Page 28 of My Secret Santa Mason

The storm raged on as the sun set, and I dug in my pantry to find something for us to eat. I didn’t have much by way of fancy meals, but I had smoked meat, biscuits, and some fresh produce I’d gotten from the general store.

“Do you always eat like this?” Cami asked, chewing on a piece of venison, looking down at her crudely put-together plate.

We sat by the fire, the storm still raging outside, but inside, it was warm. Comfortable. Cami sat on the couch next to me, her legs curled up beneath her, a blanket draped over her shoulders. I’d brought it from the bedroom for her when it looked like she still couldn’t warm up. The blanket was fur, made from the hares I’d shot over the past couple of weeks.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not much by way of delicacies but it does the trick.”

“It’s better than I expected,” she said. “Don’t you get sick of always eating the same thing?”

“I don’t always eat the same thing. Every season brings different animals to hunt and different produce to buy. It changes year round.”

“Hmm.” We fell into a comfortable silence, the crackling of the fire the only sound between us.

“I used to love Christmas,” she said, chewing on a biscuit. “Back when I lived in Denver. My family would always get together. I’d decorate the house, plan these big parties… It was my thing, you know? Everyone left it to me because they knew how much I loved it, and I went all out every year.”

“You’re serious about it,” I said.

She blinked at me. “Well, yeah.”

“I didn’t mean it sarcastically,” I corrected quickly. “Just an observation.”

She nodded, her face softening again. “I really do love it. I loved it enough to make a business out of it. My company was one of the hardest things to leave behind, you know? I built it from the ground up, creating something out of nothing, and there’s a certain sentimentality that comes with that.”

The firelight flickered across her face as she spoke, and she was beautiful. Soulful eyes, kissable lips… But there was a sadness about her, a heaviness I hadn’t noticed before.

“Why’d you leave?” I asked. “If it meant that much to you…”

She sighed, staring into the fire. “The life I’d been dreaming of, the life I’d thought I had… It wasn’t what I thought it was. I was betrayed and it was like my whole life fell apart overnight.”

“I can relate to that.”

“Yeah?” She looked up at me with those eyes, and God, if I wasn’t careful, I could fall into them.

I nodded. “I know all about being betrayed by those you trust the most.”

“It hurts like a bitch,” she said flatly.

“You can say that again.”

I saw a different side of Cami now that we were alone, with the world unable to reach us. She wasn’t the feisty firecracker, ready for a fight at every turn the way I’d thought she was at first. She acted the way she did to protect herself. Pain could be disguised as something else.

A wounded animal could look like a ferocious monster when it tried to protect itself, and humans weren’t much different.

We just used words instead of actions, snapped instead of biting, argued and fought instead of growling and retreating. I knew what it was like to carry the kind of pain she did—feeling like the world had turned on you. I’d lived with that feeling for years.

“I came here to start over,” she said, looking into the fire. “I wanted to build something new after I’d lost everything, and I figured I might as well do it here as anywhere.” She looked at me again.

“I get that,” I said.

She smiled and stretched, and I was very aware of her breasts, the way her back arched, pushing her delicate frame toward me. My cock punched up in my pants.

Behave, I scolded myself. I hadn’t brought her to my cabin to sleep with her.

But fuck, I wanted to.

“Enough of my whining and complaining.” She said it lightly, trying to make what she’d told me off as nothing-much. “Tell me about you. Why are you out here? How does someone end up in the mountains all alone?”

I hesitated. I wasn’t used to talking about myself. Hell, I wasn’t used to talking much at all. The most conversation I had was with Tanner and even then we were mostly quiet together.

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