Page 82 of Mountain Mens' Curvy Obsession

“That was Leo Sokolov with five of his men,” Nico says. “I really hope your dash and body cams captured some faces.”

“I memorized their plates,” I add with a trembling voice.

The sheriff shakes his head slowly. “Where have they been hiding this whole time?”

“In town,” Nico says. “I told you; they can blend in if the situation demands it. Leo didn’t bring his top guys out here. He brought the scrawny ones. Specifically, the ones he knows won’t raise the eyebrows of law enforcement if they’re seen walking down the street.”

“What do we do?” I worriedly ask Nico and the sheriff. “They were clearly following us. They knew where to find us.”

“But they never set foot up on the mountain,” Mills says. “That’s telling.”

“It means we need to accelerate everything we’ve been doing up to this point,” Nico replies, frowning as he looks at the sheriff. “We may need some help.”

Mills nods slowly and glances back at his men. “I need my boys for patrol now more than ever. But I can make a few calls and see if I can scrounge up a few Staties. Having seen Leo Sokolov with my own eyes just now, I can at least express official concern regarding mob activity in my town. That should get some attention.”

“In the meantime, we’re going home,” Nico tells me.

Home.

It sounds nice.

But much like everything that has sounded and felt nice up to this point, it might just crumble and fall apart under the heavy, merciless boot of reality. As long as Leo Sokolov is alive, he will not stop coming after me.

22

Anya

Every time I close my eyes, I find myself trapped beneath dead bodies, struggling to get out from that bloody hell. Leo’s face haunts me with his cruel smile, his eyes searching for me. But in my dreams, I don’t get away.

He finds me.

And every time he does, he puts a ring on my finger, thus staking his claim.

I wake up screaming until Chance or Booker or Nico or all three of them take me in their arms and comfort me back into a fully conscious state. It’s been a hard couple of days since we sent Leo and his goons away.

“Where are we going, now?” I ask Chance when we’re out hiking beyond the western mountain ridge.

“There’s something I want to show you,” he says.

The thick snow crunches under my heavy-duty boots with each step I take. We’re in the middle of the wilderness. It’s so beautiful here, so quiet and pristine. The clean air stings my lungs, but the freshness invigorates me and brings a bright pink to my cheeks.

“What do you want to show me?”

Chance glances back at me, and his radiant smile makes me want to follow him everywhere and anywhere. “On the other side of the mountain, there’s a place I used to come often. My brothers would join me, too,” he says. “It’s how we became friends with Sheriff Mills.”

“Oh? How so?”

“You’ll have to see for yourself.”

He stops and turns abruptly, so that I stumble into him. Before I can object or try to avoid a bump, Chance wraps his arms around me and we kiss smack in the middle of a small, luminous clearing, the blue sky stretching above us in all of its endless glory.

I wish this moment could last forever.

But it won’t. Nothing ever does.

“Anya, you still have some considerable memory gaps and some terrible ghosts coming out of your past,” Chance says. “It doesn’t mean we should stop living and getting to know each other on a different level.”

I sigh deeply. “You’re right.”

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