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  Lumberjacked

  Jessa James

  Contents

  Lumberjacked

  1. Chapter One

  2. Chapter Two

  3. Chapter Three

  4. Chapter Four

  5. Chapter Five

  6. Chapter Six

  7. Chapter Seven

  8. Chapter Eight

  Epilogue

  Books by Jessa James

  About the Author

  Lumberjacked

  By

  Jessa James

  Lumberjacked: Copyright © 2017 by Jessa James

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, digital or mechanical including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning or by any type of data storage and retrieval system without express, written permission from the author.

  Published by Jessa James

  James, Jessa

  Lumberjacked

  Cover design copyright 2017 by Jessa James, Author

  Images/Photo Credit: Canstock Photo: Nejron

  Publisher’s Note:

  This book was written for an adult audience. The book may contain explicit sexual content. Sexual activities included in this book are strictly fantasies intended for adults and any activities or risks taken by fictional characters within the story are neither endorsed nor encouraged by the author or publisher.

  Chapter One

  Anna

  “I will be so pissed if I die delivering this jerk his groceries,” I muttered to myself as I gripped the joystick and tried to ignore the bouncing of my old floatplane.

  That was impossible since the last drop had my stomach relocating in my throat. The sky had turned a nasty dark gray twenty minutes ago, the kind that didn’t bode well for me, the only pilot crazy enough to go out flying in my dad’s twenty year old tin can of an airplane.

  I should be on the ground with my face in a textbook, but Jack-ass Simms, the spoiled city slicker, had his groceries delivered every week and I wasn’t going to shirk my job. I was the lucky one—not—who kept him from starving to death. Since he lived out in the bush, nearly two hours from Anchorage by plane, it’s not like he could pop into the city to pick stuff up. There was a small fishing village about thirty minutes drive from his place, but I delivered there, too.

  Another rollercoaster dip made the plane shudder and I fought to stay on course.

  The man, Jack, or Jack-ass as I thought of him, just oozed money. Old money. Silver-spoon money. I had no idea why he quit the city and came up to Alaska. Most people who came up here did it for one of two reasons. One, they had the wilds in their blood. Jack Simms was handsome and rugged, had muscles to die for, but he didn’t exactly fit in with the rugged lumberjack crowd that frequented the local bars all summer. And since living out in nature wasn’t in his blood, that left option two…the rest of them came up here to hide. From the law. From an ex. Whatever. It didn’t really matter, but I knew how much people out in the bush depended on deliveries like mine. And I wasn’t about to let the man starve. Which meant I got the unlucky job of visiting him once a week.

  If I could just look my fill and leave, that would be fine. But as with most people up here, he didn’t get much company. When he did, he liked to come out to the plane, say hi, chat me up for as long as it took me to unload.

  Despite long months of weekly conversations, I didn’t know much about him other than the fact he was somewhere over thirty, tall, tan, drop-dead gorgeous and liked S’mores flavored PopTarts. Not that I’d ever admit to him that he was hot as hell. His clothes always fit a little too well to be from the local co-op, even if they were the rugged look that everyone in the area wore. He had one of those Grecian noses with cheekbones that made me want to rub my face on his like a cat. While he was pretty low key about the fact that we were two of the only youngish, single people in the area, I saw how his chocolate brown eyes wandered to my breasts and my ass, when I unloaded his groceries every week.

  I’d be lying if I said my eyes didn’t wander, too. I figured I owed it to women everywhere to check him out, to take careful note of the bulge of his pecs under his flannel shirts, the veins that ran up his forearms, the tanned skin on the back of his neck. His dark, dark brown hair was getting longer each week—he needed a haircut. Either that, or he needed to let my fingers run through the unruly locks. I wanted to tug that hair, wanted to rip that flannel shirt off him. Wanted to climb him like a goddamn tree and have him press me up against the wall of his cabin and fuck me until I couldn’t breathe.

