Page 8 of Trapped with the Forest Ranger
Not that I need to touch him to feel him. His presence fills the space between us like smoke. Like heat. He doesn’t talk much, but he doesn’t have to. His body speaks in a language older than words—muscle and intent, purpose and restraint. Every movement is its own declaration.
And I’m listening.
Loud. And. Clear.
God help me, I might be in full-blown lust with a human brick wall. One who smells like pine needles, woodsmoke, clean sweat, and something darker. Something rough and inevitable. Like the forest conjured him to prove a point.
“Flashlight,” he says, holding out his hand without looking up.
I jolt like I’ve just been caught mid-orgasm. Because in myhead? I absolutely was. Mouth, hands, hips—every inch of me busy worshipping the mountain god in front of me.
“Right. Sorry.” My voice comes out too fast, too breathy, and I shove the flashlight into his palm like it might burn me if I linger. My cheeks blaze.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t tease. Just takes it, adjusting the angle with those big, capable hands that deserve their own Greek myth. The fingers are all rough grip and precise control—surgeon meets lumberjack—and they know exactly what they’re doing.
And I keep watching because I am so far past the point of pretending I’m not.
“Pipe cutter.” His hand stretches out again, palm up, commanding and calm. He doesn’t even glance at me.
Like he just knows I’ll be there.
Like I’m already a part of his rhythm. A tool in his hand. A fixture in his world.
The touch is brief. Our fingers barely graze when I pass it over. But it’s enough to light me up from the inside, a static charge crawling up my arm, blooming beneath my skin. My breath catches, traitorous and loud in the quiet.
Oh no. No, no, no. We are not doing the slow-motion, eye-locking, accidental-electric-touch scene from a cheesy rom-com.
Except apparently my body didn’t get the memo, because my pulse is doing Olympic-level gymnastics, and my knees are threatening to give out on their own.
And then he does look at me.
Those eyes—God, those eyes—lift to mine. Moss and stormclouds. Hard to read. Harder to look away from. They pin me in place, silent and searching. A pause. A flicker of something unspoken.
Then he turns back to the trench like nothing happened.
But I’m not breathing right.And I can’t feel my hands.
And now every fantasy I’ve had since stepping foot in this cabin—every filthy, dominant, woodsmoke-and-command-laced daydream—is stacking like firewood behind my ribs.
I am so screwed.
“Almost done.” He slots the pipe into a fitting with practiced ease, hands steady, sure, like he was born with a wrench in one fist and the wilderness in the other.
“Try the pump switch.”
The graze of his fingers from a moment ago is still sizzling on my skin like a phantom touch, but I force my feet to move. I head for the shed, doing everything in my power not to let the whole damn scene scramble my neurons.
My boots crunch over pine needles. The air tastes like wet bark and oncoming rain. When I flip the switch, the pump kicks on with a hum and a satisfying gurgle of water rushing through the pipes—like the mountain itself just exhaled.
“No leaks.” I call out, already smiling.
He grunts. That’s it. One syllable. No celebration. Meanwhile, I’m three stanzas deep into an internal poem about the way his biceps flexed when he twisted the coupling.
Caleb rises from the trench in one fluid motion. His jeans are soaked, molding to his thighs like second skin—tree-trunk thick, muscular, carved by function, not vanity. There’s a smear of dirt across one sharp cheekbone, and the whole damn image is so rugged and feral it short-circuits something vital in my brain.
“You’re good at that,” I say, gesturing at the fixed pipe like it’s a masterpiece and not just, you know, functioning plumbing. “Very… capable.”
Brilliant. Because what better compliment than “capable” when your ovaries are doing a synchronized floor routine.
