Page 32 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

This kiss is different. The first ones were questions. This one is an answer. Fast and desperate and slightly rough. He freezes for half a second, then his hands find my waist and he’s kissing me back with a hunger that fuels me.

I push him backward. He lets me. His back hits the wall. The photo of my parents rattles on the shelf. I press against him, my body against his, and the difference in our sizes only makes it fiercer.

“Zoe.” His voice is wrecked. His hands grip my hips through the jeans.

“I know,” I whisper as he presses his forehead to mine.

He walks around my apartment, studying everything, learning more about me as he does. “Your radiator sounds like my generator,” Ryker says, voice rough. “Ugly, loud, and completely essential.”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about my radiator.”

“I’ll put it in the field journal.”

I turn my face into his chest and breathe him in. Cold air and leather and the scent that’s just him.

“Ryker.”

“Yeah.”

“I need one more thing before I leave. A shoebox.”

He follows me into my room and his eyes glance around, looking at all the things. “This you?” He points at a picture I keep of myself taped to my mirror. It was from a simpler time. When I was eight years old and riding my favorite horse, Daffodil. My father took the picture as my mother smiled at me.

“Yeah,” I say, telling him the story.

He grabs the picture and slips it into his jacket side pocket, next to his heart.

I don’t know why the simple gesture brings tears to my eyes, but it does. Tyler never even looked at that photo. Never cared. But Ryker’s different. Better. Outside Jax is on the landing and Kane is on the way and somewhere in this county a man connected to that gray sedan is still out there.

17

Zoe

Alpha Pig BBQ sits at the edge of Alpha Range like the town never fully committed to it. Long low building, corrugated metal roof, wraparound deck overlooking a gravel lot full of pickups. Mounted on one wall is the most ridiculous taxidermy boar I’ve ever seen. It’s wearing sunglasses and holding a tiny American flag in its trotter. A hand-painted sign underneath reads: “Oink If You’re Hungry.” Smoke drifts from the chimney, thick with hickory and brown sugar.

I’m wearing a baseball cap Jax gave me, hair tucked up, and sunglasses that are too big for my face. Minimal disguise. Ryker says heavy ones draw attention. A hat and sunglasses on a sunny day just make me a woman who doesn’t want the sun in her eyes.

Ryker drove. Just us. Mason’s orders: two-person recon, low profile, in and out in under an hour. Observe and report. Don’t engage. Don’t let the subject identify me.

We’re at a corner table on the deck that Ryker chose the second we stepped out of the truck. Clear view of the interior through the glass partition. Direct line to our truck twenty feet away. Wall at our backs. Farthest table from the front entrance.

He orders the pulled pork platter and sweet tea for both of us without looking at the menu.

“Two o’clock,” he says, eyes still on me. “Blue Chevy coming into the lot. Three-quarter ton, aftermarket toolbox, chrome running boards.”

My stomach drops.

“That’s the truck. Different color, but the toolbox and running boards are the same.”

“He changed the vehicle or the paint. Same setup.” Ryker lifts his tea, takes a sip, sets it down. Perfectly casual. Nothing about him says federal officer. Everything says man on a lunch date. Only the slow working of the tendon in his jaw gives him away.

The truck parks. The driver’s door opens.

Tyler steps out and my vision narrows. My heart beat slams inside my chest, and I try my best not to look too affected by his presence.

It’s him. His hair’s shorter. Neatly trimmed beard that makes him look older and rougher. Work clothes. Jeans, steel-toed boots, flannel with the sleeves rolled up. Grease under the nails. He looks ordinary. Like a man coming off a shift, hungry, heading into a place he’s been a hundred times. He looks safe.

My hands start shaking. I press them flat on the table. The tingling starts in my fingertips and I fight it with the breathing Ryker taught me, but the air feels thick in my throat.