  He’d be good, too. I had no doubt he knew just how to get a woman to beg for more.

  Yeah, thoughts of him wielding his cock like a weapon were working well to distract myself from the choppy skies that bounced me around my cockpit seat. I shook myself out of my fantasy sex reverie and took a quick glance at the dashboard. The pressure had built around the cockpit, a sign that the turbulence was only going to get worse.

  Don’t think about it, just fly, I heard my dad’s voice in my head.

  He’d taught me to fly when I was just a kid. Since I was old enough to buckle my own straps I flew with him on his runs when I wasn’t in school, even learned to do my homework in the co-pilot’s seat without getting plane sick. I got my pilot’s license the day I turned eighteen and we had a party at the hangar. Now that he was gone, I’d taken over his routes, his plane, everything. His business became mine. Flying was what I loved and I was really fucking good at it. But these storms were always a bitch. They were rough when one was on the ground. In the air….

  The plane dropped a good ten feet and I gritted my teeth and held on to the throttle with both hands.

  It was time to leave Alaska. Past time. I wasn’t wild. I loved the mountains and the forests, but I had as much of my city-girl mother in me as my outdoorsy father. I didn’t want to hide from life up here. I wanted to live it. I wanted to see the world. Explore everywhere. I wanted to visit every country I could, taste every exotic food. I wanted to see the bright lights of New York and hear the eerie howl of the coyote in the Arizona desert at night. I read every night, made lists of places I wanted to go. I was only twenty-four, but my bucket list was two pages long. None of which I could do stuck up here in Podunk Alaska with the bears and the lumberjacks.

  After Dad died last year, I knew it was time to go. I was fucking sick of the cold, sick of the dark, sick of delivering other people’s groceries. I wanted to be somewhere else, somewhere I could still fly but make more money doing it. I was so ready to get the hell out of here and my dad’s old house was the only thing stopping me. I couldn’t quite afford to set off on my own without the money from the house, but I didn’t exactly live in a town with a hopping real estate market. So I waited. And I studied. I had one semester left of my online college classes to go. When I got out of here, I’d have both my pilot’s license, and a business degree.

  A gust came from the east and buffeted the plane.

  I kept my head down, remained focused on the instruments, the plane, the sound of the wind. There as in instinct to flying that not everyone understood. I’d tried to explain it to some of my dad’s old buddies in town, but they’d just laughed…at both of us. There were days I would swear the wind whispered to me. Days I knew where it was going to blow, knew a storm was coming despite the radar. Weather was crazy up here, could turn on a dime, and this storm was proof of that. It was supposed to be ninety miles south of me for another few hours. More than long enough for me to get in, drop of sex-on-a-stick’s grocery order and get back.

  I was so close to getting out of here. Even if Simms decided he wanted to start something, I’d have to tell him no thanks. I had goals. I had plans. And a new man didn’t fit into them
. At least not one from up here.

  That meant avoiding men until I could get out of this place, especially hot ones with dark eyes and unkempt hair. Now was not the time to be distracted. I’d worked the last few years to get ready and I was leaving for the lower forty-eight. Falling for someone was the last thing I needed.

  So, of course, my thoughts wandered to Jack-ass and how I wanted him to tug down my jeans, push me over the railing of his deck and take me from behind.

  No. No. NO!

  “Stop that.” I scolded myself aloud, but knew it wouldn’t help.

  I forced my thoughts back to the future. I could not fall for someone, especially not some stupid city-slicker who’d be starving by now if it wasn’t for me. I needed a real man, one who could handle me.

  So, falling in love was out of the question. But what if Jack just wanted hot monkey sex?

  I continued to monitor the console, check the altimeter. Jack would probably be a fun fuck buddy— how could he not, with muscles and a face like that? I smiled to myself, as I thought about the hot sex we could have. One night might be perfect. Just enough to take the edge off my need, give my vibrator a little vacation.

