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- Herausgeber: Lynn Burke
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
A timid woman desperate for love. A wild, young man born of the wilderness. Off-limits desire spirals them toward sure danger—and conflict that will end in death.
A wildling, Ma always called me, born of nature, feral as a fox.
I made a promise to her on her deathbed to look after my heartless Pa, but eight years later, he brings another woman to our homestead in the wilds of Alaska, testing my determination to honor Ma’s memory.
Saige is timid. Beautiful. Unthreatening and desperate for affection, consuming my mind and drawing me in.
I should flee—for both our safety.
But I have nothing to my name, and leaving as winter approaches means certain death, no matter my survival skills.
Pa crosses a line, and the wildling inside me rises like a bear on its hind legs, instinctively needing to show dominance.
This time, I won’t fail to protect the one I love, no matter the cost—even if it means breaking my promise and shedding blood.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Wildling
Midnight Sun 2
Lynn Burke
Copyright © 2020 by Lynn Burke
All rights reserved.
Editor: Avril Stepowski
Cover Art by Golden Czermak / FuriousFotog
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review or article, without written permission from the author.
Visit my website at authorlynnburke.com
Wildling
A wildling, Ma always called me, born of nature, feral as a fox.
I made a promise to her on her deathbed to look after my heartless Pa, but eight years later, he brings another woman to our homestead in the wilds of Alaska, testing my determination to honor Ma’s memory.
Saige is timid. Beautiful. Unthreatening and desperate for affection, consuming my mind and drawing me in.
I should flee—for both our safety.
But I have nothing to my name, and leaving as winter approaches means certain death, no matter my survival skills.
Pa crosses a line, and the wildling inside me rises like a bear on its hind legs, instinctively needing to show dominance.
This time, I won’t fail to protect the one I love, no matter the cost—even if it means breaking my promise and shedding blood.
Contents
1. Saige
2. Saige
3. Flynn
4. Saige
5. Flynn
6. Saige
7. Flynn
8. Saige
9. Flynn
10. Saige
11. Flynn
12. Saige
13. Flynn
14. Saige
15. Flynn
16. Saige
17. Flynn
18. Saige
19. Flynn
20. Saige
21. Flynn
22. Saige
23. Flynn
24. Saige
25. Flynn
26. Saige
27. Flynn
28. Saige
29. Flynn
30. Saige
31. Flynn
32. Saige
33. Flynn
34. Saige
35. Flynn
36. Saige
37. Flynn
38. Saige
Bonus Material
About the Author
Also By Lynn Burke
Saige
My sneaker I wore for work didn’t get kicked under my bed where it pushed against the wall. Sitting back on my haunches from having looked, I eyed the rest of my room with its single bookshelf, old bureau, and bed stand. Everything sat in its usual place.
Nothing littered the old carpet covering the floor.
Rummaging my parents’ house beyond my bedroom door, keeping their mess away from my personal space wasn’t an option. Hoarders, the both of them, and Mom’s yappy dog loved shoes. The chances of me finding that sneaker?
Absolutely zero.
Asking either of them for help would prove just as futile. Since I could remember, Mom hadn’t seemed to give two shits about me. Same with Dad.
“Damnitalltohell.” Still grumbling, I stood, hands on hips, chewing the inside of my lip, and wracking my brain.
Spring had hit our area of Alaska, but sandal and flip-flop weather lay weeks away, and my lone pair of heeled boots would kill my feet long before my five-hour shift ended at the farm supply store I’d been working at for six years.
The bank envelope I kept taped to the back of my bed stand held enough cash to purchase a new pair, but I hoarded my dollar bills like Dad did pizza boxes and plastic beer pack rings. Not that I saved for anything specific. Since neither of my parents could get jobs with their so-called disabilities, and also couldn’t get approved for government assistance, I paid the bills. I kept a roof over our heads. I brought home the staple groceries to see us through.
Where the hell they got cash for takeout, beer, and the pills they popped, I had no clue.
I never got a word of thanks, either.
They’d made their beds long before Mom had brought me into the world—not that they could find said bed beneath the clothing and rubbish filling the other bedroom in our small house.
Dad slept on the couch, Mom in her recliner.
