Page 17 of Possessive Mountain Man

I gestured toward the windows. It was clearly not even close to dark yet. And we’d left a good two hours ago.

“I talked one of my roommates into bringing me back here. That’s the only reason I’m not stuck in Adairsville, preparing for a night of bar hopping.”

He frowned. “There aren’t that many bars in Adairsville.”

“Try telling them that.” I sighed. “But it doesn’t matter. They’ll have a few drinks and not care where they are.”

“Let’s go look for your phone.”

I shook my head. “I’ll look tomorrow. I don’t need it now. I just need you.”

He didn’t say anything at first. He just looked at me. And I wondered if maybe I’d been too heavy-handed with letting him know how much I needed him. Nobody liked a clingy girlfriend. I wasn’t even his girlfriend, so I shouldn’t be thinking that way. Crap, I sucked at this relationship thing.

But slowly, a smile spread over his face. “I thought you’d changed your mind.” He held up his phone. “I was sure you were ghosting me. Isn’t that what they call it?”

I nodded. “Never. I’d never ghost you.”

“Let’s go.” He nodded toward the door. “Wait, first—do you want something to eat? Did you have dinner?”

I looked beyond him to the bar, then back to his face. “Let’s call in a to-go order at the diner. By the time we get there, it’ll be ready. Then we can take it back to your place.”

Suddenly, I remembered him not wanting me to come inside when we dropped by his house last night. Maybe it wasn’t in the best condition?

But he was still smiling. “That sounds like a plan. Then we’ll get up and go looking for your phone in the morning. We’re in this together.”

It was a simple thing—looking for my phone—but I knew he meant more than that. We were in this together. All of it. For life.

As we exited the ski lodge hand in hand, I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened if I’d never come here onvacation. Or if we hadn’t chosen to go rappelling. I might have never met him. I could have gone the rest of my life without knowing the man of my dreams was right here in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina.

EPILOGUE

EVE

“Do you think they’ll notice we’re gone?” I asked as I followed my husband up a winding path through the mountains.

“Nope,” he called back. “They’re all too busy swimming.”

We’d taken the kids to a pond the locals had nicknamed Lumberjack Cove. We were there with Hayden’s friends’ wives and kids. That meant four other people were around to keep an eye on the younger swimmers while we snuck away.

“I’m pretty sure they know what we’re doing,” I said as Hayden stopped in front of a tree and looked around.

He was checking to make sure we were still alone. There wasn’t a chance of that. I hadn’t so much as heard a twig pop since we’d started walking up this hill. But that was my husband. Always vigilant, no matter where we were.

He shifted his gaze back to me, that heat stronger than ever. How was it possible we’d been married almost a full decade and he still looked at me that way? I knew that heat was a combination of lust and deep love, and both only got stronger every time we saw each other.

Most of the time, the kids got in the way of the lust part of it. But they were growing up with two parents who loved each other very much, and that mattered more than anything to me.

Hayden leaned toward me, and I was more than happy to make up the rest of the distance, wrapping my arms around him and pulling him down toward me for a long, slow kiss. We’d made love just that morning, before the kids were up, but having seven- and five-year-old boys in the house meant we had to be fast. And quiet.

My hands began roaming seconds after we started kissing. I moved them over his chest and down toward his stomach, keeping the kiss going but tilting my body back to allow access.

He wore only swim trunks and tennis shoes, while I had on a one-piece bathing suit and sandals. Neither of us was dressed for hiking, but hiking wasn’t what we planned to do right now.

I slid my hand beneath the elastic waistband of his trunks and found him fully erect. Hard as steel. I smiled against his mouth as I ran my hand up and down, sliding my pinky over his tip, then going back down again.

He groaned against my mouth, but he wanted to touch too. His fingers were already fumbling with the straps of my swimsuit, tugging them down my arms. His hands went straight to my breasts, sending heat straight to my pussy.

It was more about how much he loved touching me than the touch itself. I’d given birth to our two kids at a young enough age that my body sprang back pretty decently, but I knew things weren’t as perky as they once were.

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