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As if he can read my thoughts and finds them deeply offensive, he snarls louder. “I’m also the man responsible for the predicament you’re in, Beauty.”
Perhaps now isn’t the time to poke The Beast, but I can’t help myself.
I raise another brow at him. “Are you?”
He flinches slightly, as if I’ve struck a nerve, and the mystery of the strange things he’s said since I’ve come up here deepens. Someone else is pulling the strings, but he won’t break free of them.
Why?
As much as I like to watch the massive, strong man squirm, if I question him, he’ll only retreat farther, and my fingers itch to touch his thick, lush, shimmering hair, to run over his hard, lean muscle, to know what it feels like to have his mouth on me.
I must be suffering from some sort of Stockholm syndrome.
It’s the only explanation that makes sense because my attraction to this man has only grown every day since I’ve been here when the opposite should be happening.
After all he’s told me, everything I’ve seen, I should stay locked away in my room or the library until Dad resolves his dispute with the Barkers and then race home as fast as my car will take me.
Still, I swim closer, hoping he’ll let me advance this time, that he might consider that what I’m feeling, what we’re feeling, could be real.
In one swift move, Weston shifts back and circles away from me, using his powerful arms to stroke through the water toward the shore, where our clothes lie in a pile on the beach. “I’m not playing this game, Callista. Not now, not ever.” He pauses when he gets halfway out of the water, rivulets running down his chest and over his abs to disappear into the lake, lapping around his waist. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
He turns away and steps from the lake, keeping his back to me, but not before I catch a glimpse of his rock-hard cock jutting out from between his legs.
Shit.
That man may claim this is a bad idea, that what I’m experiencing isn’t real, but he feels it as much as I do. This strange attraction—the pull, the draw, the need. It is real. For both of us.
His muscled legs and hard ass ripple as he bends to pick up his clothes and boots, then stalks toward the forest without bothering to put them back on. He pauses at the base of the path. “Be careful on your way back to the house. Like I said, there are things more dangerous than me in these woods.”
Holy hell.
That seems unlikely, given what I just saw.
My cheeks warm, I plug my nose and dip under the water, letting it wash over me and cool my heated face—and the rest of my body that seems to be on fire now. But when I come back up gasping for air, I don’t feel any better.
If anything, I’m only more confused than I was when I came down here after him.
He doesn’t want me here but says I can’t leave. He avoids me like he hates me, but when we’re in a room together, I’m drawn to him like a moth to a flame.
Everything about this is wrong, but his heated gaze on me felt so right.
Weston Barker is hiding something, and he’s hiding from me.
But he can’t hide forever, not when we’re trapped on this mountain together.
Chapter Eight
CALLISTA
An owl hoots outside the window, the sound haunting in the still of the otherwise silent night. Ominous and very fitting for my mood in this house, on this mountain, where I sleep—or don’t, more accurately.
I’d love to blame my inability to drift off on that noise from the unexpected visitor perched on the branch. It’s loud enough that it would keep most people awake. Not me, though. Typically, I can sleep through almost anything.
Not tonight, though.
The ache between my legs has been constant since my dip in the lake this afternoon, a reminder of the way that man can twist me up and leave me wanting in only a matter of a few moments, without ever touching me.
I toss and turn in the comfort of the big, king-sized bed on luxurious sheets fit for a king, trying to make it ease, unable to stop thinking about my conversation—or confrontation?—with Weston.
