Page 24 of Possessed By the Mountain Man
“That’s enough for tonight,” he says, voice suddenly gruff again. Controlled. “You’re tired. You’re worked up. You make bad decisions when you’re both.”
“Excuse me?” I push off the wall, stalking toward him. “I make great decisions.”
He lifts a brow. “Prove it. Go to bed. Alone.”
My mouth opens. Closes. Rage flares. Flames of humiliation lick up my spine.
He walks to the stairs like he didn’t just carve me open with restraint. “Lock up. No more candy theft. No climbing shit. Goodnight.”
“Thorne,” I snap.
He pauses at the base of the stairs, looks back.
“That little move?” I gesture wildly between us. “That was weak.”
He smiles then. Slow and lethal.
He stalks back down two steps with deliberate slowness. “Weak?”
“Pathetic power play.”
He stops in front of me again, so close I feel his heat. His hand comes up, slow and deliberate, and he brushes the pad of his thumb over my lower lip—smearing it, marking me. “Weak is letting you think you’re in control.”
Oh. Oh, hell.
He steps back once more, eyes glittering. “Don’t wipe it off,” he says, voice like a promise and a threat rolled into one. “I want to see it at breakfast.”
He leaves me there, heart wrecked, lipstick smeared, breath gone.
I don’t follow.
But I watch him go.
And I know—deep in the bones of me—that whatever this is, it’s not over.
It’s only beginning.
Tomorrow, I’ll hang more decor.
Tomorrow, I’ll break another rule.
And tomorrow, when Thorne Maddox comes for me again?
I won’t stop him.
Not anymore.
Chapter 6
Thorne
Snow falls quietly over Devil’s Peak, turning everything white and still.
Everything except Aspen—who currently stands on my goddamn coffee table stringing orange tinsel across the antlers mounted above my fireplace like she’s decorating for a satanic cheer competition.
“Take that crap down,” I growl from the doorway.
She doesn’t turn.
