Bending Steele Read Online Free PDF Page B

making it easy to track the paw prints laid
into the snow. Jacks tarried after her, his pace as fast as the
terrain would let him go. His snow shoes left soft impressions in
the white crust.
    White buried the world here, everything
crystalline and untouched. It’d been beautiful. For the first five
minutes. Now, storm gray rocks and the nearly uninterrupted splay
of white blended into each other, the world blurred around him in
one massive haze. Only his compass and the tracks in front of him
kept him going.
    A mountain split out of the ground in front
of him, jagged, it scraped up into a dusky sky. The tracks leapt up
the slight crevices, fleeting, and he could only track them for a
handful of strides before they vanished all together. Damn. He
licked his frozen teeth. The wily little cat thought she could
outrun him going up, deeper.
    But Jacks hadn’t come this far to give up.
Dragging his ice pick and climbing gear out of his pack, he turned,
scanning the cliff side for another way up. Tracking was always the
hardest part, once he had them in sight, it was easy from there.
Make sure they’d traded in human skin for animal fur, get them in
the scope of his rifle, and... bang .
     
    ***
     
    The scent of Hexe’s venison stew woke her,
followed by the chop-chop-chop of a knife hitting the cutting
board. Her stomach gave a hungry rumble at the scent of food and
Steele rolled over onto her back, staring up at the log ceiling. On
more than a few of the logs Hexe had carved vines into the wood,
like a forest canopy stretching into the house. But it was the
intricacy of the designs that left her breathless.
    Sure, one could get bored as hell up here,
but this was art no one but him would ever see. But he put every
detail into each leaf, from the veins to the stems. He missed
nothing, just like with his damned bed. Steele sat up from her
makeshift bed on his couch, angling herself so she could watch as
Hexe cooked. Four days here and so far she’d managed to keep her
distance. Not easily of course.
    Hexe didn’t understand the words ‘back off’
even when he ended up flat on his back with a knife at his damned
throat. Steele leaned into the soft couch cushions and watched as
he worked, pausing as he chopped up a vegetable to give the stir a
quick stew.
    “You must get out of the mountains fairly
regularly.”
    The corner of Hexe’s mouth kicked up in a
half smile as he glanced her way, but he didn’t say a word. For the
past two days, that had been his new tactic. If she wouldn’t share,
neither would he. Which would have been fine, but the near-silent
treatment was beginning to grate on her nerves. She’d lived on her
own every damn day for years now, in perfect silence, and yet, toss
her in Hexe’s house and she couldn’t take it. The problem was, the
bastard was typically downright chatty, talking to himself as much
as to her.
    Now, the sudden silence felt false. An
overbearing presence that lingered in the room, stretched out
between them. Steele crossed her arms over the back of the couch
and rested her head on her wrists. “I like the color blue.”
    “Why?”
    She lifted her eyebrows. “Where’d you get the
vegetables?”
    Hexe shook his head with a laugh. “All right.
Fair enough.”
    He lifted the cutting board, and using the
knife, he swept the chopped carrots into the stew. Giving the pot
one last stir, he headed her way, those gold-green eyes focused on
her. Like always, they seemed to look into her, through her, but
for once, Steele was thankful for the company. His strides were
long, purposeful, and his hips swayed slightly with the movement.
He moved like a cat, both as a man and as a leopard. All confidence
and easy, liquefied grace.
    Hexe prowled around the side of the couch and
sank down next to her. “You’re right. I get out of the mountains
quite a bit. Sometimes you just have to see people, be around
them.”
    Steele watched him as he spoke, the murmur of
pride in his voice. The quiet