Wild Men of Alaska 04 - Wild Men of Alaska - Four Book Bundle

rest, though she’d need magical powers to free herself of the bonds he’d tied her with.
    Just as he would never be free of the bonds tying his heart to hers.

C HAPTER E LEVEN

    How dare he leave her here like this? Trussed up and so turned on her vision blurred.
    Kate listened hard, past the snapping of the fire he’d started for her—wasn’t that fucking thoughtful—and the pulsing of her molten blood rushing through her veins. There was a silence within the lodge that told her she was completely alone. What if she needed to use the bathroom or the lodge caught fire? Or the phone rang? Okay, the last one was a stretch. But, seriously, what if Sergei had decided to leave and not come back?
    She kicked off the blanket, and the cold air spanked her bare flesh. If she didn’t get free of the ropes, she was now in for an uncomfortable night even with the fire burning cheerfully. At least the chillier air helped cool her over-heated sensibilities.
    She craned her neck to look at the headboard and the canopy above her. The whole bed was made of logs, though the canopy rails were quite a bit thinner than the posts. The posts might as well have been tree trunks rooted into the ground. There was no sway, no give in the ropes no matter how hard she strained against them.
    She took a moment to think.
    Looking around the room she scrutinized what she could reach—nothing—or use to help free herself.
    Again, nothing.
    Sergei must feel pretty secure that she wasn’t going anywhere. She snarled through her teeth in aggravation. She couldn’t still be here tied up like this when he returned. What would he do to her then?
    Never had she been at the mercy of a man like this. Yes, she’d been captured, tortured, but this was different. This was Sergei, and he had always been able to get to her on a deeper level than anyone she’d ever met.
    There was something not right in that the one man she wanted to hate, needed to kill, understood her. Not the person she showed the world, or even the person she pretended to herself to be. He saw her . Flaws and all.
    That’s it. If she had to use the ropes to saw through her wrist, she was getting out of these bonds. She struggled against the ropes. If she could just gain a little extra room...but Sergei had stretched her arms far enough apart that there was no possible way for her to do that.
    Maybe she could swing her legs up and bust the rungs? It wasn’t like she had anything else to concentrate on. Other than what Sergei had told her about Perry and that was certainly something she didn’t want to revisit right now. She was too raw. Her feelings churned under the surface. Any provocation would stir them up into tidal waves she couldn’t surf at the moment.
    Swinging her legs up, she used the ropes as leverage and the strength of her abs in a way a gymnast would on parallel bars, and kicked at the rails above her.
    Shit, that hurt.
    Her feet stung with the impact of ramming them into the log rail. She kept at it, though, encouraged by the sound of a crack. A few more non-enjoyable head-banging incidents against the headboard, and she splintered the top rung above her.
    It tumbled down on top of her, nailing her upper torso.
    Oh, yeah, that would leave a bruise.
    She wished she could curl into a ball as pain radiated through her upper body. Out of breath and sweating, she took a few minutes to lie there, compartmentalizing the impact before bucking her body and dislodging the wood laying across her ribs. It crashed onto the floor and echoed throughout the lodge. Good thing Sergei wasn’t here, because the racket would have brought him running.
    One down. The side rungs would be a bitch as she had to kick out at an angle. Grunting with the exertion, she lashed out to the right. She didn’t give up as her muscles ached and burned. Finally, she knocked it loose. Luckily this one didn’t land on her, but it took out the bedside lamp—killing it—and shredding the pile of books Sergei had stacked, littering them across the floor, and denting the wall before coming to a final stop.
    The momentum slid the rope up the post a few inches, and she was able to get her knees under her. She inched her body back toward the headboard, nudging the pillows out of her way. The action stirred up Sergei’s scent, and she found herself suddenly sexually frustrated all over again.
    Oh, that man was going to pay. And he would pay hard.
    With thoughts of tying him up and torturing him, Kate