Page 11 of Mountain Storm
Phone. Dead. My fingers hover over the broken screen like maybe I can will it back to life, like maybe this is still salvageable. But it isn't. I'm cut off. Alone. And the man behind me knows it. The heat of his stare burns into the back of my neck, and the silence stretches so long it starts to feel like a cage slamming shut.
"I could've smashed it all," he says casually.
"But you didn't."
"Didn't have to. You managed to do that yourself. Looks like you're stuck, sweet thing."
I meet his gaze, fire flickering between us.
"You're wrong," I whisper, summoning every ounce of defiance I can scrape together. It sounds thin even to my own ears, a brittle protest hurled into the storm of his certainty. ButI cling to it like armor, like the last scrap of control I have in a place that keeps stripping it away.
"We'll see."
The storm howls louder, and suddenly I'm no longer sure which force is more dangerous—the ruthless cold outside, or the man inside this cabin watching me like I already belong to him. His stare sears over my skin, burning hot in all the places it lingers, sending a low, pulsing ache through my belly and up my spine.
I should be afraid. Maybe I am. But what truly rattles me is the heat that coils low, spreading with each second his eyes stay on me—a dark, forbidden craving I can't explain or control. Part of me, some feral, unspoken instinct, whispers that I already belong to him. That I've been his from the moment he dragged me out of the snow.
His stare brands me, searing into places I don't want to admit are aching for more. Fear shudders through me, but it's tangled with something deeper—an erotic pull I don't understand, and worse, don't want to resist. It's madness. It's instinct. It's something raw and real and terrifyingly seductive.
4
ZEB
She's mine now. Lying in my bed, wrapped in my furs, tucked away in my mountain cabin like a secret too dangerous to speak aloud. Every rational part of me screams that it's wrong, that I crossed a line I can't uncross. And yet—the darker instincts I've spent years choking down rise up in triumph, whispering that this is right. That she belongs here. With me. Under me. Marked by me. Claimed.
I pace the far side of the room, too wired to sit, my muscles coiled so tight I feel like I might snap in half. Each step echoes like a warning bell, my boots grinding against the floorboards as if the sound alone could drown out the storm inside my skull. I tell myself I'm walking to stay calm, to think. But the truth is darker. If I stop, if I let myself pause for even a second, I'll turn toward the bed—and I won't be able to stop myself. I'll go to her. I'll touch her. I'll take her. And not gently.
Because the urge clawing at me isn't some noble instinct to protect or nurture. It's hunger. Rage. Obsession. It's the part of me that doesn't belong in polite society. The side forged in blood and frost and silence. The one I buried so deep I thought it had finally died. But now it's alive again. She brought it back to life.And if I don't keep moving, if I don't pace this room like a beast in a cage—I'll unleash it.
And there will be no putting it back. I'm too close to losing control to do anything but keep moving. The urge to turn around, to go to her, is a living thing inside me—sharp, gnawing, relentless. The rhythm of my boots scuffing across the plank floor is the only thing keeping me tethered. If I stop, I'll look at her. And if I look at her too long, I'll touch. And once I touch—I won't stop.
My hands ache with the memory of pulling her out of the snow, of stripping her bare and wrapping her in warmth that had no business feeling as intimate as it did. I tell myself it was necessity. But it felt like something darker. Something I've kept buried under years of solitude and ice.
I'm not a man who believes in fate. But this feels too precise to be an accident. Like the mountain itself brought her back to test the last shreds of my restraint. And I'm failing. The storm is still howling outside, battering the trees like a pack of wolves trying to get in. But it's the quiet in here that rattles me more—the sound of her breathing, slow and shallow under the weight of sleep.
She's here.
Caryn fucking Stevens.
Of all the people to come back into my world, of all the goddamn names to echo through Hollow Ridge, it had to be hers. And not as a whisper or a memory this time—but flesh and blood, curled in my bed like a temptation I never asked for but always knew I wouldn't resist.
I told myself it was the storm. That I dragged her out of the snow to keep her alive. That stripping her out of those wet clothes was survival, not sin. But even now, with her safe and warm, I'm still watching her like a starving animal waiting for the chance to feed.
She's older now. Sharper around the edges—but still, it's her. The girl from all those years ago, hidden under a snapped pine limb, frostbitten and barely breathing, bundled in a ridiculous red parka that swallowed her whole. I remember the way her eyes—wide, wet, too big for her face—locked on mine and didn't let go. Her tiny voice cracked on a whisper: 'Are you real?' That memory lives buried deep, like shrapnel lodged in muscle, impossible to dig out.
Now she's back, a woman molded by time, but unmistakable. She walks with a tension knotted just beneath her composure, speaks with a confidence she didn't have back then. There's bite in her words now—teeth she hadn't yet grown the first time. But her chin still lifts in that same stubborn defiance. Her eyes still spark like flint in the dark. Time didn't erase her. It sharpened her. Hardened her. And somehow, made her more dangerous and compelling than ever before.
I watched her the moment she stumbled into the storm's teeth. Watched as she defied the mountain, as if it hadn't almost killed her once already. Even when I dragged her back here, half-frozen and slipping toward unconsciousness, she stared at me like she couldn't decide whether I was her salvation—or her doom.
Back then, she clung to me with fragile, frostbitten fingers like I was the only solid thing left in a world turned to ice. Now there's steel beneath her skin—but the softness lingers in ways that drive me mad. In the delicate slope of her neck, the hesitant flutter of breath against her lips even in sleep, the soft crease between her brows when she dreams.
She's not fragile anymore. But she's not untouchable, either.
I should've walked away when I saw her silhouette between the trees. Should've turned my back like I did with everything and everyone else. But I didn't. Couldn't. Because that connection—that dark tether that wrapped around my soul thefirst time I saw her—never severed. It's still there, thrumming between us—taut and humming, like the charged silence before a lightning strike.
She was mine then, though I refused to believe it. She's mine now—and this time, I won't pretend otherwise.
She's mine because no one else ever could be. Because the mountain gave her back to me, and I'd be a fool to waste this second chance. Because some things, once claimed, never let go—no matter how far they run or how many years pass.
