Hunter's Moon by Chuck Logan (the false prince series txt) 📗

She flung out her arms, grasped two branches in her fists, and bent from the waist and her smooth thighs shuddered as 60 / CHUCK LOGAN

she stamped one shoe in the snow and then the other and took the stance and thrust her back in a powerful arch.

Harry would remember the antler curve of the moon, the pines shivering, the snow tumbling down.

Their breath joined in one great cloud, then tapered off into plumes and on fire in a foot of snow, they dropped to their knees and, face to face, began to laugh. Quickly they covered each other’s mouths with their hands and hugged and looked warily after their echoing laughter. Starved to touch, their fingers silently gobbled each other’s faces and only their eyes sparkled with laughter: isn’t this the way it’s supposed to be—wild. Magic.

The moment ended and they put their clothing back in place and she tugged his wrists, inclining her body back toward the lodge—toward hot coffee, clean sheets. Words to span the wreckage of impulse.

No. He wanted this moment pure. He shook his head and she tightened her grip. They began to struggle because she was very strong and deliberate thought replaced the passion in her incendiary eyes. Stay.

Harry resorted to a fighting technique to break her grip. She re-bounded quickly and threw her arms around him. He held her off and pushed through the pines. A crimson thread drew him to the side of the trail where he retrieved his compass. She followed him as he retraced his steps and, as he buckled on his snowshoes and shouldered his rifle and pack, she stood with her arms upraised, beckoning. Finally, the cold gripped her face like censure; she hugged herself, turned and walked away.

Not a word had passed between them.

He was caught in a riddle of time. Somewhere just up ahead he had stepped through a door in the forest and now he had to find his way back into his life. Irony twirled around him but his muscles moved smoothly with dreamy power and his eyes had never been so clean. He could feel the blood shoot the rapids of his heart.

Cursed or blessed, he wanted to shout.

HUNTER’S MOON / 61

Floating, he seized the rifle with both hands in a burst of exhilaration: I’ll shoot a deer while it’s still running down her leg.

Then the first twinge eclipsed the euphoria. Have to tell Bud. Be honest. Just happened. Like a car accident. Still hard to think right now, all tactile, pulsing…

Every surface of the forest stood out with a shadowy gleam.

Pristine, never cut in here. Towers of white and red pine reached up 80, 90 feet before they branched. Thickets of snow-tiered fir and spruce. A tremble of aspen stirred heady resins of sap and tangy bark and pine cones nestled like tiny hand grenades.

His heart thumped in his throat when he picked out Bud hiding behind a tree next to the trail, stooped over, chin on his chest. He stepped back into his life and everything looked different. Bud looked weak, pathetic.

For the first time, Harry consciously resented Bud Maston his messy, monied life. Walking those last few paces, his mind swirled with numbers; his age, salary, the years until retirement. Not that many good years left.

Could he afford a woman like Jesse? Crazy damn thoughts.

“You all set?” Bud whispered.

Harry nodded and held up the compass and looked around.

“Where’s the kid?”

“Up ahead. He started down already. Something was moving this way. I think he saw that deer.”

“You think? Not a good idea to split up in the dark.”

Bud watched his breath drift in the chill air. “Wind’s this way,”

he motioned to the left. “If we jump a deer, he’ll run into the wind, that way.”

“Yeah?” Harry’s senses were still reeling. Wind? And Bud, his voice goofy for that big deer, went on talking.

“So, you take the trail, I’ll drag along about thirty yards into the trees to the right. Maybe you’ll push him out my way.” Bud gripped his rifle and his eyes glowed in the faint light, Harry wondered if he could sniff the sweet babyshit of sex lingering in the crisp air.

62 / CHUCK LOGAN

“Let’s do it. I’m going to hang that deer from that fucking tree and show these morons,” said Bud. “I’ll meet you where the ridges split off over the swamp. Keep an eye out for Chris, he’s to the left.”

Harry didn’t like it, split up and all, but he didn’t want to be around Bud right now, so he stalked the trail while Bud moved silently on snowshoes through the trees. He just walked, not even unslinging his rifle from his shoulder until he came to the end of the trail where the ridge broke into three meandering fingers and sloped gradually. Below, flanked by tamarack and aspen and fringed by a thick hedge of tall reddish brush, the gray grass and clumped cattails were bent with frost and driven helter-skelter by a stampede of wind.

Bud’s voice came from the cover of the trees to Harry’s rear.

“You’re in here. I’ll find Chris and set him in and be right back.”

A few yards away, astride the ridgeline, a platform of new lumber peeked stark as bone among the rotting branches of a fallen white pine. A deer would see it a mile away.

Bud disappeared into the trees down the second finger. Harry unbuckled the snowshoes and quietly hoisted himself into the platform and scooped away snow. He had the highest position, overlooking the other two fingers.

He got his bearings and quickly figured his field of fire: 200 yards of open swamp and slope in front and 100 yards of tangled forest to either side.

A red squirrel raced chattering through the underbrush in a miniature frenzy and set the forest echoing and the first hush of dawn smeared honey through the trees and dripped pastel shadows on the snow.

The heavy rifle swung balsa-light in his hot hands as he traversed an arc, sighting