?” she screeched. “Sneak up like some god dammed ninja!” She gazed down at the mess. “Dammit!” Her gaze rose up to spot his amused grin. “Oh, no. You’d better not think this is funny!”
He kept grinning. Egging her on in fact. He’d found that he so enjoyed this woman’s temper tantrums.
She looked flustered and blew a curl out of her eyes as she grabbed paper towels then bent over to clean up the mess.
His smile faded. Her ass cheeks were now peeking out from the shirt. Taunting the fuck out of him. She wore no panties. His gut clenched and his dick sat up on alert. Now the joke was on him.
She kept fussing as she wiped up the mess. “Sneaking up on a person, just will-nilly then thinking it’s funny…” she kept muttering.
Noah moved to pick up the bowl. “Okay. I’m sorry?” He set the bowl in the sink. He was just learning she had this temper. And he liked it.
She sighed. “I was going to make breakfast. Return the favor of all your meals.”
He raised a brow at her. Like she’d wanted to return the favor by blowing him last night? Oh, he knew that was what she wanted to do after he’d made her come.
She caught him staring at her. “What?” she asked as she moved to the egg carton on the counter and reached up to a cabinet to get a new bowl.
There went the shirt again rising, rising. Now her soft cheeks were there at his beck and call. Damn, how he wanted to feel them under his fingers squeezing them, using them to propel her over his cock. He shook his head and turned away to grab a pan and some oil. “I’ll help you.”
She laughed. “Yeah, a lot of help you are.”
He chuckled and avoided looking at her, because if he looked—that shirt was sure as fuck coming off and he would—he caught himself again.
“Okay, so move out of my way,” she ordered.
He raised a brow at her. “When did you become this rude, sassy thing?”
She huffed still bent on being angry. “It’s better than cute!”
He couldn’t help it, he laughed.
“Okay that did it, Mister!” She took an egg and smashed it onto his bare chest.
Noah easily saw it coming, could have moved, could have possibly broken her arm to stop her. He did none of that. He had egged her on hadn’t he? He wanted to laugh at the apt pun. Still, he had to admire her. Small thing that she was, bold and temperamental.
Stepping back, she then seemed to think better of her actions as her expression looked dismayed. “Dammit!” She grabbed another paper towel and stepped up to wipe his chest.
He now caught the scent of her. And no, it wasn’t of eggs. It was of her. He’d caught it last night when he’d woken up to see her blue gaze above him on the couch. Now she was touching him. One hand on his chest the other wiping off the egg. He looked around at the counters. He wanted to set her up on one of them strip that shirt off her body and do all the things he was tempted to do.
“This tattoo,” she whispered. “I know this tat. The symbol…it is so familiar.”
Noah grabbed her hand and tugged her closer. “What?”
She nodded. “I’ve seen it somewhere before…”
So here it was. The reason he couldn’t act on his lust. Her memories and this particular one meant danger to him. There had only ever been three other people who wore this tatt. “From where? Who had it?”
Her face contorted in pain. “H-Harris. Y-your hurting me.”
He gazed down to see he had her wrist in a tight hold. He let go instantly. He could see his fingerprints there in a blazing red color. “Fuck!” He instantly regretted hurting her. He carefully looked at the marks. They would bruise he felt sure.
“I don’t know at all where I’ve seen it,” she whispered and shook her hand as if it were numb or something.
“Do you know what it means?” he asked distractedly as he went to get an icepack for her wrist.
“To the victor…”
He whirled around. “…Goes the spoils!”
Nodding her head, she looked upset. “H-how do I know that? When I don’t even…” Her voice trailed away.
He grabbed the ice pack from the freezer and stepped over to gently take her arm as he applied the pack to her wrist. “Only four people that I know of have this tat, Ridge,” he spoke softly. “We made it up, designed it. There’s no way you could have seen it. Then to know what it stands for?”
Biting her lip, she looked nervous.
He tried to speak softly to her, “This means that…you were after me. Or coming to me.”
Her gaze rose from his hands on her wrist to his face. “What?”
He let out a sigh. Tell her now. Not all of it but the part about her. “We never had sex, Ridge. You were climbing up my mountain.”
Her eyes widened as she gasped. “What? I d-don’t understand.”
He let go of her wrist. “Two men were right behind you with guns.”
“WHAT?” she shouted as all the color drained from her face.
He nodded. “Then an avalanche fell on you.”
She was breathing rapidly and looking like she would pass out again.
He grabbed her up. “Easy now. Easy.”
“Why? Why was I there?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“B-but why did you…”
He gazed at her lips wanting to kiss away her distress. Wanting take it all away. “I didn’t know who you were. Why you were here in the first place.”
“So you lied?” she asked in a small voice.
“I had to. You don’t understand what is going on here.”
She pushed at his chest. “I sure as hell don’t!”
He kept her up against him with very little effort.
“So why don’t you tell me why? What is the reason you would hide all this from me? Letting me think we’d had sex…” She gasped, as it seemed to hit her all over again. “So, my name isn’t Ridge?”
He shrugged. “No. Most likely not.”
“Let me go.” Her voice was low and fierce.
“No. I think not. You are too upset right now.”
“So, what? You’re gonna keep me hostage?”
He laughed, though there wasn’t any amusement in it this time. “Where would you go? Down the mountain in eight feet of snow?”
She was breathing heavily. “Maybe…”
He shook his head. “You need to stay right here until you remember. I cannot allow you to go even if there wasn’t snow and blizzards. You came here to find me.”
She seemed to calm suddenly. “Okay then, how do you want to proceed?”
He studied her face. He knew something had just changed in her. His senses never lied. “Look. Let’s eat. Talk. Rest, okay?”