Page 18 of Mountain Storm (Mountain Shadows #1)

CARYN

The cabin holds its breath. The last thing he said still scrapes across my skin.

The true storm is not in the sky but here.

The walls creak as the wind presses against the logs.

The window glass trembles. Snow stacks against the door like a barricade built by a ruthless hand.

I tuck the blanket closer, not for warmth, but to keep from flying apart.

I taste him when I swallow. The memory of my knees on the floor flashes through me, heat and humiliation tangled with a need that will not release me.

My thighs tighten at the memory, a restless ache that betrays me.

I hate the honesty of it. I hate that part of me is still trembling from the way he kissed me after I hit him, how my body arched toward him, wanting more.

He could have taken me then, buried himself inside me while the storm raged, and the worst part is that I would have opened for him, my body welcoming him. But he didn't. That restraint feels like another method of control, and the ache it leaves feels like punishment.

I tell myself to stand. I tell myself to speak first. He moves before I can.

He crosses to the door, listens, returns to the fire, and stands over me with a look that could pin a storm in place.

I brace for orders. None come. Only the steady scrape of his breath, the rasp of wood settling, the roof timbers complaining as the weight above grows heavier. The mountain tightens its grip.

"Say it," he tells me, voice low. "Admit why you came."

I shake my head, throat raw as the truth claws its way up.

My body betrays me with a throb low in my belly, heat rising with the memory of the night he pulled me out of darkness.

"You know why. You saved me once. I wanted to see if you were real, if the ghost that haunted me was made of flesh I could touch, a man I could want. "

"That's not all."

I hate that he is right. I drag in air, trying to hold the words back, but they come anyway. "I thought that if I found you, the noise in my head would stop. I thought a face would tame the shadow." I force myself to meet his eyes. "I was wrong."

The couch sinks slightly as he sits beside me.

He does not touch me. The restraint lights a fire in my chest that is not rage.

I should be shouting. Instead I am confessing to the man who bound my wrists and held my head while he used my mouth for his pleasure.

The thought should drown me. It doesn't. It steadies me.

"I keep asking myself if you forced me," I say, each word a step across ice.

"In your kitchen. On your couch. In your bathroom.

I replay it, frame by frame. I should be able to hate you cleanly.

I can't. I can't say you raped me. If I'm being honest, each and every time, somewhere deep down inside I wanted it.

Even when I fought you, I wanted it. I'm not sure what that makes me, but I'm pretty sure it's nothing I should be proud of. "

He turns his head, and the fire throws lines of light across the hard planes of his face. For a fleeting instant the hardness softens, a trace of something gentler surfacing before he masks it again. "It makes you honest."

My laugh catches. "It makes me lost."

"You can't be lost, I found you besides. You can be lost, found and honest."

Silence grows, thick as wool. The storm lays another cold hand across the roof.

Somewhere outside a tree groans and then settles.

When I asked Zeb about the men he explained Brenner was in the woodshed, trussed up and waiting, and the other man was dead and lying out in the snow.

The images jab me with a guilt I did not expect.

I should care more about them than I do.

My guilt is that somehow, inexplicably, I led them to Zeb's doorstep.

I should care less about the man at my shoulder than I am coming to realize I do.

"I didn't come only for a story," I whisper. "I've been haunted by you for twelve years. I wanted you to be a lie. I wanted to be free of you. I thought answers would give me peace." I say again, slow and deliberate.

His hand lifts, then stops. The pause is a thunderbolt. For Zeb, not touching me is as loud as a shout. He looks at the fire. When he speaks, his voice is a flat stone.

"Peace does not live up here."

"Maybe not," I say. "But truth does."

He looks at me again, and something in his eyes loosens. Not much. Just enough for me to see the man under the soldier. There is grief there. It swims close to the surface, then disappears like a fish that has learned not to trust the light.

"I saw the photos," I say. "The folder. I suppose some would call it obsession.

I should throw it in the fire and call you a monster, but I can't. You didn't stalk a stranger.

You watched a ghost you thought you lost. I don't know how normal that is," I say looking at him with a smile, "and I'm not pretending it is.

