Jake Voss, a retired Senior Master Sergeant, lives in the Idaho Rockies among pine and rock, sixty and still dangerous to anyone who threatens his people.
Hunting a ransom crew through the mountains, he discovers Lucy Brennan lashed to a pine, a thirty-five-year-old blonde civilian who had been pledged to a rich older man she never chose.
He frees her and takes her to his canyon cabin, where sanctuary turns into heat, restraint, and the unyielding claim of a man who holds what she yields and defends what he keeps.
Lucy is used to directing milder lovers, but Jake will not be steered, and she likes being wanted when his former unit arrives, older, restless, and well aware of the woman under his roof.
He then gives her a choice that will set his men against one another: remain exclusively his, or be shared with the whole unit.
