Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 33333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 167(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 167(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
He notices. “TBD?”
“To be determined.” I shrug. “Or Thorne’s Bad Decisions.”
“That a promise or a threat?”
“Yes.”
He huffs out something that might be a laugh and might be a plea for patience from any gods who’ll listen.
“Dinner’s at six,” he says. “I’m cooking.”
“You can cook?”
He pins me with a look. “Woman, I can survive. You’ll eat.”
“Is that a threat, too?”
“It’s a guarantee.” His gaze skims my body once, thorough. “You like guarantees.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You showed up to a couples’ retreat alone with a plan to win anyway. You want certainty so bad you make it yourself.”
I swallow past the lump his accuracy forms in my throat. “And you? What do you want?”
His eyes don’t leave mine. “Quiet.” He lets it hang. Then, lower: “Until you.”
The air tightens.
“You’re not quiet around me?” I ask, barely above the whisper of the fire.
He steps close, crowding my space on purpose, forcing me back until my hips bump the table and the entry card flutters to the floor. He palms the edge beside my thigh, leaning in, heat and cedar and danger surrounding me like a cloak I asked for.
“No,” he says. “You make everything loud.”
I should push him off. I don’t.
“You hate loud.”
He shakes his head once. “Not yours.”
My pulse misbehaves. “Define ‘loud.’”
His mouth tilts, wicked. “The kind that happens when you finally stop pretending you’re here for a prize.” His gaze drops, lingers, returns to my eyes like a promise. “The kind you make when you’re done playing nice.”
My breath shivers out. “You think I play nice?”
“I think you’re deciding if I’ve earned bad.”
We hover there, suspended, one breath from ruin, when the back door rattles in a gust and the porch light flickers to life again before the breaker trips with a clunk. The lamps die. The fireplace stays.
Dark wraps the room.
His body remains, shadow-solid, near enough that if I lean an inch I’ll touch him.
“Power’s delicate,” I whisper.
His laugh rumbles against my ribs. “So are some men.”
“Are you?”
“No.” He straightens, gives me space like it’s a gift and a punishment. “Lock the porch. I’ll check the generator. No more candy left out.”
I nod, throat dry.
He pauses in the doorway. Looks back. “Red looks good on you.”
“My lipstick?”
“My rules,” he says, and vanishes into the dark.
The room exhales. I sink onto the chair, heart rioting, mouth tingling, the taste of poison apple clinging to my tongue. Through the window, I catch the barest flash of his body in the snow as he checks the shed, breath steaming, shoulders carved out of shadow.
Loud, I think, pressing two fingers to my pulse.
I’m not quiet either.
And tomorrow, I’ll hang every last bat light in this place and dare him to cut the breaker again.
Let the game continue.
Chapter 4
Thorne
The storm hits like the mountain decided to swallow the world. No warning. No build-up. Just rage—wind screaming through the pines, snow slamming sideways, air turning violent. I’ve seen war zones quieter.
Being trapped doesn’t bother me. Being trapped with her does.
Aspen Taylor is a problem dressed in lipstick. Chaos in combat boots. A goddamn fever I can’t sweat out. She flung herself into my lodge just a day ago and she hasn’t stopped talking—or pushing—or getting under my skin—since.
She shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t want her here.
Neither of those facts change a damn thing.
“Generator’s dead,” I tell her, slamming the shed door closed behind me. “Power’s out until I can thaw the line.”
She’s standing in the living room wrapped in sweaters and defiance, arms stacked with pillar candles she found in storage somewhere, hair tied in a messy knot. Her nose is pink from the cold. Her eyes flash.
“Are you sure you didn’t kill it on purpose? Makes it easier for you to brood without overhead lighting.”
I stalk past her and throw another log into the fireplace. “If I killed it, you’d know. You’d be crying.”
“I don’t cry.”
“Then you’d be screaming.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
My teeth flash. “Promise.”
She mutters a sound that’s halfway between a scoff and a moan. “You’re unbearable.”
“You’re still here.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Then pack your shit, princess.”
She tilts her chin. “Never.”
She’s infuriating. Wild. Lawless.
And she has no idea what she does to me.
By sundown, the temperature drops fast. The heat is gone. The mountain bites hard and sharp.
She tries to make a bed on the floor like an idiot.
“You’re not sleeping down here,” I tell her.
She spreads a blanket and lies on it dramatically. “I won’t be bullied by flannel and biceps. Anyway, that guest room you gave me is freezing.”
I haul her up and march her toward the stairs. “You’ll freeze down here.”
“By the fire?”
“Won’t hold all night.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re—” I stop walking and spin her to face me. “You’re shaking.”
“I vibrate at a high emotional frequency.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. Then I lift her off her feet and throw her over my shoulder.
She kicks. “Put me down!”
“No.”
“I’ll bite you.”