Page 137 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

She got up and looked outside. There was rose-colored light spilling over the top of the mountains and it was going to be a gloriously warm summer day. The kind of day she would normally go and have a hike on.

He had her backpack.

Maybe she should go and get it.

Or maybe you should listen when the scary man makes it clear that he’s scary, and stay away.

Little Red.

It was funny he should call her that since she’d seen him and thought of a wolf all those years ago.

Funny, but more in the sense that it was unsettling than it being a joke.

She found herself putting on her shorts, her T-shirt and her hiking boots, and found herself getting into her car and driving the fifteen minutes back to the trailhead.

By the time she got there it was about six-thirty in the morning, and surely he wouldn’t be up and about then.

You want to see him.

Why?

She argued with herself all the way up the trail, and she found herself standing on the edge of the woods again, staring inside, and now the tragedy was she knew what she’d find there.

And so she couldn’t claim to be uncertain about why she felt drawn into the forest.

It was him.

Or my backpack.

But she couldn’t shake off the erotic dream.

Or the fact that she was just so desperately bored. And that seeing him—and dreaming about him after—was the most exciting thing she’d ever experienced.

So she kept on walking.

And when she got into the trees, she saw movement, and froze. And just then, she saw him. Striding up the path across from her, toward the little cabin.

He was naked.

His hair was wet, and she couldn’t see...the details of him because he was turned to the side and moving at a good clip, but she could see enough.

He was muscular, with ink on his skin. He looked like the kind of dangerous man she’d always wanted. The kind who would never want her.

He looked rough. He looked brutal. Would he be?

Her brain got all tripped up with thoughts like that, because she shouldn’t want it. But she did. And always had. Did she have to start slow when she knew she wanted it all?

Her heart was pounding so hard she thought she might faint. She held absolutely still because surely he wouldn’t see her if she did.

But then he stopped. And looked through the trees, and she knew the exact moment he saw her.

Because he smiled.

Slow and dangerous.

Showing his teeth.

The better to eat you with.

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