Page 36 of Recurve Ridge

Why aren’t I running?

Where the hell would I go?

“You are so pretty, Mari,” an icy, unrecognizable voice whispered in my ear.

Almostunrecognizable.

Because that same voice belonged to Alan, though none of his usual sharp humor etched the edges of what I’d come to suspect covered a damaged man beneath the camaraderie, showmanship, and snark.

No, his voice sliced through the air as cold as the heat of him behind me seared my skin. A single knuckle brushed across the nape of my neck, raising shivers and goose bumps across my skin. He trailed the digit along my spine, leaving a harsh, searing path of pain and ice in its wake.

“Alan? What do you want?” I shivered at the contact, the whole situation sowrong.Twisting, the other half of my body anchored to the floor, I tried to face him, but that one finger on my nape turned me back to face myself in the full-length mirror I couldn’t see. “Turn the light on.”

“You know that’s not going to happen, don’t you?”

A dull rush of white noise filled my ears. For all my panic, jarred somewhere between a will for flight and the inability to access those primal bodily functions, Alan’s movements—or lack thereof—were the opposite: laced in tight control, a cruel smirk concealed in his words.

As though he was enjoying this moment,knewhis touch brought me back to that place, and that amused him.

All of that sat at odds with the man I thought I knew.

“I trusted you,” I croaked.

He laughed, a low sound that rippled across my body in an intimate caress of its own. “I know. Shall we?” One unyielding, cold hand flexed on my shoulder, holding me in place so I had no choice but to face forward.

Like a Mari-sized statue, I let him.

I faced the blacked-out mirror I couldn’t see, my senses reduced to a hollow void at my back that was anything but empty. Alan’s touch centered in two places, arms cocked around my throat and upper body to pin me in place, though my rigid stance made his icy prison redundant. Fear locked me tight as a statue as his fingerprints seared pensive marks at my neck and shoulders, waiting.

My own contact offered nothing so kind. Ragged nails curled into my palms, the harsh edges biting into my skin. Something trickled between my fingers. In the pitch blackness that pervaded the small space, I couldn’t tell the difference between salt and iron.

Alan’s touch disappeared, leaving me alone.

Mustering every inch of my courage that rooted my feet to the floor—I’d be dead if Alan were a bear or Gideon or somethingworse—I tipped my chin up, though he likely couldn’t see the small act of defiance.

“I’ll scream, and Robe will come running. What would he do to a man who broke his trust?” I bluffed, fighting the urge to deny the event and to sink back into Alan’s warm presence, into the man I knew.

Alan won’t hurt me. Hewon’t.

My heart thrummed in my chest, fear’s cold touch embracing me anew, etched with an awareness of the man I called friend. Despite all evidence to the contrary, my brain clung to the new truth I’d created for myself. That I could trust Robe and his men; that they would protect me.

Or maybe they were just men, like the others who hurt me.

“If you were going to scream, you would have done it already.” A lilt in his voice added a strange musical element akin to laughter to his tone. The cool draft of his breath kissed the back of my neck, though he didn’t touch me.

The absence of his usual endearments, nosweetcheeksorsweetcakes,removed the personal aspect I’d come to adore in Alan, who was my retreat when Robe and Jon became too overly everything to my senses. This new version of the personable man stripped away my shitty belief system, leaving me barer than ever.

I’d created a fantasy world, weaving myself a pretty, happy ending that would never happen for a broken creature like me. Now, he trapped me within that reality.

A torn sob jerked in my throat, the barest sound making it past my lips. “What do you want?”

I expected his phantom fingers to return to tracing across my body, but he gave me nothing. Only that void of cold air at my back where he still stood, though his chest never made contact. Then cool fingers encircled my throat, holding me in place by their disembodied touch.

“I want to see if little Mari Merripen is worth the trouble she’s caused.” His tongue flicked out, licking the shell of my ear in a delicate, tasting touch.

The sob lodged in my throat met with a scream that vied for cramped space while I forced two words past them. “What trouble?”

Alan’s fingertips rested over my windpipe, his touch lighter, more familiar, like his usual brand of flirtation. “Oh, you know. The sort of trouble that can ruin a man, a brotherhood. A friendship. The sort that could fuck up this house, including Robe and every man in it. All because you’ve got a pretty little cunt they all want to fuck.”

---