Page 19

The world spun.

My body hummed.

My mind reeled.

When the last pulse had faded, when his grip on me had loosened, his chest still pressed against my back, he finally, slowly pulled out of me.

His warmth disappeared, leaving me cold and alone, but before I could protest, he laid beside me as his arm wrapped around my waist, and he pulled me flush against him, bare chest to bare chest.

His heart thundered beneath my cheek, and his hand trailed down the curve of my back, gentle and possessive.

“Mine. My mate,” he whispered.

For several long moments, the only sound was our breathing, ragged with exhaustion, the air thick with sex and heat.

Slowly, carefully he untied the blindfold and let it fall to the floor.

There in front of me, a gentle smile turning up his sensuous lips, was the long-lost face of the man I thought I’d never see again.

CHAPTER5

Silas

The firelight caught her face, illuminating the lines of her jaw, the curve of her lips.

When I saw her eyes, I went utterly still.

They were a deep forest green, dark and untamed, the kind of color that belonged to the deepest parts of the wilderness, where the trees grew thick, and the light barely touched the ground. There was something else there, too; just beneath the surface burned a quiet fire, a relentless defiance that hadn’t been snuffed out, no matter what the world had thrown at her.

Even now, staring up at me, those dark green eyes were unreadable, calculating, as if she was already deciding whether I was an enemy, an ally… or something else entirely.

It washer.

My chest tightened, my pulse roaring in my ears.

Lia.

The girl I saved.

The girl I left behind.

The girl I’d just stripped, spanked, and fucked.

She blinked once, her gaze locked onto mine. Sheknew.

The fire crackled between us, and in that single, shattering moment, I understood one thing with perfect, brutal clarity: Lia wasn’t just alive, she was here, and she wasmine.

Utterly and completely mine.

“You’ve grown up.”

The raspy words slipped out before I could stop them, scraping against the thick silence between us.

Lia stared up at me, her stunning green eyes reflecting our mutual shock, and I swore I could feel the weight of that look pressing into my skin, searching me, testing me. She wasn’t the fragile, dirty-faced child I had left behind in the mountains all those years ago.

She was a woman now.

And fuck, was I in trouble.