Page 18 of Mountain Men on Ice

Then we fall silent, letting the warmth of being wrapped together lull us into sleep.

SIX

GRADY

The storm breaks sometime overnight.

I should be relieved. I’m not.

Because in here, with her, the world shrank to something better. Easier.

But it’s also something that can’t last forever.

She’s in the kitchen now, humming another song under her breath. Her hair is in another messy braid that still manages to look like something from a dream I didn’t know I had. She’s slicing tomatoes, lips pursed making me want to nibble on them again.

I watch from the doorway longer than is polite. My chest tightens. I’ve been hit in the ribs enough to know what it feels like when something cracks. This is worse.

I’m falling in love with the one woman I shouldn’t.

I tell myself not to touch her. I don’t listen.

I cross the kitchen, slide my hands around her waist, and bury my mouth against the slope of her neck. She squeaks, knife clattering, then melts back into me with a laugh.

“Hungry?” she teases.

“Starving,” I murmur, teeth grazing her shoulder. “Not for lunch.”

She’s warm and soft under my palms, the world narrowing again to this kitchen, this girl, this fire under my skin. I spin her gently, lift her onto the counter, and step between her knees. Her hands go to my jaw. Mine slide lower, finding her curves.

“You’re insatiable,” she says, but her smile urges me on.

“You love it,” I say, and I kiss her until she stops laughing.

It’s heat and want and more than that—too much more. Her humming caught between our mouths, my knee forgotten for once, her thighs tightening around my hips like I’m something worth holding.

And then her phone rings.

We both freeze. The sound is loud, cruel, pulling us out of the bubble and back into a world where consequences live.

She pulls back, breathless. “It’s—” she glances at the screen “—Thatcher.”

Cold water dumps over my head.

I step back and she slides off the counter fast, smoothing her shirt, tugging her braid. I attempt to school my face, trying not to look like a man who was just about to sin against every friendship he’s ever valued.

“Hey, big brother,” she answers, voice too bright.

I lean against the fridge, jaw locked. Her laugh is nervous. She paces, talking about the storm, the generator, the woodpile. I don’t hear all of it because guilt is loud, drowning everything else.

Then I catch it—her laugh falters when he must ask something about her.

She says, “What do you mean? You know my tattoo is music notes”

And because I’m an idiot, because my brain is scrambled eggs when she’s in the room, I mutter, “It’s the opening notes to ‘Landslide.’”

She goes still and her eyes widen.

Oh. Fuck. Maybe I didn’t say that as quietly as I thought.