The Men of Whiskey Mountain

 WALKER

One look, one kiss, one night -- and I know Waverly is mine.

 JAMESON

She needs a man who can protect her, a man she can trust.

BEAM

I've done lots of terrible things in my life — but I have only one regret.

I never told her how I truly feel.

MAKER

I love Marley more than life itself. But is that enough when the world is dead set against it?

Four books set in Alaska, with high heat, action, and plenty of alpha heroes!

WALKER

The moment I see her in the bar I know.

Know how the night will end.

It’s only a matter of time.

I catch her eye and, in that flash, she knows it too. Some things in life are inevitable. Like the two of us fucking somewhere quiet, dark. Finding warmth in this godforsaken wilderness wherever we can find it.

But even if we were on a tropical fucking beach, it would go down like this. 

Her. Me. Tonight.

I take my three fingers of whiskey and walk over to her. She’s sitting at the end of the bar, torn up in a way I can understand. Her eyes are heavy and she’s nursing a Moscow mule in a copper cup, hardly taking a sip.

She needs company.

She smiles as I saunter over, knowing where this is going. She kicks out the stool next to her and I take a seat. Like we’ve done this before.

“I’m Walker,” I tell her. “Jeremy Walker. And who are you?”

She smirks. A hard ass with a soft center. How’d I figure that? Well, she’s been playing with gold the chain on her neck, one half a heart dangling from it. Mean girls don’t wear friendship necklaces, that’s for damn sure. For another, when she lifted her hands to tie up her long hair, I saw a hint of her underwear. Bad girls don’t wear white lace panties, I can you tell you that for certain.

“I’m Waverly,” she says. 

Sitting this close means I can smell the lavender and mint shampoo she uses, and somehow, even in this town sitting on the edge of civilization, she smells fresh. She smells like home.

Not that I know a thing about that. But if I did — if I was the kind of man who knew what it meant to be back by dinner, it would smell like her.

“And you’re a long way from where you started,” I say, taking a drink. It doesn’t burn going down. I’ve done this far too many times for it to sting. 

“How’d you know that?” she asks, her eyelashes fluttering. My cock aches, picturing her on her knees, taking me in her pretty pink mouth while looking up into my eyes. Dark lashes, dark deeds. She’s the girl I need tonight.

Every night.

A goddamn fantasy showing up in this dive bar, in the middle of Alaska, so far from civilization that it’s easy to get lost. But I won’t lose her. No way in hell will she get spun up and turned around. I’m the man to point her in the right direction.

“I can tell by your clothes. Anyone who spent much time in Alaska wouldn’t be wearing a jean jacket and boots with heels, for starters.”

“And for seconds?” she asks, licking those perfect lips.

“For seconds,” I say, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, letting the sparks fly as they will, letting them land. We both feel it. That undeniable draw. “You’re too clean for the wilderness. Scrubbed with innocence; eyes that are sweeter than you want to let on.”

She shakes her head slowly. “You know nothing about me, Walker.”

“Then tell me.”

She smiles then, bringing light into this dark bar; my heart tenses, because shit, I was just looking for a lay, but she’s just handed me love at first fucking sight.

“You’re trouble,” she says, avoiding my request. To know her. All of her. Every damn thing about her. The whole story start to finish. “Well, let’s just say the innocence you think you see when you look at me, it’s not there.”

“No?” I take a harder look at her. Wheat blonde hair and eyes as blue as a high mountain lake. 

“No.” She drops her gaze then, picks up her cup and tosses it back. Sets the mug down, the ice clinks. Empty. 

“Well then, we’re more alike than I thought, Wavy.”

She studies me then, and I hold her gaze. Willing her to look away. She doesn’t.

“You’re from here then?” she asks me as I finish the whiskey.

“No. Moved up here to the Whiskey Mountains a year ago. Found some land, a cabin and  figured it was a good place to disappear.”

“You’re running from something?”

I nod. “From everything.”

She exhales, reaching for her backpack underneath her bar stool. It’s a big one, a hiking pack. And it’s filled. “I know the feeling,” she says. 

“You ready to go?” I ask her.

Her eyebrow lifts. “Where do you think you’re taking me?”

Now it’s my turn to smirk. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to drag you into my plane and fly off. You have a say in this. But I was planning to get a room at the motel across the street. I fly out tomorrow.”

“You’re a pilot?”

“A bush pilot. Yeah. I fly supplies to remote areas. I’m here to refuel and to load the plane up.”

“I’m only here for the night, too,” she says.

“Where you headed?”

She reaches for her wallet, but I push her hand away and drop cash on the bar for both our drinks. “Thanks.” Swallowing she stands from the stool. “If I told you where I was headed it would kind of ruin the entire point of disappearing.”

“Probably breaking your rules talking to me at all.”

She smiles that bright white smile again and my black heart tenses. “True. I’ve known you what, ten minutes and already you’re making me compromise my position.”

I shake my head. “Don’t change on my account.”

Standing, she’s smaller than I expected as she looks up at me. I tower over her, but she doesn’t seem scared. “I don’t know, Walker. I think maybe I’m long overdue for a change.”

“What kind of change did you have in mind?”

She looks over her shoulder. Vacancy lights flash across the street.

“Anything different from what I’ve known. Which freaks me out right now because I feel like I’ve known you all my life and that doesn’t seem like something I need to change,” she says softly, her words catching me off guard in the best fucking way.

I take her pack and sling it over my shoulder. “Does that scare you?”

“No.” She shakes her head. Sure, it doesn’t. And many ways I still believe she is innocent and purer than she lets on. That single moment of surety tells me that Waverly is more than a girl with a pretty face and wounded eyes.

No woman is that confident about leaving a bar, in the dead of night with a stranger unless she’s full of secrets.

Then again, it’s like we’ve known each other for a long ass while.

“Should I be scared?” she asks as my palm presses to the small of her back, leading her out into the cold October air.

“No,” I tell her, wanting to believe my own words. But the truth is, no one runs away unless they’re trying to leave something, or someone, behind. “Tonight, you’re safe with me.”