Both claimed I’d been nothing but a burden since being born. Somehow, they overlooked the fact I went above and beyond to support them—all in hopes of a word of affirmation, an affectionate pat on the head.
It’s as though they floated through their drugged-out days, siphoning off me rather than the government who acknowledged them as much as my parents did me—not at all.
Wasted energy, wasted hopes, on my part. My constant failures had weakened my resolve to make them see me. Appreciate me.
Depression had made me her bitch over the winter, no matter how hard I tried to keep my chin up.
Both still snored as I quietly made my way into the kitchen with a heavy heart. I traversed the path I cleared every night once they passed out, scanning the disastrous mess for my missing sneaker. The winding route would be cluttered again once I returned from work, same as always. And same as always, anytime something of mine went missing, it didn’t magically reappear.
Not that I took time to dig through the piles of trash close to my five-foot and a couple inches height. When I’d become old enough to realize we didn’t live like normal people, I’d attempted to keep the house clean. I got my ass handed to me time and again for throwing out their precious things—stinking, filthy trash.
Sick. Absolute filth. And the stench?
I shook my head, lips pursed.
The little yapper blinked sleepily from atop Mom’s lap and jumped down, the tiny bell on her collar twinkling as she pranced after me. At least the little bitch kept quiet in the morning. I let her out the kitchen’s door into the back yard. Not that she’d find a nice bit of grass to relieve herself around Dad’s shit littering our acre of land.
Coffee pot warming to life, I returned to my room, shoved my feet into my winter boots, and grabbed my cash envelope. My old sneakers’ soles had worn out over the previous two years.
“It’s time for something new anyway,” I muttered to myself, weaving me way back toward the kitchen as both parents continued to snore.
Usually, spring and its warmer weather and rain brought a sense of refreshment and life. I’d yet to experience the vitality that helped keep my spirits from dipping to the point I wondered if medication might be the only way to dig me out of the winter months’ depression.
My travel mug I’d cleaned and left on a clean paper towel for my morning’s coffee had disappeared, too, I noted once I let the yapper back in.
More curses muttered in my head as I pulled out the milk from the fridge, and not for the first time, the desire to get out on my own, escape the shit hole I’d been raised in, swelled inside me, stinging my eyes with the need to spill tears down my cheeks.
But tears would wash away the cheap mascara I’d worn that morning.
Spring meant those living off-grid made their way to town for supplies after the long winter. Spring meant Callan Kelly might come calling again—thus the bit of makeup and need to feel somewhat cute. As cute as a waif-thin upper body with thick thighs redhead could be.
While no thrill of attraction spirited my heart away whenever I thought of Callan, warmth of the friendly sort came in to ease the missing sneaker and mug issue ruling my morning.
I’d first met Callan the spring before when he’d flown into town by way of Midnight Sun Charter. A client of Jessie Blacke’s, Callan had been all smiles and flirting words. The fact gray hairs peeked through his darker strands above his temples didn’t bother me. The age lines around his eyes and mouth were merely evidence of hard years in the wilderness. Hard working years. Something neither of my parents could possibly fathom, something I thoroughly appreciated in a man.
He hadn’t brought butterflies to flight in my belly or warmth between my thighs, but his character I’d come to know over a summer of sporadic visits had intrigued me to the point I hoped to see him again.
If I were to ever marry a man, he would be the type I would tie myself to. Solid and steady. A worker who didn’t shirk from dangers or the challenges of living a flight away from civilization.
In the fall, before disappearing for the long winter, he promised to see me in spring.
Once the snow had started to melt, I’d pulled out that old mascara wand and kept it in my purse. Just in case.
It’d been two weeks since I’d started to see a few of the off-grid families coming in for society and supplies, and while I should have been thrilled to have something to look forward to, I couldn’t rouse my emotions past flat.
Bland.
Bored.
Downright depressed.
My eyes stung again as I slipped outside, keys to Dad’s old truck in one hand, chipped mug of coffee in the other.
Peeks of sun hinted through the clouds, and I filled my lungs, reminding myself I lived. My heart beat inside my chest. I had my health, even if Mom and Dad didn’t have theirs. But those truths didn’t lighten the heaviness in my chest, either.
Something new…
Something more than mere sneakers, too.