  Just one night, I could do that, I kept telling myself, even though the rational part of my brain scoffed loudly. Yeah, right, Anna. I had just started to roll my eyes at myself when the plane lurched so roughly I let out a yelp. Shit, this storm was nasty. Time to get out of the damn sky.

  My elevation was decreasing with the intense turbulence, something that never boded well for a floatplane. Jack’s house was right on a lake with no room cleared through the trees for an actual land landing. Water landings were all I could do in this plane anyway. I loved to watch the floaters cut through the choppy gray waves, but in this weather, water landings—or any landings for that matter—were brutal.

  Still, any landing was a good landing. Hell of a lot better than the alternative…

  I forced myself back into automatic pilot mode. Dad had taught me to fly “technical,” so I kept to what I knew and met each problem with calm. The wind shook the entire body of my little cargo plane and I knew the landing was going to be bad.

  God, hope Jack doesn’t see this. He already thinks I’m incompetent.

  I didn’t know why I cared, but that seemed important to me—that he didn’t watch me struggle to land sideways on the water. If I wanted to keep my job, my clients, I needed to be seen as a strong, independent woman who flew like a badass. Alaska was huge in land but small on people. One bad word from him at the closest fishing village and the news would spread. Until the house sold, I needed to keep flying to pay the bills.

  As I watched my radar, I knew I was only about a mile out from my usual landing spot. I continued to decrease my altitude as I worried that doing so would drop me from the sky like a stone. In this wind, who knew what the airstreams would be like? I gripped the joystick tighter as I turned a little west, then a little north, then a little east to get a feel for the airstream. Landing on the water would be much easier with the wind at my back, but in this storm, the wind ripped from all directions. Any way I approached, it was going to be bumpy.

  I aimed for the landing spot and I zoned in on the last three hundred feet of elevation. I bounced roughly around my seat, thankful for the strong body harness keeping me from hitting my head. My headset flew off after one especially strong gust and I tried to be gentle as I directed the joystick, and the nose of the plane, further down. I couldn’t see a damn thing through the rain and the fog on the water, but I knew I was far enough from the shore. Jack’s house sat like a beacon of light about a quarter mile from my landing spot and I knew I was right on the nose.

  The bumping and bouncing continued as I tried to level out the plane, but it was a lost cause. The tail end was going to hit the water—hard—but it was better than the nose. I’d go through the windshield if I hit the nose. I held onto the joystick with both hands as the wind jostled me just fifty feet above the water. At the last second, I pulled up on the joystick and forced the nose up and the tail down. The tail smacked the water, the floaters connected loudly with the waves, and my plane teeter-tottered wildly as it coasted. I continued to coast as the plane slid across the choppy surface of the lake, my floaters rocking for a moment long before they settled.

  Holy shit.

  I breathed out as I decelerated the plane and turned towards the massive dock by the shore. The wind was even more intense on the water than it was in the air and I had to accelerate more than usual to get to the spot where I turned off the engine. The plane coasted the last fifty feet or so.

  That was going to make a great story when I get back to town, I thought, but then balked as I realized I wasn’t flying home until the weather cleared. Until then, I was stuck out here. With Jack.

  Chapter Two

  Jack

  Where the hell was she?

  Anna Jackson was a wisp of a woman, but she was a force to be reckoned with. All five foot nothing of her and she flew a damn floatplane. She was the Alaskan version of FedEx and I relied on her for all my deliveries, even my fucking groceries.

  How did such a tiny woman command that damn plane? And in this shitty weather. As I looked outside, a hard rock of worry settled in my gut as I realized that she just might be ballsy enough to risk the damn delivery.

  It was near dark, but not because of the sunset. The sky had turned a nasty, dark gray, and the wind was so bad that the trees looked like they were growing sideways. At this time of year, the sun set around midnight and it was barely seven. She wasn’t late, but it was dark and with this storm, I couldn’t imagine a worse time to be in a small plane. I’d heard that bush plane crash rates were higher than any other. No wonder, with the crazy ass weather. She was probably already on her way when the weather changed. But had she turned back?

