Page 48 of Possessed By the Mountain Man
She turns her head, and I catch the arc of her jaw, the line down her neck. I can smell the flowers in her hair—crisp, like autumn. My hand slides up, under the hem of her dress, fingers finding the warmth of her thigh. It’s a small, deliberate movement meant to say more than my mouth ever can without sounding like an apology I’m not ready to give.
Her breath clips. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t tell me to stop. She leans into the motion like someone leaning into a promise.
I press closer, not enough to break the rules we wrote for ourselves, but close enough that I can see the pulse in her throat, bright and dangerous.
“Why haven’t you touched me yet?” she asks, and the words are raw and brittle with truth.
The question hits me like a slap. Not because I don’t want her—God, I want her—but because the thing lodged under my ribs is delicate as bone. I built walls with wood and silence. Touching her has always felt like breaking something I’m not ready to fix.
“Because I’m careful with the things I don’t want to lose,” I say, the answer thin with confession.
“That’s not a good reason.”
“No.” I swallow. “It’s a coward’s one.”
She laughs, short and almost unbelieving. “You’re terrible.”
“Yeah,” I rasp. “I am.”
Her fingers curl into my flannel at my chest, anchoring us both. “Then touch me,” she orders, and the word is the sweetest kind of dare.
I don’t move with the skillful patience she expects. I move with the ugly, dangerous honesty I should have learned how to have sooner. My hand slides higher, under lace and leather, coaxing the heat of her skin to the surface. I stop, thumb hovering at the edge, where private heat begins. I don’t cross.Not in front of people. Not like this. But I let my fingers rest there, the softest of claims.
“You piss me off,” she whispers in my ear, voice small and big and everything in between. “And also—everything else.”
“You make me want to annihilate anyone who looks at you wrong,” I confess, and the words sound like a threat and a vow.
She breathes out a laugh that sounds like surrender. “That’s poetic in a problematic way.”
I bend my head, my mouth almost to her ear. I whisper something filthy and private—something that makes her shiver and laugh and suck in a breath that promises a war. “You’re mine, Aspen,” I say, low and unrepentant. “All of you. Don’t make me prove it.”
She closes her eyes like she’s tasting it, like it’s the sweetest poison. For a stolen second, everything is slow and hot and we are the only two people who exist in this room of music and fog and false courage.
Then a clumsy hand slaps a shoulder near us—Perry, blissfully oblivious—and everyone’s attention flickers. The world tilts back. Social obligation tugs at the corners of the moment and something in me snaps like a twig underfoot.
I pull back, fingers trailing down her thigh in a final, possessive stroke. My eyes pin her with something fierce.
“Come with me,” I say, but I don’t mean to the corner behind the bar or the back alley. I mean home.
She searches my face like she’s trying to read the truth from the map of it. “What if I tell you I like it here?” she asks, half-mocking, half-pleading.
I smirk, but it’s all teeth, no softness. “Don’t tempt me, witch.”
Before she can answer, I turn and push through the crowd, the warm press of bodies and music swallowing me. I can feel her eyes on my back. I can feel the electricity in the air like a livewire. I step into the cool night and the wind slaps the skin on my neck raw.
I don’t look back until I reach my truck. When I do, she’s at the door with Winter and Zane, hair messy, a laugh breaking the dark like a little bell.
I pull my beanie down, climb in, and start the engine. Watching men smile at my girl would be murder and I’m not in the habit of becoming a killer for the best reasons and the worst.
I wipe my fingers on my jeans, smirk stuck to my face like a bruise, and think, not for the first time, of how many men would need to be taught a lesson before she could live in peace.
If that’s what it takes, then consider the town warned.
But I don’t want war. Not really. I want her.
And I’ll make sure every man in Devil’s Peak knows exactly what he’s up against.
A moment later she’s climbing into the cab of my truck. The ride back to my place is silent, heat pulsing in the air as we travel the few miles home. I pull into the circle driveway and park, moving around the front of the truck to open her door. I help her down without words, my hand resting at her back as we climb the steps of the lodge. Once we enter, I kick off my boots and turn to take her in.
