Page 61 of Claimed on the Ridge

"Is there anything else you're not telling me?" she asks.

The honest answer is yes. There's the scope of how long I've been preparing for this, the fact that my preparation started the day Bryan flagged her as someone running. There's the degree to which I've been managing this situation while sleeping beside her.

"I'm telling you what you need to know," I say.

Her chin lifts a fraction. She hears the words, and what's underneath them. The withholding. The decision to control the flow of information because I've judged that control necessary.

Her eyes hold mine. The look is long, measured, and I can see her weighing it. Whether I'm protecting her or managing her. Whether the distinction matters enough to fight about right now.

"For now," she says.

The concession is conditional. The two words carry a deadline I can feel.

The danger is real, the men are real. Somewhere in the middle of laying all of that in front of her, the threat stopped being abstract. Someone wants to take what's mine. The woman sitting across from me at this table just made that personal.

The lodge is quiet. The brothers are gone. The fire pops in the hearth. Outside, the wind pushes against the windows, and somewhere on a road connected to this one, two men are driving toward this mountain with a photograph.

Kendall sets the mug on the table. She doesn't pick the notepad back up. She looks at me, and the look has changed.

The tactical sharpness is still there, the alert intelligence that just broke down Gary Simmons's operational playbook in front of my brothers like a battlefield briefing, but underneath it there's heat. The same want that's been running between us since the night she crossed the kitchen. Banked under mornings and coffee and her body beside mine. Fed by the awareness that someone is coming for her and I am the thing standing in the way.

"You sat across from me on purpose," she says.

During the briefing, there were brothers between us. Now the table is empty and I'm still at my end. Six feet of oak, and I haven't moved to close it.

"Yes."

"The brothers are gone, Alex. You don't need the distance anymore."

"Maybe I do."

"Why?"

Because if I'm within arm's reach of her right now, with the adrenaline still running and the image of two men driving toward my mountain with her photograph, the part of me that plans loses to the part that wants to put my mouth on her throat and my body between her and the door. She's reading that off me from six feet away, and the accuracy of it tightens my jaw.

"Alex."

Her voice is low and certain, with the edge that tells me she's done letting me manage the distance.

"Come here."

My own words, thrown back at me with the same quiet authority I used the night everything changed. She's telling me the distance I set is over. She's the one closing it, choosing this with the knowledge that two men are hunting her and the man in front of her is keeping secrets.

I come around the table. She stands to meet me, and my hands find her hips and pull her against me in a single motion that has nothing gentle in it.

Her body hits mine and the contact runs through me like a current. The adrenaline that's been channeling into tactical planning since the vehicle appeared on the road has nowhere left to go except into her. Into the press of her body against mine.

My hands tighten on her hips until my fingers dig into the muscle and she makes a sound low in her throat that tells me the pressure is exactly right.

Her hands come up to my jaw. She holds my face and looks at me, and what she's looking for is the thing I can't hide. The possession. The territorial certainty that if anyone touches her I will take them apart with my hands and feel nothing but satisfaction. She finds it. I watch her find it, watch her take it in. Instead of pulling back, she pulls me down and puts her mouth on mine.

The kiss is adrenaline and possession and the raw urgency of two people who know the clock is running. Her fingers slide into my hair and grip, and the pull sends a charge straight through my core. I walk her backward until her legs hit the arm of the leather chair. She sits on it, and the height puts her at the right level for me to step between her knees and press forward until there's no space left.

My mouth moves from hers to her jaw, down the line of her throat. I find the spot below her ear where her pulse runs fast and close to the surface, and I press my lips against it and feel her heartbeat against my mouth. The tempo is elevated. Not fear. Want. I know the difference in this woman's body by now. Fear makes her go still. Want makes her arch.

She arches.

"Your brothers," she says against my temple.