Saige
The cashier in the line beside mine did nothing but talk. Chatter, chatter, chatter, complain, complain, complain. She also filled the air with cloying, cheap perfume.
“Ellie had me up three times last night,” she grumbled. “Three. And the second time, she woke up Eli. He screamed for an hour straight.”
I listened because I didn’t have much choice, considering our proximity.
“Billy couldn’t be bothered, so it fell to me to take care of them. Big surprise. Some days, I kinda wish I never had the twins, you know?” She huffed and crossed her arms under her large breasts, angled my way while waiting for our first customers of the day.
She’d said similar things before, irking me to no end.
I knew what it felt like to be an unwanted child. I also knew what it felt like to wish for a husband and children like she had. A family of my own. People to call my own. A man and children to love like I craved to be loved.
My timidity kept me from both.
“Then Ellie was up at five,” she continued when I didn’t comment. “What two-year-old wakes up for the day at five in the freaking morning? Like, seriously?”
A hungry one? A thirsty one? I wanted to ask if Ellie had a wet diaper.
I shrugged, leaning down to rearrange items beneath my counter.
“And Billy is goddamn useless.”
Fighting against the need to roll my eyes, I bit my tongue and let her spew out all sorts of shit about her husband, complaining about his getting home at night and sitting in front of the TV while she made dinner, fed the kids, bathed, and put them to bed by herself.
She could always ask for help, I wanted to tell her. Tell him she was exhausted rather than her co-workers. Or maybe she didn’t communicate, and he just didn’t give a shit. Dad was that sort of husband and father.
Finally, a customer came through her line, shutting her up.
Fake smile, chatty and happy—at least she made the customers’ experience a pleasant one.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d smiled, let alone sang like a canary before I knew the truth of my life. While hostility never crossed my mind, I did my job with efficiency. Unhurried, yet thorough. Packing bags properly, making sure they weren’t too heavy for the elderly or frail.
I’d also given up singing even though sad ballads often ran through my head while I lie in bed wishing for…more.
The new girl continued to gab as I rang up my first customer, taking care as usual. Initiating conversation didn’t come easy for me, so I kept my silence, simply doing my job.
“Have a good day,” I quietly stated once handing off the customer’s bag, keeping my gaze averted.
“You, too, young lady,” the old man said before shuffling away.
Dozens of such transactions a day. Impersonal, but not cold.
Hardly fulfilling, but I got an occasional, “Good job today” from our boss.
The window beyond my co-worker drew my focus in between customers, and an ache spread through my chest as a flock of birds flitted between trees. A breeze rustled the new leaves, and I closed my eyes, imagining it on my face. Fresh air. Quietness. Peace.
“Hello, Saige.”
My eyelids popped open at the voice I remembered from the summer before, and my lips actually twitched.
“Callan.” No butterflies lit in my stomach, but I didn’t mind. I held his gaze all of two seconds before my timidity flitted my attention to the cart he pushed.
“How was your winter, beautiful?”
Heat flushed my cheeks. I started scanning items the second he set them on the belt. “Long. Yours?”
“Longer.”
I believed it, living out in the bush like he did. “Survived it, though,” I murmured.
“Would it make you smile if I said looking forward to seeing you this spring made it easier?”
Sure that my cheeks blazed enough to cover my freckles, I gulped. No smile, but funny flutters finally woke in my belly.
“I’m in town for the next two weeks,” Callan said, setting the last item on the belt. “I’d like to pick up where we left off in the fall—if you’re interested.”
Pick up…
I glanced up to find his blue eyes serious. Nice eyes, but guarded and bland, not filled with the heat of passion like the heroes in the tattered paperbacks I got from the library’s free stack.
Callan had talked me into getting coffee with him the few times he’d been in town the summer before. My first real dates, but he hadn’t tried to kiss me. Hadn’t held my hand. Hadn’t seemed interested other than telling me about his homestead and trying to get me to talk more about my almost non-existent life.
“What do you say?” He smiled, and even though it didn’t reach his eyes or warm me between my thighs like my romance novels did, I considered my morning. My depression. My desire for something new. My need for such a thing.
Hope pushed to life inside my chest for the second time that day.
A change.
“Same place?” I asked, my voice sounding rusty even though I’d wished good mornings to dozens of people in the previous two hours.
