Page 54 of Mountain Refuge

Her touch felt like a soothing balm, like aloe on sunburn. It was the calm I needed to clear my head.

“Sorry,” I mumbled into her chest.

Running her fingers through my hair, her nails massaged the tension out of my scalp. “It’s okay. I’m glad I found you, though. Corbin wasn’t sure where you were headed exactly, but you left an easy trail for me to track.”

I liked that she’d made the effort to even try, rather than just wait at the cabin for me. I felt bad about pawning off Lucas and Belle on Corbin and Gertie. I really did rely on them too much. Brooke, too.

“I know you said you didn’t want to talk about it, but it’s not like you to brood. I’m worried about you.”

For some reason, I didn’t like that description. “I wasn’t brooding.”

Her chest vibrated with her giggle. “Yes, you were.”

“Sulking, maybe,” I allowed. She smelled good. She must have been in her garden earlier; she smelled of dirt and greens.

“All right. Fine. It’s not like you tosulk.”

I knew she was right. This wasn’t like me. Maybe I was due a bad day after all we’d been through. It had been eight months since we’d run.

I looked past her right ear, out at the vast horizon. There was nothing but trees and rocks for miles. I knew the land well enough by now to know which direction the mountain river was in, but it blended into the foliage too much to be seen at this distance. There was nothing like nature to make a man realign his priorities.

Up here on this mountain, we were safe and protected from everything. The influence of society, the dangers of man, the expectations of modern life… There was nothing around us and yet I didn’t feel alone.

My eyes slid back to hers. I reached up, placing a lock of her hair between two fingers and threaded it down around her face. Brooke was, without a doubt, the most important person in my life—aside from my children.

She knew most of my secrets and had accepted me. It was time she knew the rest.

“Take off my shirt.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Brooke

The 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 morecomfortable. 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.

---