Page 127 of Wish You Were Mine

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SUMMER

Something wasn’t right. Forcing the last vestiges of sleep from my mind, I pushed myself upright and blinked until my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting in the cabin.

“What’s wrong?” I asked Asher, who sat at the table, his shoulders rigid.

The scent of cooking pumpkin filled the room. He must have started heating the soup.

“Everything is fine,” he replied a little too quickly. “I’m just watching the snow.”

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Has it slowed at all?”

“A little.”

I got up and padded across the wooden floor to stand in front of the fireplace. “At least with the weather like this, we can be reasonably sure that no one will try to get out here.”

“Yeah.” But he frowned.

Okay, something was definitely wrong.

“Seriously, what’s the matter?” I asked, holding my hands to the heat to warm them.

He shook his head, but almost didn’t seem aware of doing it. “It’s just been a hell of a day.”

My heart ached for him. First, his niece had vanished—possibly because someone had a vendetta against either him or Frannie-—and now we were stuck here. No wonder he didn’t feel well. I only felt semi-decent because I’d had a nap. If he’d been stressed, he might not have slept at all.

I knelt and checked the fire, then added another piece of wood. Hopefully the snow would stop by morning. It must be late afternoon now, and I doubted we had any chance of getting home. We had enough wood in the cabin to see us through the night, but tomorrow, we’d have to venture out and collect more.

Asher stood and walked over to check the soup. He grabbed a spoon from the counter, dunked it into the pot, and licked soup from the back of it.

“Good enough,” he said. I got out of the way, and he carried the pot to the counter and divided it between two bowls. “There’s no bread to go with it.”

“That’s fine.” I hadn’t expected there to be. Whoever had brought food to the cabin had focused on non-perishables. Without a freezer, most bread wouldn’t last for a week, let alone longer.

We ate together at the table. Neither of us said much. I was warm all the way through thanks to the fire, but the food was nonetheless soothing. There was nothing like sitting inside with a bowl of soup or a hot drink on a cold day. If not for the fact we were stranded here, inside a kidnapper’s hideaway, I might even be enjoying myself.

When we finished, we used a little of the stored water to rinse off the plates but didn’t wash them properly. It was best to conserve the water in case we needed to drink it.

Determined to take Asher’s mind off Marcy and his family, I held his hand and led him to the bed. “Hold me?”

He smiled tenderly. “I’d love to.”

We snuggled beneath the blankets. After a while, the warmth from the fire became too much, and I stripped off my shirt and pants. Asher did the same, and I noticed with a smirk that his eyes kept traveling to the exposed parts of my legs and torso.

I slid one of my calves between his, relishing the rasp of his hair against my smooth, sensitive skin. His breath caught, and when I tilted my head to look at him, his pupils had almost swallowed his irises.

Something hard pressed against my thigh, and my eyes widened. “You…”

He grimaced. “Not the time for it, I know, but you’re so damn sexy.”

I pursed my lips. “Why isn’t it a good time? We’re stuck here. Connor has already said that no one is coming until the weather clears. It’s not like there’s anything else to do.”

“What if someone is out there?” he asked, his eyes flicking toward the window.

“Whoever has been here is hunkered down, staying safe and dry. I doubt they’ll go anywhere until the weather clears.”

One side of his mouth began to hitch up. “I don’t have a condom.”

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