Page 27 of Shadow of Misty Mountain

His mouth crashes down on mine, hungry and hot, like he’s starving, and I’m the only thing that can fill that need. The kiss isn’t gentle. It’s fire and frustration, command and surrender all wrapped into one devastating moment that blurs the lines we’ve both been dancing around for days.

I press myself against him, hands clutching his shirt, fingers tangled in flannel and muscle. My legs nearly buckle, but he’s there, solid and immovable, holding me upright with nothing but strength and need.

When he pulls away, we’re both breathing hard. His forehead presses to mine.

“This is why I didn’t stay,” he growls. “Because I knew the second I touched you like this, I wouldn’t stop.”

My voice is barely a whisper as I pull his head back down to mine. “Then don’t.”

He lets out a harsh sound—frustrated, hungry—and lifts me effortlessly, carrying me to the bed. His mouth finds mine again before we hit the mattress, his hands already tugging my sweater up, warm palms skating over bare skin.

The rest comes off in pieces. All of my clothes stripped away as he kisses me to the point I may not be able to breathe. I shove his flannel shirt off his shoulders and then pull his thermal Henley over his head. His mouth traces fire along my jaw and down my throat, across my collarbone, kissing a line between my breasts as he cups them possessively with his hand and his lips whisper kisses across my belly.

I gasp his name when his fingers slide between my thighs and find the place I’m already aching for him. He’s in complete control—commanding, sure, dominant in the way he touches, takes, gives—but he listens to every sound I make, every whisper of my body under his hands.

We break apart only long enough for him to look at me, breathing hard, eyes blazing.

“This changes everything,” he says.

“I know.”

This isn’t just attraction. This isn’t just escape. This is the kind of kiss that shifts tectonic plates. That changes the battlefield. He lowers his head again, and I let go of everything but him.

Travis slips his hand behind my head, tilting my mouth to exactly where he wants it as his tongue slides between my lips. My brain says to bite him, but my lips decide that sucking at his tongue would be a lot more fun.

I moan slightly at his touch, the heat spreading through me like wildfire. As our kiss deepens, I burrow myself closer, wanting to feel the heat of his skin against mine once more before it was too late.

Travis breaks the kiss and stands, his breath ragged. “I don’t do soft, and I don’t do easy.”

Rolling up onto my knees, I wrap my arms around his neck. “No one’s asking you to. I can handle you, Shadow.”

“You can’t just say no, can you?” he says, his eyes hooded and filled with a hunger I know all too well.

“Not a chance, big guy,” I say with a smile.

Unable to find the words that can express the need coursing through me. I lie back down, pulling him with me. This may be our one and only chance, and I refuse to let it pass by.

8

TRAVIS

She raises her eyes to meet mine, dark and smoldering with hunger, and a slow, knowing grin spreads across my face—a grin sharpened by desire. No words pass my lips as I gently but firmly press her onto the soft expanse of the mattress, positioning myself deliberately between her thighs as if drawn by a gravitational pull to a familiar destination.

I explore her torso with tender, deliberate kisses, each caress imbued with the slow, sensual precision of a practiced symphony. It feels as if our shared history has rehearsed this moment a thousand times—every curve and every sigh echoing a memory. Her chest rises and falls under my touch; her nipples, taut and pleading, glow under the intensity of my attention. I claim one with a hard, insistent suck, and as she moans out my name, I feel the reverberation of her response echoing deep within me.

Gripping her hips tightly, I draw her even closer. My fingertips trace slow, teasing patterns along the contours of her sides, eliciting that delicate, shaky breath that speaks volumes. Her back arches in surrender, a silent invitation proving that no woman has ever made me feel so uncontrollably alive—so willingly exposed in her exquisite desire, yearning almostas fervently as I do. My deep, possessive kiss tells her, unmistakably, that she is irrevocably mine, as if that truth had been etched into her soul from the start.

I let my mouth wander lower, trailing warm, enlivening kisses across her belly, my tongue playfully dipping into the soft hollow of her navel. In response, her hips instinctively roll upwards, meeting my advances with an unspoken demand for more. Her whispered utterance of my name, quiet yet desperate, shatters any remaining restraint within me; resonating like a spell that leaves me weak at the knees.

Sliding two eager fingers inside her, I am struck by how impossibly wet she is—a tangible testament to her longing. She lets out a cry of surrender; her back curving in rhythmic invitation, and I continue without hesitation. My mouth finds her most delicate spot; I alternate between slow, tantalizing licks and quicker, exciting strokes that send waves of pleasure through her, each motion an intricate dance of arousal.

Beyond the sanctuary of this room, a relentless snowstorm rages, but here it transforms into another world entirely—a world defined by the symphony of our intimacy. It’s just us: my fingers, my mouth, and the beautiful collapse of her resolve upon my tongue. She seizes my hair in a grip both desperate and passionate, riding me with a fervor that blurs the line between control and surrender, her body grinding against my face as if to erase all inhibitions.

Even when she pushes at my head—too close, too tender, too fiercely sensitive—I hold fast, my arms tightening around her inner thighs as if to claim every fleeting second. I remain unswerving, driven by her silent plea for more, her unspoken demand for the complete fullness of me.

Abby’s whispered pleas echo around us, her voice breaking with raw emotion as she begs for the continuation of our dance. In that instant, a thunderous clap—an awe-inspiringthundersnow—seems to bless our passion. I remain unfazed, entirely consumed by the delicious taste of her, the intoxicating yearning that has haunted me during even this brief absence.

Her thighs tremble against my shoulders as I feel the rising tide of her climax, her moans growing louder, raw and unfiltered. Her fingers find their way to her own skin, pinching at her nipples with a fervor that borders on self-punishment—a scene so vivid it ignites a fire within me I can scarcely admit.

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