“I was thinking instead of coffee we could get some dinner.”
A dinner date. My very first one.
“I-I’d like that,” I sputtered, heat once more flooding my face.
“Want to meet over at Dilly’s Diner? Say, six?”
My head jerked in a nod as I glanced at the register for his total. “Okay.”
Two minutes later, he walked out with his loaded carts, and I caught my attention staying on him far longer than it had the fall before. Broad shoulders beneath his flannel. A bit shy of six feet, dark hair, and beard neatly trimmed.
“You fuck him last fall?”
I jerked my focus across the aisle, my jaw dropping as my co-worker laughed. “N-no!” I sputtered.
“God, you’re a virgin?”
That damn heat returned to my face, and I clamped my lips shut, grabbing a bottle of cleaner to wipe down the belt that didn’t need it.
“You are, aren’t you?” She snorted with laughter. “Girl, you need to get out of your shell and live a little! You’re what—eighteen? Nineteen?”
“Twenty-four,” I mumbled.
“Shit.” She huffed. “I lost mine at thirteen. Hurt like a bitch.”
Not a conversation for work… I glanced around to find us alone—for the most part—but that didn’t ease my feet shifting in the new sneakers I’d bought myself from aisle thirteen before we’d opened for the day.
“He was hung like a horse and didn’t take it easy on me. Your man, there, didn’t look the gentle sort, either,” she continued running her inappropriate commentary. “Bet he’s aching to fuck something other than his fist after a winter out in the wilderness.” Another snort. “You aren’t much for conversation, but I’ll bet after spending that longer winter in the middle of nowhere, he’ll be more interested in getting his dick wet. Perfect opportunity to give it up if you ask me, Saige. Just sayin’. You’re kinda shy, I’m thinking, to lose it on your own merit.” At least her voice lowered as a customer approached. “Find everything okay today?” she called to them, all bubbly.
Thoughts swarmed my brain.
A dinner date with a man I wasn’t even sexually attracted to.
Something new.
The perfect opportunity.
Was she right about Callan hoping to get between my thighs? Did I want him there?
I hadn’t been saving my first time on purpose—I’d just never had the chance to give up the V-card. No boy had shown interest in me during high school, but I hadn’t looked up from the floor long enough to see if anyone even glanced my way, either.
Those funny flutters twisted my insides, and I glanced out the window again.
Callan had already gone from the parking lot.
He’d been widowed eight years earlier, he’d told me. Hardly spent any time in town, choosing the wilderness and quiet, instead. He’d spoken of his land, his cabin, as though she’d become his mistress. He trapped and panned a bit for gold to make a living.
No electricity. No running water.
A simplistic way of life that honed a man into something a woman could be proud of. Callan wouldn’t get home from trapping and sit on the couch all night watching TV. He wouldn’t have pills and beer readily available. From how he’d spoken of his homestead, I knew he treated both with care.
His cabin wouldn’t be filled with trash.
He’d become something of a friend the year before—even if I hadn’t been the one to fill the silence that sometimes rose between us while sitting down to coffee.
Callan appreciated my quietness, my meekness, he’d claimed. Women, he’d said, oftentimes spoke too much.
I glanced at my co-worker who had her back to me while ringing up Mrs. Dembrook, her chatter a buzz in my ears.
My agreement went with Callan about chatty women—and I looked forward to dinner with more excitement than I’d ever experienced in my life.
Flynn
I caught sight of myself in the still blue of the pool above the waterfall. My bruises had healed in the weeks I’d been in the wilderness, but the pain he’d inflicted inside didn’t fade as easily as the outside.
All because I’d fallen back to sleep after he’d gotten me up for the day.
Not like I did it often, but I felt my birthday allowed for a bit of laziness, something I didn’t truly understand the meaning of. Growing up off grid from day one out of Ma’s womb, I knew the meaning of hard work. Having to take care of the house and Pa when she’d passed, I also knew how to keep one’s head above water living off the land.
Pa didn’t notice. Didn’t fuckin’ care how hard his son worked, strived, to earn his appreciation and respect.
Finally eighteen, taller and wider in shoulders than Pa, and he still knocked me around. And I stuck around because I’d promised Ma I would. Ten years old, and I’d sworn an oath as she lay there dying that I would look after the bastard who’d hurt her more than loved her.
