Page 58 of Jetmir

She shifted with a little sigh while a soft moan escaped her lips.

It punched every ounce of common sense straight out of my body and my cock hardened to attention.

Yeah.

I was a sick bastard. Or maybe just a desperate one.

The drive to the clearing took ten minutes, and then another thirty in the chopper before we were lowered next to the private jet waiting with its engines already running.

Anya never woke.

By the time the sun rose fully over the horizon, we were gone.

I’d stolen my wife back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ANYA

The constant hum of an engine pulled me through the fog of sleep, insistent, wrong. For a moment I thought the sound was the air conditioner rattling against the window, but it pushed at the contours of my consciousness like a bruise, hard enough to rouse me.

I blinked, slow and heavy, the world swimming into focus. A warm body lay beneath me. An arm, heavy as iron, curled around my waist. I tried to shift away but my limbs refused—sluggish, foreign, like they belonged to someone else.

My breathing picked up first. Then the terror came, dragging its nails up through my chest before my mind could even catch up.

I shoved against the body, fists tight, and scrambled backward until I hit the headboard. The room tilted and spun, the walls smearing into streaks of shadow and lamplight.

A face swam into focus. The face I loved. The face I hated myself for loving.

“Thorne?” I whispered, defaulting to the name he’d given me when we first met. My voice came out cracked, barely a whisper. “What’s happening?”

My mouth was sandpaper-dry. My body wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t cooperate, as I kept scooting backward, putting distance between us that felt both essential and impossible. He blurred and doubled in my vision, refusing to hold still.

“Go back to sleep, my angel.” His voice reached me, threaded through with something almost tender. I fought to keep my eyes open.

I lost.

The next time I surfaced, it was to Dozer’s whining and the low growl of a motor. I glanced down and found him sitting curled up next to me. Then I felt the weight of a jacket draped over me. His scent surrounded me, cedar and smoke and another layer I’d never been able to name, something that used to mean safe before it meant danger.

I lifted my head.

Thorne sat beside me in the back seat, close enough that our knees touched. His gaze was already on me, burning, and I couldn’t tell if the shiver that ran through me was fear or the traitorous ghost of longing. Maybe both. Maybe that was the worst part.

I pushed myself upright, and he extended his hands to help.

“Don’t.” I knocked them off my shoulders, harder than necessary.

The driver’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, and I recognized her instantly. She had the same sharp cheekbones, the same storm-colored eyes as her twin. Elira. Thorne’s sister, behind the wheel, driving me wherever this nightmare was taking me.

She’d helped him do this. Helped him take me.

The realization landed like a stone in my stomach. My brother would burn the world down for this. My father would call it an act of war and mean it. Did they understand what they’d started, the two of them, sitting there so calm?

The silence in the car was suffocating, thick enough to choke on. My whole body ached. My head, my wrists, some bone-deep exhaustion. I let my eyes move over them, searching for a flicker of doubt.

There was none. Not in Thorne’s eyes, not in Elira’s.

“What have you done?” My voice shook despite everything I did to steady it. “Take me back. Right now.”