Resistance by Jan Springer Page A

one.
A log cabin. One story. A roof covered in snow and lots of snow-drenched pine
trees towering behind the building.
    He recognized it. Had come across it while tracking Red. This
was where she’d been living. He’d gone into the cabin after finding the door
wide open. Someone had busted in and vandalized the place.
    Despite the mess, he’d found the place rustic. Bookshelves
had lined the living room. An old cast-iron potbelly stove was warm to the
touch and coals glowed in a nearby fireplace. She’d left an erotic romance novel
lying on the couch. A quick glance at the back cover blurb revealed the book
contained lots of hot sex and a threesome. He could just imagine what the men
who’d broken into the cabin thought about what she’d been reading.
    He’d left the building in a hurry, following the tracks
until he’d come upon the group of men who’d set up camp. In the nearby bushes,
he’d listened to their conversations about tracking down the woman who was
staying at that cabin. Blade would have opened fire on them, but there had been
too many for him to shoot. He wouldn’t have been able to get away without being
trailed by survivors. The last thing he’d wanted was for them to know he was
around. So he’d left and gone in search of Red himself. He’d found her and Cade
and then the storm had hit.
    Blade focused back on the present, to the square logs with
cement caulking. Homemade job. With matching stone chimneys on each end. His
gaze lifted toward the sky where a spiral of gray smoke puffed into the black
night air. Chimneys meant fireplaces and that meant heat. Warmth cracked
through the chill encasing his heart and, for a split second, he had the weird sense
of “coming home”.
    He ripped himself free from that odd homey comfort when
someone stepped down the rough-hewn wood-planked stairs. He wondered if the
person was a hallucination, but the shadow seemed solid as it moved toward him.
Red’s face floated from beneath a black hat and scarf, and just like every time
he saw her, his breath seemed to halt in his lungs.
    She was a striking woman. Beautiful. A ripe, sensual mouth.
Gorgeous eyes. A man could drown in her eyes. Her hair was loose and spilled from
her black hat like wildfire to the tops of her shoulders. He didn’t know how he
could see her hair in all that dark shit she wore, but he could.
    His gaze flew back to her face. Bruises and cuts lashed her
high cheekbones where she’d been slapped. The cold deepened inside him and at
that moment he wanted to once again kill those bastards who’d hurt her.
    She squatted beside him and white puffs of mist escaped her
mouth with her every breath. Her lips moved. She was talking. He must have
blacked out because he’d missed what she said. Her lips moved again.
    “Will? Can you hear me?”
    Hell, he didn’t remember giving her his first name. Warmth
shot through him. Although he’d known it was the drugs urging her into his room
that night, and he’d sworn he’d turn her down flat if she approached him, the
instant she’d exposed herself to him—along with the tugging on all those rings—his
self-control had vanished. He’d taken her up against the door and she’d been
like a drug in his system, making him crave her again.
    The erotic scent of her pleasure, her heat, her arousal,
swept in around him and for a moment he was back in that room, kissing her
pouty warm lips and licking her engorged clit while he held her ass cheeks. Her
moans had been sweet and succulent.
    “Will? Will? Can you hear me?” Her insistent voice snapped
through his memory.
    “I need you to wake up, Blade. Or you’re going to end up
freezing your ass off out here on my grandparents’ snowmobile. So come on! Do
me a favor and wake up!”
    Snowmobile?
    A sharp pain snapped against his frozen right cheek and
damned if the reflexes he thought dead didn’t come to life. With lightning
speed, he grabbed her by the wrist and held tight. Her surprised gasp made