Page 101 of Mountain Boss

“Go to bed,” I tell myself.

I go through the motions.

Stripping out of my clothes, cleaning myself up, pulling on pajamas.

I brush my teeth and undo my braids, my usual style feeling too tight against my scalp on my overstimulated body.

While I wash my face, I inspect my cheeks.

They feel a tiny bit sore from the hold Sterling kept over my mouth, but I don’t see any marks. Not yet.

I squeeze my thighs together as I remember the feel of his strong hand holding my sounds in.

I’m not inexperienced. Not a virgin. But I’m notexperiencedeither.

My history has been fairly… vanilla.

What happened tonight wasnotvanilla.

It was… rainbow sherbert. Or whatever the opposite of plain is.

And if my inkling is correct, it was only the tip of the iceberg of what Sterling has to offer.

Thinking of all these cold things while standing in a loose T-shirt makes me notice the nip in the air inside my cabin. But I still feel flushed from myencounter,so I decide to wait another day before turning the heat on.

Turning the light off in the bathroom, I step into my bedroom.

I stop in front of the bunk.

I didn’t know the mattress was missing. It was supposed to be in there.

I never would’ve made you sleep like that. Not ever.

I reach out and touch the mattress. The new one that was delivered days after Sterling apparently found out I was sleeping on a board.

There are still so many questions.

Like how he found out I didn’t have a mattress in the first place.

Clearly, he was in here. There’s no other way for him to have found out.

Unless someone else was in here and told him…

I shake away that thought immediately.

We might not have been on speaking terms back then.Not that we’ve really spent any time speaking since then either.But hindsight lets me recognize Sterling’s possessive behavior even back then. He may have still wanted me gone, but I don’t think he’d let one of the other guys in my place.

So he comes in here to… snoop. Sees the missing mattress. Replaces it with one from some other cabin. And then… decides to buy new mattresses for the whole damn Lodge?

Heaving out a breath, I climb up the step stool and crawl across my new mystery mattress.

If I ever have a full conversation with the man who just worked my body over like a pro, I’ll ask him.

But for now—I tug the blankets up to my chin and curl onto my side—I’ll let the answers be as much of a mystery as the man himself.

Chapter 81

Sterling

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