Page 47 of Possessed By the Mountain Man
“You two are breaking my heart,” she teases. “Dance with me, Aspen.”
Aspen shrugs, letting go of my hand long enough to hook an arm through Winter’s. “One dance. Just one.”
I watch them go and the tightness in my ribs goes primeval. People we know line the edges of the floor—Perry and Ruby flirting with a T-rex couple; Fox and Cal in an argument over whether zombie or vampire is more accurate for 80s nostalgia.
I try not to care about the way Aspen moves. Not really. Her skirt sways and sparks small fires under my skin. She catches my eye mid-spin and mouths something likestay, and I swear I almost left then and there. But I stay.
The song slows and the DJ chants for “slow dances.” Aspen’s partner slips away, and in the crowd someone hands her a drink—some idiot with a bad smile. I don’t think. My hand clamps around his wrist like a vice; he flinches.
“Not tonight,” I say.
He tries some joke about small-town charm and I answer with the kind of silence that eats men’s guts. He stumbles away as Aspen’s mouth quirks; she looks at me like I’m the problem and the solution at once. The heat between us isn’t just what our bodies do to each other; it’s what we do to everyone else. It’s a liability and a promise and this bar is full of people who don’t understand boundaries until I make them.
“Thorne,” Aspen murmurs, voice low and amused. “You’re ferocious.”
“Only when I need to be,” I say.
We leave the floor, drift into the part of the Brew that’s quieter—a corner near the fireplace where the shadows stretch long. I pull her close enough that the heat from my chest ghosts along her back. She presses into me voluntarily, and the world narrows to the scrape of our bodies and the hum in my ear.
“You look ridiculous,” she says against my throat. Her breath is sweet with cider.
“Ridiculous is the new black,” I answer, but my fingers are already at the tiny buckle of her corset, thumbs drawing the leather over the lace like a ritual. I don’t undress her; I don’t need to. This is not the slow undressing of lovers. This is the quick reveal of a hunter who knows his terrain.
“Don’t start,” she warns, but her voice is thin and fragile the way it is when she’s dangerous and tired. I love that version of her. It’s honest.
“Start what?” I ask, and I don’t even try to make my voice lighter.
She looks at me, eyes fusing shadow and fire. “Thorne—don’t be an idiot.”
“Been that all my life.”
She laughs, short and incredulous. “And somehow I still show up.”
“You shouldn’t feel like you have to prove anything to me,” I say, not a question.
She shifts in my arms, hips brushing the seam of my jeans like a minor war. “You think I do?” She bites her lower lip, the little motion that makes me forget to breathe.
“Maybe I’m selfish,” I admit. “Maybe I need to know that no one can just walk in and make you laugh like that.”
She stares at me, the way I stare when I’m trying to decode her. “Everyone makes me laugh,” she says. “Not everyone makes me want to move in with a man who hoards wood for no reason.”
I plant my hand at the small of her back, fingers splaying like I’m claiming the space where her spine meets muscle. “Then stop making it easy for them.”
Her eyes darken. “So possessive.”
I lean my forehead to hers. “Possession is a warm thing.”
She squeezes my hand, teasing, brand-new mischief in her face. “You say that like it’s a compliment.”
“It is.”
A slow heat coils through my gut at the thought of all the men who tried to take what’s mine. She’s not property. She’s a person. A wild thing. A hurricane that wears lipstick and tells me to stop being dramatic.
“You’re also spectacularly infuriating,” I tell her, and it’s true and I mean it and it’s also a declaration.
She snorts, then her expression folds under something tender. “You know I don’t do easy, right?”
“Good,” I rasp. “Me neither.”