  Moving inside, I picked up my radio and tried to call through to the nearest village, get them to radio Anchorage and find out if she was on her way or sitting safe and sound at home. On good days, I could get a clear signal. Today, there was no answer, as I’d expected with this damn storm. I tried my computer, but with the cloud coverage, my satellite service was down as well. No way to get messages in our out until the storm cleared.

  I sat down at my desk and flipped through the pages of a small tech company’s investor portfolio to keep from worrying. She was a big girl. Knew what she was doing. Knew my supply of spaghetti sauce and toilet paper weren’t worth dying for. No. She was safe on the ground, waiting out the storm.

  I returned to the tech company’s details. Brothers started it two years ago and had grown the firm exponentially. That’s why they contacted my investment broker. They really wanted me to get involved. They were definitely going places, but could do a lot more with their brand. I knew I could help them, but I wasn’t ready to return to the real world, to the fucking rat race. If I did, this company would be my first choice. A return to Seattle was a big deal, though, and I wasn’t going to rush into a decision. I’d left the city, and all the bullshit behind for a reason. That reason hadn’t changed. Maybe I would be ready tomorrow, maybe I needed a little more time.

  Speaking of time. I looked out the window, watched the rain paint my window sideways.

  Work wasn’t effective as a distraction. I kept thinking about Anna, the infuriating woman with her shit kicker boots, tight jeans, and perfect breasts she tried so damn hard to hide under those long sleeved shirts that clung to every curve. She was stubborn as hell and every week she refused to let me help her unload her plane. Always said she didn’t want me to fuck up my manicure.

  Oh honey, I wanted to purr in her ear, You’re the only thing I want to fuck...

  I never got close enough to say it; she never seemed interested and I wouldn’t fuck a woman who wasn’t willing. I’d be lying if I said her reaction to me didn’t sting a little. Women had wanted me my entire life, practically thrown themselves at my feet, but that was only because they knew I was rich. That’s why V
ictoria had pretended to fall in love with me. I let it happen, too. I’d even been the dumb-ass who’d asked her to marry me.

  I shook the thoughts off, not wanting to go there. It had been over a year ago since the shit storm that became my life once I learned Victoria had been lying to me. Over a year since I moved to Alaska. I loved the unspoiled vistas, the rugged people, the quiet. This time of year, mid-August, the weather was warm, the days were long and near perfect. I spent hours hiking and exploring the woods, some days the breeze was chilly enough for a jacket, but the daylight lasted almost twenty hours.

  My mom came to visit about a month after I settled in. Even she loved my little house, the lake, the wind in the trees and the wild animals that made their way to the water’s edge to drink. She hadn’t stayed long, just long enough to make sure I was all right, and long enough to find Anna. My mother insisted that I needed human contact and fresh food, so she hired Anna’s company to make deliveries once a week. I was pretty sure Mother did it because she thought Anna was beautiful and secretly hoped I’d fall for her. The irony was not lost on me.

  Anna was beautiful and curvy in all the right places. She was honest and hard-working and tough as nails. Could I fall for Anna? Probably. But Anna didn’t give a shit about me, my money, any of it. Each week she left me with my deliveries and a hard on that seemed to be focused entirely on her.

  As I paced the floor, I occasionally checked the window over my kitchen sink and stared out towards the dock. The storm had picked up so much that I couldn’t see that far out; the rain and wind had made the usually stunning view gray. But then I saw it. Her plane, a ghostly orb, about fifty feet up from the water. The streak of white in the gray sky stuck out like a sore thumb, but so did the position of her plane. Holy shit, she’s going to nosedive! I barely spared a thought before I ran out the door, the rain and wind slapping me back as soon as I stepped onto the porch.