Snow and the Seven Men: A Reverse Harem Fairy Tale Romance(16)

“HELLO? IS ANYONE IN THERE?” Someone yelled.

“Oh fuck!” Sasha gasped, leaping to her feet in utter shock. I could read the terror in her face.

“Who is it?” Dan demanded. None of us was tired anymore.

“It’s my team,” she breathed and somehow we all managed to get some semblance of clothing on before I marched to the front door and peered out into the snow. To my shock, the storm had stopped.

I stared at the man and woman standing before me.

“Hi,” the man said. “I’m sorry to bother you but we’re looking for a member of our research team who’s gone missing. Is there any chance—”

“I’m here, Hunter,” Sasha said, appearing at my side. I watched at the pair’s eyes flashed in disbelief.

“You’ve been here all along?” Hunter howled. “Are you joking me?”

He turned to the woman.

“You were right,” he muttered. “She was just sticking it to us.”

I felt an instant dislike toward him.

“I wasn’t sticking it to you,” Sasha barked. “I got hurt and the power was down. I’ve been here for days, waiting out the storm.”

Hunter’s eyes narrowed.

“The storm’s been over for hours. What have you been doing?”

“Why don’t you come inside,” Dan suggested. Funny, I was going to slam the door in their faces.

Suddenly, every dark thought I’d had before came flooding back.

“Yeah,” Sasha mumbled, stepping back. “Come in while I grab my things.”

The couple exchanged a long look and I was instantly wary. What was that about?

“Well hurry up,” Hunter muttered. “We’ve been looking for you for hours. You should have called.”

“Like she said,” I snapped. “The phones were down.”

“The phones are fine,” Hunter retorted and we glared at one another. I didn’t want to be left alone in the entrance with these two so I hurried back to find Sasha who was dressing into the only clothes she’d had with her—the ones she’d worn into the cabin. I could see the resignation on her face as she dressed, her lower lip quivering slightly.

“Sasha,” Dan was saying. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

She raised her head and stared at him and then around the room at all of us. I could see she was seriously considering his words and my heart leapt with hope. We could work something out if she decided to stay. We could—

“You know there’s nothing I’d like more,” she told us in a hushed voice. Her eyes darted nervously toward the doorway as if she expected her team to be listening. Was she embarrassed? Did she regret what she’d done with us?

She looked conflicted more than anything and I willed her to look at me but she seemed to be avoiding my eyes more than anyone else’s.

We knew this was coming. We all knew. We couldn’t make a big production out of it now.

But that was so much easier said than done. We loved her. She belonged with us. How could we let her go?

“Hello?” Hunter yelled. “Can we get going?”

“Is he always that obnoxious?” I snapped and Sasha smiled wryly.

“Always,” she conceded. Slowly, she lifted her head and walked around the room, pausing to hug us one by one.

“I’ll miss you,” she murmured. “I’ll send you an email.”

The words were empty, stupid. There was nothing an email could say that would recapture what we had.

“I’ll come and visit,” she promised when she got to me. “You’ll have to send me your itinerary and—”

“Please don’t,” I mumbled, feeling a lump forming in my throat. “I know you’re trying to make this easier but…just please.”

She nodded and sighed, drawing me toward her. Her lips brushed against the base of my ear and I exhaled in a tremor.

“I love you,” she whispered and I knew she meant it. But what good did that do really?

With a sickening feeling in my gut, I watched as Sasha picked up her knapsack and ambled toward the doorway, pausing to cast us one last look.

“Thank you for everything,” she breathed before disappearing into the hallway. As if her departure had sucked the air completely out of the room, we all sank back, falling to our respective beds in shock.

The front door closed with a bang and I heard the sound that had initially caught my attention: the snowmobile starting.

And just as quickly as she’d come into our lives, Sasha had gone, taking a piece of us with her just as Collette had before.

The dream had died and as I looked at my friends, I could tell they were thinking the same thing as me.

