from his wild, unkempt brown hair over a rugged face, to impossibly wide shoulders and a torso packed with muscle squeezed into a checked shirt, down to tree-trunk legs encased in winter pants and heavy boots.
As far as she could see, she was up against an older bear, one who had barked orders at the others and had been obeyed. Not a good thing. If she had to guess, she would say he was the alpha.
Which meant he was the star of half the stories she had heard over the last few days.
“Which one are you?” she said, refusing to whisper those words despite the growing fear she felt.
He puffed his chest out a little, his smile confident. “Saint.”
Warmth rolled through her as he tipped his chin up, some deeply primal part of her purring at the sight of him, at how strong he looked as he stood like that. She shut it down and continued with her plan.
Her brothers always hated it when she found ways to belittle them when they were trying to trample all over her, when she acted as if she wasn’t afraid of them or wasn’t impressed by their chest-beating behaviour.
Holly pulled a face. Shrugged for effect.
“I don’t know one bear from another in this pride. You’ll have to tell me whether you’re someone important.” She raked her eyes over him and arched an eyebrow. Playing with fire, but she wasn’t going to let him intimidate her. She was going to irritate him. “You don’t look important.”
He scoffed at that. “I’m the pride alpha.”
She pretended to mull that over as she rounded the end of the couch, keeping him away from her. “So a pride alpha has resorted to childish methods of getting his way?”
He growled. “I’m not being childish.”
Holly tapped her chin, holding her nerve as he stopped opposite her, his face rapidly darkening. “My kin didn’t do as you wanted, so you took something of theirs to force them to do it. Seems rather immature to me.”
Her heart shot into her throat as he vaulted over the couch and grabbed her again, an unwanted thrill chasing down her spine at the display of agility. Her pulse rushed in her ears as he dragged her against him, his grip on her right arm bruising, his face dark with anger as his lips flattened and his eyebrows met hard, narrowing his brown eyes.
Holly tipped her head back and stared up at him.
Breathed. “Saint?”
“Hmm?” His gaze fell to her mouth, darkened in a way that had nothing to do with anger.
A way that thrilled her.
“You’re hardly worthy of that name.” She pushed the words out, sure she would regret them. Irritation flared in his eyes but he didn’t take them away from her lips. “You abducted me, and you’re holding me prisoner, and for what?”
“Revenge,” he growled.
She scoffed now, feeling bold as he continued to gaze at her mouth, as his grip on her slowly loosened, as if she had cast a spell on him and could control him. The thought she had some sort of command over this strong male heated the blood in her veins and was one hell of a power trip.
“Revenge? What did Rath and Storm ever do to you?”
His free hand lifted and he stroked two fingers down the scar that darted over his left eye. “Your kin gave me this.”
He released her and tugged his shirt off together with whatever he wore beneath it, revealing far too much bare flesh dusted with dark hair.
He tossed the shirt aside and growled as he pointed to his right shoulder, to deep scars that cut a groove in his muscles. “And this.”
Holly tried not to stare at his body, tried to pretend she didn’t notice how the sight of all that honed muscle heated her blood in a way no man had before him.
“And it doesn’t end there. You want to see the scars from where Flint tried to turn me into a fucking eunuch?” He reached for his belt.
Holly shrank back and averted her gaze, her heart jamming into her throat and hammering there as panic swamped her, the sudden switch in her emotions wrenching a gasp from her lips.
His hands stilled and then fell to his sides, and his voice was gruff as he growled, “It isn’t wise to wake a sleeping bear, and Rath—you—did just that.”
She wanted to apologise, wanted to tell him that she would have kept the noise down if she had known she would wake him, but