Page 20 of Trapped with the Forest Ranger
He stops to lift a fallen branch off the trail, forearms flexing beneath rolled sleeves. The kind of strength that doesn’t brag. Doesn’t pose. Just is.
I swear the air gets warmer. Or maybe that’s just me, burning from the inside out while pretending to care about lichen colonies.
I follow him.
God help me, I’d follow him anywhere.
The air shifts—brighter one moment, darker the next. Clouds bloom like bruises above the ridgeline. The wind carries a bite now, teasing through the trees, stirring the hem of my damp shirt.
“More rain coming?” I glance up, tracking the roiling sky.
“Probably.” He frowns. “Sooner than forecast.”
Spoiler alert:very soon.
The first raindrop lands with an icy kiss on my collarbone. Then another. Then?—
Downpour.
We don’t speak, just break into a run, boots slapping mud. The wind howls as if it’s got something to prove, rain pelting down in a sudden onslaught that soaks us in seconds. Myclothes cling like a second skin, plastered to every inch of me, cold enough to raise goosebumps—and heat enough to burn right through them.
“This way.” Caleb grabs my elbow. Just his hand—rough, warm, anchoring.
He veers off the trail toward a low silhouette tucked against the ridge. A structure. I hadn’t even noticed it.
We reach the door in a sprint, half-blind from the rain. Caleb throws it open, practically shoves me inside before following, slamming it shut behind us.
The slam echoes.
Silence follows.
The shelter is barely bigger than a closet. Wooden walls, narrow bench, weather station gear in one corner, and a single battery-powered lantern on the shelf. No electricity. No distractions.
Just us. A one-room cabin, and one bed.
Just kill me now.
Chapter 7
Water streams off me—hairplastered to my scalp, jacket clinging like a second skin. I’m soaked to the bone, shivering, half-mad with cold and something far more dangerous.
But he’s worse.
Caleb stands in the middle of the cabin like some feral deity summoned by thunder, his shirt molded to his chest like wet paint. Every ridge, every defined edge of muscle etched in high-def torment. Pecs. Abs. Veins that snake down thick forearms made for lifting, gripping, holding someone in place while they come undone.
Jesus.
He looks like wrath sculpted in flesh. Like sin carved from stone and left to weather in the wild.
And I want to climb him. Wrap myself around him like ivy and beg to be torn apart.
A violent shiver racks me. Not just from the cold this time.
He notices. Of course he fucking does.
Caleb shrugs off his soaked jacket, muscles rippling like awarning. Then grabs a blanket from the shelf and tosses it toward me without a word.
“You’re soaked.”