There would not be any recovering from this.

At least I knew there wouldn’t be for me.





18





Sasha





Everything about the research unit made my skin crawl. There didn’t seem to be a single place I could feast my eyes which didn’t make my stomach flip with contempt. Hunter, Queenie, the bed, the mere air I was breathing. I’d been back an hour and I wanted to run screaming from the place and back into the arms of my saviors but somehow, I managed to keep my composure.

I deserved a damned medal for it, in my opinion.

“You better call your mother,” Queenie barked at me. “She was going to call the police even though I told her you were probably—”

“Fine,” I replied in a clipped tone. I didn’t want to hear her take on how I’d run off to give her a hard time. “Thanks.”

I grabbed my laptop and set up a Skype call to my mom who answered on the first ring. Her eyes were red rimmed and she burst into tears the second she saw me.

“Oh thank Jesus!” she screamed. “ALEX! Alex, it’s Sasha!”

Instantly, my bestie appeared at her side and I could see that she looked as distraught as my mom.

Oh Jesus. It was worse than I thought.

“I’m fine,” I assured them. “I’m sorry you were so worried—”

“WORRIED?” Mom howled. I winced at the feedback and shook my head. I had a headache and her screeching wasn’t making things any better.

“Worried is an understatement,” Alex offered, resting a hand on my mother’s shoulder. Even through the grainy feed, I could see Mom was shaking with relief.

“Look, I’m alive, see?” I tried to joke. “It was a freak turn of weather. I got stranded and—”

“Where? Were you in a cave? Did you go to the hospital? How did you survive?” The questions were live a spray of gunfire on my already assaulted body and I held up a hand.

“If you’d let me finish, I’ll tell you,” I said, trying to keep my patience. Mom glared at me balefully.

“Tell me what happened,” she insisted. Through the webcam, I caught Alex’s eye and I could read the deep concern in her face.

How much could I really tell them?

“I went out to collect samples,” I explained. “And I—"

“Alone?” Alex and my mom demanded in unison and I paused, thinking about how easily Hunter and Queenie had let me go.

“Yes,” I answered, reluctant to get into the details.

“Are you supposed to do that?” Alex asked.

“That was foolish!” Mom snapped at the same time and I rolled my eyes. I doubted I was going to make it through the conversation with my sanity intact.

“Do you two want to know what happened or are you just going to pepper me with questions?”

They clamped their mouths shut and waited for me to continue.

“Anyway, I was out longer than I expected and then I got lost,” I rushed on, wondering how much I should tell them. Obviously the orgy with the seven men who had rescued me was out of the question but what else should I leave out?

“Spill it, Sash,” Alex growled at me and I realized I’d fallen silent for too long.

“Spill what?” I asked innocently but they continued to glare at me. They could tell I was hiding something. I knew I’d better fess up to something before their minds started making up their own stories.

“I fell into a bear trap,” I sighed. “And I found a cabin where I was lucky enough to wait out the storm with some contract drillers.”

“Wait what?” Alex cried.

“A bear trap!” Mom choked. “Are you hurt? Do you have an infection?”

“No, no. These men were amazing.” I felt my heart catch in my throat as I thought about them. “I was really, really lucky.”

Don’t you dare get all emotional in front of these two, I warned myself.

“There was a medic and he took care of me,” I offered weakly, realizing their eyes were pinned on me.

“They were ALL men?” Alex asked, her eyes widening and I groaned inwardly. It didn’t matter how I spun this, they were going to be freaked out. Not that I could really blame them.

“I was lucky,” I insisted again. “If I hadn’t found their cabin…”

I shuddered to think about what could have happened. I surely wouldn’t be sitting there talking to them, that much was a certainty.

“There’s no serious damage to my leg.”

“How can you be sure?” Mom wanted to know. “You need to go to a hospital. Is there a hospital there? Oh, I knew I shouldn’t have let you go!”