Page 8

AURELIA

I t feels like they’re pushing me, leading me into a trap that I can’t see, at least not until it’s too late.

“Don’t be afraid,” the mad one says.

The look the other two give me tells me all I need to know. Fear may be the only card I have to play here.

The baleful one confirms it when he taunts, “Don’t fight us, and we’ll be nice.”

I’m too stunned by the thinly veiled threat to stop Khalil when he works the top of my dress open. If they weren’t so frightening and despicable, I’d be tempted to give in.

Men like this don’t exist in the real world.

They don’t have deep, rough voices like gravel, strong jaws, and smoldering intensity. They certainly don’t hang onto your every word while looking at you as if they’re seconds from tossing you over their shoulder and carrying you back to their cave.

No, the men where I’m from have podcasts and the attention span of a gnat. They can barely bench press a chair and think it’s a woman’s responsibility to make them feel like a man.

Thorin, Khalil, and Seth.

God, they look like villains. They look like every father’s worst nightmare.

When I first woke up and found them standing over me, I thought I was still asleep and dreaming, but they were very much real.

My attraction to each of them is wildly different.

Khalil feels like this hot, writhing, angry gale that will sweep me up if I get too close. Thorin feels like a cold, phantom grip around my spine that threatens to paralyze me if I don’t obey. Seth feels like my demons are wrestling with his and losing .

The fact that I want to know more weirds me the hell out.

I’m not proud of my attraction to these mountain men. It’s an instinctual, impulsive thing that is no less devastating than flying too close to the sun and getting burned. Or wandering into a black hole, lost to it forever, trapped in their darkness and mine.

These men don’t want to help me. They want to hurt me. But how much? More than I can take or just the right amount?

God, I need help.

Clearly, coming here was a mistake. Tyler would call me reckless, but what else was I supposed to do? I’m only alive because of him. I wouldn’t last a day out there on my own. The thought paralyzes me long enough for Seth to get his shirt off and Khalil to get my dress open.

I snap out of it the moment I feel the cold air in the room breeze across my hard, bare nipples.

God, they weren’t bluffing.

These men aren’t trying to scare me into leaving and forgetting they exist. Khalil, Seth, and Thorin expect me to pay for their hospitality…with my body.

It isn’t intentional when I rear back and slap Khalil for his aggression, but I’m not sorry, and I don’t hesitate to take advantage of his shock.

Seth is still wide-eyed and salivating like he’s never seen tits before, so getting past him is easy. In my haste to get away, I fall off the bed more than climb, but I’ve gotten some practice running from predators in the last three days.

I’m back on my feet and running for the window.

It’s closer than the door and my best chance at escape, but it’s guarded by Thorin.

Out of the three, he seems the least interested in me. It almost feels like he hates me even. Hates me for being here. Hates me for turning his friends into rabid dogs—as if it’s my fault that they’re creeps.

Thorin doesn’t make a move to stop me as I reach the unlocked window and shove it open. The cold that rushes in nearly makes me reconsider. I could take my chances with the mountain men, but they’re scarier than certain death, so I lift one leg to climb out.

An arm locks around my waist, and I’m lifted off my feet.

“Noooo! Let me go!”

“Calm the fuck down.”

Thorin.

He grunts when I continue to struggle. I’m kicking and scratching and punching, but he acts like it’s no more than a bee sting as he carries me away from the window. “Exactly, where were you planning to go, Aurelia? We’re on a fucking cliff.”

Oh.

He stops by the dresser again, where he sets me on my feet but quickly pins me against it. I grit my teeth when the knobs and edges dig into my back, but Thorin’s hand on my shoulder keeps me there.

“Get your fucking hands off me! Do you know who I am?”

“Yeah, you’re a trespasser and a rude one, too.” Thorin grabs my jaw, and his grip isn’t gentle. “I can’t imagine why, but my brothers want to fuck you,” he says, making my cheeks blaze with shame while my stomach twists with nerves and want—especially when I see that Khalil and Seth are hovering nearby, and the only thing keeping them from tearing me apart is Thorin. He moves his face closer, blocking them from view, and I have to be careful not to move lest our lips meet. “Are you going to stop acting like you’re too good and give them a piece of that sweet ass or not?”

I spit in his face.

“Ah shit,” I hear Khalil grumble.

The dead look Thorin gives me says I’ll live to regret it for the rest of my life. Swiping a hand across his face to remove my loogie from his nose and cheek where it landed, he slaps that same hand over my mouth and nose, and I scream my rage into his palm.

I don’t realize his true intent until I feel a desperate need to breathe, and he won’t let me. He keeps his hand in place, even tightening his hold when I shake my head back and forth, trying to free my face.

Oh, my God.

He’s going to kill me.

No sooner do I think it than he finally releases me. I’ve barely managed to suck in a single breath when he grabs my nape and starts forcing me forward.

Khalil and Seth follow but don’t intervene when we leave the room. I don’t fight Thorin, assuming he’s letting me leave the cabin, but when he pushes me left toward the double doors instead of toward the stairs on the right, I panic and try to backpedal.

“What are you doing?”

“Giving you one last chance.”

Reaching around me, he opens one of the doors, and all I feel is wind. A cold, unforgiving gust that barrels inside the cabin and threatens to turn me into a block of ice. I swear the deafening roar shakes the very foundation of the cabin. Outside, I can see that there is a deck. It hangs over the cliff’s edge while the mist rises from the steep depths below to curl on the floor’s wooden planks.

“Are you going to be reasonable?” Thorin whispers close to my ear. “It’s only fucking. You’ve done it for revenge. Why not for survival?”

Maybe I don’t want to survive.

My teeth are already chattering, but I have a feeling the shivers quaking my bones have nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with his proposal. “You w-want me to h-h-have sex with you—all three of y-you—for sh-shelter. How is t-t-th-that fair?”

“You’re an extra mouth to feed, and the winters are long here. We could have a few more weeks before the passes clear or a few more months. We already have everything we need to survive. Everything except something warm and soft to make it all worth it.”

“E-ever h-h-heard of a b-blanket?”

“Nine winters, Aurelia,” Khalil tries to reason from behind us. “That’s a long time.”

Seth is quiet, but I know he’s there.

“My brothers are hungry.” My stomach flips when I feel Thorin butt his face against mine, pressing our cheeks together when he whispers, “Are you going to feed them or not? They need this.”

“Not…” God, it’s so fucking cold! It’s only been a few hours, but I’d forgotten already “My p-p-problem.”

“You’re right. It’s not,” Thorin says in a deceptively soft voice. His hand shifts to the small of my back while his nose skims my neck. I’m staring down certain death when he inhales deeply. “See ya.”

Without hesitation or care, Thorin shoves me over the threshold and out into the cold.