Page 40 of Protector of Talon Mountain

Her eyes lift, and for a second, the air thickens. We sit like that—just watching each other, breathing in the same charged space. I should say more. I don’t. I just hold her stare and let the weight between us settle.

After a while, I stand. “I should go.”

She stands too. Quickly. Too quickly. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to stay,” I say. “But if I do—” I pause, step in just a little closer, enough that her breath catches. “I won’t pretend it’s just tea.”

She steps into me. Not all the way. Just enough. Her hand rises slowly, fingers brushing the front of my jacket like she’s grounding herself.

“Then don’t,” she whispers.

I start to turn. I have to. But her hand curls in my sleeve. And then her lips are on mine.

Soft. Deliberate. She kisses me like it’s a choice she’s thought about for too long—and now she’s done waiting. It’s not desperate. It’s not tentative. It’s a confirmation. A spark lit with purpose.

I kiss her back, deepening it, angling her jaw with one hand as the other curls around her waist. Her warmth and softness mold perfectly against me; it feels as though I was made to hold her.

But I stop. I don’t want to. Every muscle in my body screams not to. But I ease back just enough to breathe against her lips.

“Not like this,” I murmur.

She blinks up at me, dazed and open and beautiful as hell.

“When I take you, Sadie...” I let the words come slow, weighted with everything I haven’t said yet. “You’ll know it’s real.”

Her breath shudders. “It already feels real.”

My thumb brushes her cheek. “Then we do this right. I brought nothing with me.”

“That’s all right. If you tell me you’re clean, I’ll believe you. I’m clean too and have been on birth control since I was in my teens.”

Every practical detail blurs into insignificance as I lean in to kiss her with fervent urgency—slowly yet deliberately, relishing the gravity of the moment. Her lips are a blazing softness, igniting a deep-seated reminder of everything I hold dear. As I retreat, my hand clings to her hip with a fierce promise, a silent vow that pulses in the air between us, charged with an electrifying blend of reassurance and fervent tenderness.

“I have to meet Caleb. You lock up after me. Don’t go near the door or the windows until I call and give you the all clear.”

She kisses me again and nods as she watches me go, and this time, I don’t feel like I’m leaving something unfinished.

Because when this fire starts to burn, it won’t be an accident. It’ll be a goddamn reckoning.

10

SADIE

It starts with his hands.

Not his voice. Not his eyes. Just the slow, deliberate way his fingers trace the line of my jaw, down the side of my neck, pausing at the pulse point that always jumps when he gets too close. It’s warm in the dream—thick, like the air can’t decide if it wants to be rain or heat—but I don’t care. Zeke’s hands are on me, and that’s the only thing that matters.

His mouth follows next. Rough stubble scraping across the hollow beneath my ear as he kisses lower. His breath fans against my skin, and I swear I feel every inch in places that haven’t been touched in longer than I want to admit. My back arches into him, and I don’t stop it. I don’t hide it. In the dream, there’s no pretending I don’t want this. Him.

He lifts my shirt, slow like he’s savoring it. Like undressing me is something sacred, something he’s been waiting to do since the day he stepped into my café kitchen and I told him I didn’t need help.

He peels the fabric up and over, and his voice, low and rough, curls through the space between us.

“Mine now.”

God, the way he says it. Not like a question. Like a promise. A claim written into bone.

I reach for him—his shoulders, his chest, the ridged muscle that never moves unless he wants it to. He’s solid. Heavy. Warm. His body presses me down against the bed—my bed, I think, though nothing looks exactly the same. Doesn’t matter. My legs wrap around his hips like they’ve done this before, like my body remembers what my mind’s only starting to admit.

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