I’d cursed myself to the equator and back since making that promise, but couldn’t bring myself to break it.
Pa was a bastard of the worst sort. Always poking fun, tearing me down, and calling me a pussy if he felt I didn’t man-up like I ought to.
Eighteen.
“Time to get the hell out of there,” I told my reflection while smoothing down my beard that had begun to fill in. Wasn’t the first time I’d said it—wouldn’t be the last.
But I had no money. No means of making it on my own. Everything I called mine belonged to Pa, even though I’d helped with the trapping and panning for gold since I could walk alongside him. I knew what those critters felt like ensnared in wire or metal claws—fuckin’ trapped. Unable to escape. Freedom a long-gone wish. The chance to live ripped from their center like still-warm guts dropping to the snowy ground.
Jaw clenched, I pushed up from sucking down the icy mountain water, swiping my forearm across my mouth.
Eighteen.
Bearded like a man. Seasoned like a man. Officially in the eyes of the law—a man. But I’d never gone to a school. Never drove a vehicle. Never had myself a woman. Never owned a goddamn thing, not even the clothes on my back.
Yes, I wanted to get the hell off Pa’s homestead, but where the fuck would I go even if I hadn’t promised Ma to stick around? What the fuck could I do? Sure as hell couldn’t afford the plane ride into Fairbanks.
Tired of game cooked over an open fire, I trudged down the mountain, feeling as though I had no other choice, my footsteps slow while I forced myself to focus on bathing with real soap in the river. Changing into clean clothes since the ones on my body had crusted over days ago.
Fuckin’ filthy animal.
Wildling, Ma had called me when I’d been a kid and she’d been around to show me the meaning of kindness. Always running around half-naked in the summer, my hair long and knotted, scratches and scrapes on my arms and legs. Half-feral, Pa had always grumbled before cursing at me. Made for the wilderness, at one with the woods, wildlife, and Mother Nature.
I’d known nothing but the wilds of Alaska, and I had no wish to know anything beyond. I didn’t need to remind myself while standing on a bluff overlooking the greening land stretching alongside the river below.
No smoke rose from the cabin’s chimney that I could see from my height. No one moved, either.
He’d be around somewhere, though. Always was—even when I felt sure he didn’t watch, catching me doing shit I shouldn’t; like skipping rocks across the river rather than tending my fishing pole. Tossing sticks to my dog rather than splitting wood like he’d instructed me to do.
My dog…
The old beagle Pa had brought home from Fairbanks when I’d been eight or so. A dog to hunt with him, man’s best friend. Turned out Dog liked Pa about as much as I did, and he’d taken to my side like a summer shadow, tight against my side—ignoring Pa altogether.
He’d tried to protect me against Pa on my birthday, but Pa’s fist clobbered him alongside the head, leaving him dazed as me whenever fist or palm met flesh.
But no more.
I straightened and filled my lungs with the mountain’s clean air, sucking it in deep until my lungs thought to burst.
“I’m a man,” I told Dog, leaning down to scratch beneath his chin. He closed his eyes, his tongue lolling like he was smiling. “Not gonna let Pa hurt either one of us ever again. I’m gonna stand up to him. Won’t hurt him because of my promise to Ma, but I’m not going to let him use me like dough Ma used to beat down before making bread.”
I stood, my mind set, my feet ready to take me home to begin a new kind of life.
Dog sniffed the air and took off down the path but didn’t make so much as a hint of noise from his flapping jaw. Pa had throat-punched him hard enough after his first week of braying pretty much non-stop, that the poor animal couldn’t make a sound.
Useless animal in Pa’s eyes. A necessity in mine.
Man’s best friend—man, I reminded myself. I’d tended to Dog ever since. Provided his food, and he kept me warm at night.
Dog continued down the path, flitting glances back at me now and then, making sure I followed his lead, that I would stay true to the promise I’d just made to myself about standing up like the man I’d become.
No sign of Pa around the yard. The cabin sat shut up and quiet, cool, with no evidence of a morning fire—or any recent fire, for that matter.
Hands on hips, I surveyed the two-room cabin, hoping for evidence he’d disappeared in the middle of the day and hadn’t been able to return. Dead. Fuckin’ gone, leaving me the man of the house.
