Page 43 of Possessed By the Mountain Man
He pauses mid-reach. Looks over his shoulder at me. Then back to the fire.
Silence again. But not the cold kind. Something… warmer.
He sits across from me on the hearth. Close enough I could stretch out a foot and touch him if I wanted to. (I do not. Probably. Maybe.)
“Read,” he says.
I blink. “You—you want me to keep going?”
“Won’t be able to sleep anyway.”
“I have warm milk in the kitchen.”
“Do I look like I drink warm milk?”
“No,” I say. “You look like you chew nails.”
He nods. “True.”
I pick the book back up. Try not to let him see how his attention affects me—this man never asks for anything. Never invites anything. Yet he just did.
I read. His gaze stays on the fire, but I can feel him listening—no, studying. It sends a weird thrill across my skin. Someone should not be able to listen like that. It feels… intimate.
Dangerously so.
By the fourth story, I lower the book. “Tell me something, Thorne.”
“No.”
I smile. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“You were going to ask something I don’t want to talk about. That’s your brand.”
My eyebrows lift. He’s not wrong. “Okay, but let’s try something new. You pick the question.”
He scoffs. “That’s not how this works.”
“It could be.”
“No.”
“You’re scared.”
His eyes snap to mine. “Try again.”
“You hide behind deflection because talking about yourself is hard.”
“Better,” he says dryly. “Still no.”
I let the silence stretch until I know he feels it. Until it starts to bite.
Then I say, softly: “Where’d you go earlier?”
His mouth tightens. I brace for shutdown. But he surprises me.
“I hiked to the ridge,” he says. “Old habit.”
“Why?”
