Page 3 of Forbidden Passions

I stepped over the threshold, Max at my heels, into the warmth of the cabin.

And just like that, I was trapped with a stranger who looked like he could snap a tree in half with his bare hands, miles from civilization, during one of the worst storms I had ever seen.

Some vacation this was turning out to be.

CHAPTER TWO

Gabriel

Peace and fucking quiet.

That’s all I had wanted when I bought this cabin in the middle of nowhere. No noise, no bullshit. Just me, the mountain, and enough distance from humanity that I could finally breathe again.

I’d come to Lone Mountain to get away from people.

Away from the pitying looks and well-meaning questions no civilian could understand. Away from a world that expected me to just slot back into normal life as if the past hadn’t changed me forever.

Yet somehow, I had a woman dripping on my floor and a dog shaking water all over my cabin. So much for solitude.

I should’ve left the dog outside. Should’ve ignored the pounding on the door. Should’ve turned away from that face—mud-streaked, stubborn, way too pretty—and slammed the door.

But I didn’t.

Because the truth was, I might be half-feral and three-quarters broken, but I wasn’t heartless. Not yet.

The dog—Max, she’d called him—had shown up on my porch earlier today, wet and looking like he’d run through half the forest. I’d let him in because, well, I wasn’t a completemonster. A dog wasn’t a person. Dogs didn’t want anything from you except food and maybe a warm place to sleep.

His owner, on the other hand...

I watched her as she knelt to fuss over the mutt, her soaked clothes forming a puddle around her boots. She was small—the top of her head would barely reach my shoulder—but there was nothing delicate about her. From the moment she’d pounded on my door, everything about her had radiated a stubborn energy that set my teeth on edge.

And something else. Something I didn’t want to acknowledge.

Even soaking wet and bedraggled, she was the most alive-looking woman I’d ever seen. Curves in all the right places that her raincoat did nothing to hide. When she’d first looked up at me with those big amber eyes, something had kicked hard in my chest—a feeling I thought I’d left behind in another life. Before I’d come home with scars both visible and hidden way down deep inside, that had made me a stranger in my own skin. Better to keep her at a distance than risk letting anyone close enough to see the damage.

“You’re getting water everywhere,” I muttered. Not because I cared about the mess—but because it was safer than admitting how watching her touched a nerve I thought I’d severed a long time ago.

I didn’t like people in my space. Too many variables. Too many reminders. Too much temptation to pretend I was someone I wasn’t anymore.

She looked up. Fuck.

Even drenched and scowling, she was a gut punch. Full mouth. Wild curls clinging to her cheeks. A spark in her eyes that said she wasn’t afraid of me—even when she probably should be.

Full lips that even pale from the chill looked soft and entirely too kissable. Even drenched and exhausted, there wassomething striking about her. Wild. Untamed. Her eyes were the color of whiskey and currently narrowed at me with a mix of gratitude and irritation.

My body tightened. I’d been alone too long. That’s all this was. Three years of isolation, and suddenly there’s an attractive woman in my cabin. Basic biology. Nothing more.

It wasn’t like I missed people. I missed silence I didn’t have to fight for. Nights without the echoes. Days without memories creeping out of the shadows. Hours where I didn’t have to pretend that I was fine when I wasn’t. Where I could just exist with my scars without having to explain them.

“Sorry about that,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’ll clean it up. Do you have a towel I could use for Max?”

I grunted and pulled a ratty old towel from the hook by the front door. It smelled like cedar and the faint hint of firewood—everything in this cabin did. Everything except her.

When I turned back around, she was unzipping her jacket, revealing a shirt plastered to her curves. My jaw clenched. I shoved the towel at her without a word. I realized I’d been alone too long. I’d forgotten what hunger felt like when it wasn’t for food or sleep or peace.

“So, Gabriel,” she added, like we were chatting over coffee and not trapped in a storm. “Do you always live like a mountain-dwelling hermit, or is this just a rainy day thing?”

I stiffened. “I like my privacy.” The words were only partly true. Privacy was part of it. The rest was the space to heal without an audience. The freedom to have bad days without explanation or apology. The choice to step away from a world that now felt too loud, too fast, too much.

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