His neatly made bed sat in view through the opened door into the one bedroom, and the lack of dirty dishes he rarely bothered with, fireplace cleaned out…
He’d gone to town, which meant he’d be back.
“Fuck.”
Every part of me wished he wouldn’t. If it weren’t for Jessie and her bush plane being my lifeline to the outside world, I’d hope his flight nose-dived. Jessie had been lucky enough to survive a plane crash a couple years earlier—and I wouldn’t wish it on her again no matter how much my bastard of a father deserved to rot in a shallow grave, feeding worms and bugs in the circle of life.
Jessie had heard Pa give me shit more than once. Seemingly a smart woman, I expected she knew his character. Her kind eyes never failed to catch my gaze, offering me friendship even if we didn’t share words privately.
Pa never left us alone.
Maybe he tried to protect Jessie from his wild son, the man who’d never felt the softness of a woman grasping at his dick.
I remembered hearing Pa and Ma in their bed. Kinda hard to not hear as a kid when your parents lay beyond a doorway without a door, rutting away like all animals did. With Ma gone, it’d fallen to Pa to tell me once I’d hit puberty what they’d been doing. He told me all I’d be missing as a teenager and a young man out in the wilds of Alaska.
Teased the shit out of me. Fuckin’ relentless in his vivid descriptions of a warm, wet pussy, created just for man’s pleasure. What soft breasts felt like in a man’s hands. What it felt like to have a woman’s ass in your face, slick and ready to suck your dick into her body. Sick bastard wouldn’t stop. Laughing after me whenever I walked away to escape the teasing that made me hard as wood.
My focus caught on a pencil drawing that hung forgotten beside his bedroom doorway, pulling my focus off him. I’d fashioned a frame for the image Ma had drawn of me sitting down by the river, fishing pole in my hands, Dog seated next to me. Both of us peered out over the water. The details of our faces made plain what we’d been thinking about…freedom.
At the time, I hadn’t realized what I’d longed for. With the wilderness stretching around me, I had more freedom than most. The trap ensnaring me lay in circumstances, and the knowledge no escape was possible kept me down more often than not.
Dog’s wet nose touched my hand, and I scratched under his chin again. “You’re a good boy,” I told him, my throat tightening over the fact I hadn’t heard similar words for too damn long.
And I didn’t expect to hear them anytime in the near future. Pa would return, and life would go back to shit, until he took another trip into town.
Saige
Dinner with Callan wasn’t much different than coffee. He chatted, and I offered my two cents if he asked. I didn’t expound on my home life he’d already dragged from me the year before. He didn’t ask after my parents—and I didn’t offer.
Neither noticed when I got home, nor did they care when I went straight to my bedroom without cleaning up my trail through the house like usual.
After a lovely dinner with my friend, bitterness damn near choked me at having to pick my way through trash just to get to the only place I could call my own. Even though I’d had a good time, even smiling a few times, tears soaked my cheeks and pillow as I lay in bed that night.
Callan hadn’t kissed me, hadn’t even suggested he’d wanted to. Perhaps after the long winter, he needed an ear more than a female body. Not that I had much of one to offer.
“Give it up last night?” My co-worker jumped on me the second she walked in the employees’ only door at the store’s back the next morning.
I ignored her while hanging up my zipper-down sweatshirt.
“Spill, Saige! Give me something. Please.” She dragged the word out, begging in the tone of the two-year-old twins she always complained about.
“We just had dinner,” I gave her, smoothing out the wrinkles of my work shirt.
“Seriously? There’s no way I read that man wrong!”
Internally, I begged to differ, but kept my mouth shut.
Callan showed up with flowers an hour later.
Once again, he brought heat to my face, and I agreed to have dinner with him that night.
The relentless woman beside me tittered and teased me all damn day.
Another dinner, another lack of conversation on my part, and another parting with no attempt of a kiss goodnight.
Just friends, I insisted after her relentless questions the morning following dinner date number two.
Two days later, I agreed to a third—one much less expensive than dining out. We met at seven at the coffee shop and ended up sitting on a park bench. An hour in, Callan asked if he could hold my hand.
My palm sweated, but he didn’t complain.
“It gets lonely out there.”