But I think I understand it. Truth be told, I'm not sure I haven't been doing the same thing. "

His jaw tightens, and for a heartbeat I think I may have tipped us back into anger and violence.

Then he stands, crosses the room, and returns with a basin and a folded cloth.

He kneels by the hearth and pours water.

The sound is small and clean. He brings the basin to the edge of the couch and looks at me.

I nod.

The basin settles on the trunk. He reaches for the hem of the flannel I stole, fingers sliding under the fabric.

The air leaves my lungs in a stutter. He doesn't rush.

The shirt peels up an inch at a time, eyes on my face, watching for any tremor that means stop.

I release the blanket. The cloth slides over my ribs and clears my breasts.

My skin tightens in the cool air. The only sound is the low pop of the fire.

The cloth dips into the water, wringing out with a soft twist. He lifts it to my throat—warm, careful.

He cleans the marks the leather left on my wrists, lifts my hair out of the way, not possessive, only practical.

Water trails over my chest and down my sternum, his hand following with deliberate slowness.

He wipes my shoulder, the center of my collarbone, the rise of each breast, stopping just before the peaks.

The restraint winds me tighter than any rope.

"You can touch me," I whisper, then heat races into my cheeks. "I want you to."

His breath leaves him in a long line. "I know."

He does not give in. He moves the cloth again, a path that borders and refuses. The ache that follows is relentless. He cleans the hollow of my throat. He slides lower to my stomach. He pauses there, patient, and looks up.

"Tell me," he says. "Tell me yes."

"Yes."

The cloth slips downward. I ease back and open my knees.

The room dims around the edges as he tends to me.

His touch is careful. He does not tease.

He does not push. He simply takes care of me, and a hot rush loosens inside me that feels like tears I cannot shed.

I hold myself very still and let it happen. I am shaking by the time he is done.

The cloth rinses clean, then trails water over my thighs, down one leg, then the other, over my calves and ankles.

From the floor, his eyes meet mine again.

There is no victory in him. There is only focus.

The same kind of focus I knew he had to have when he faced down two men with a knife and bare hands.

"You don't scare me anymore," I say, and my voice doesn't waver. "Not the way you think."

He leans back on his heels and studies me. "What way do you think I think?"

"I think others think it's the kind of fear that keeps a woman small." I shake my head. "I am not small here. I hate that. I love that. I am both at once, and I do not know what to do with it."

A ghost of a smile races across his face. "You don't need to decide tonight."

He rises with the basin and carries it to the sink. He empties it and sets it aside to dry. He returns to me and reaches for the flannel. I catch his wrist.

"Leave it," I say.

His gaze dips. He nods. He tucks the blanket around my shoulders again, a careful wrap that feels like a vow.

He sits, elbows on his knees, face turned to the fire.

We don't speak for a long time. We listen to the storm press its weight into the logs and the roof.

The cabin gives a low complaint and then holds.

My heart learns the rhythm of the wind and begins to match it.

"You weren't born a beast," I say finally. "Something made you. Something broke you in a way that made you believe you had to live alone."

He stares into the flames as if they could answer for him. "I told you some of it."

"Tell me the part that hurts."

He is a statue for three breaths. Then he starts to talk.

He doesn't dress it up. He doesn't dramatize or make himself out to be a victim.

He gives me simple pieces. The handler who traded his team for influence.

The day an extraction never came. The way Brenner looked at him and chose to walk away.

The way the snow filled the mouths of the men he tried to drag to cover.

His voice frays on the part where he says, "I failed those men. A part of me, the honorable man, died with them. By the time I made it back, I'd been erased. Suited me just fine."

He doesn't shed a single tear. He doesn't break. He sits in the light of his fire and gives me the map of a wounded soul that never healed.

I should pity him, but I don't. It might be easier, but what I feel is kinship. I know what it is to be defined by the worst night of your life. I know how quiet can feel safer than questions. I know how a myth can feed you when nothing else will.

"You left the world before it could bury you," I say. "You wrote your own obituary and moved into it."

He turns his head, a single slow movement. "You came to read it."

"I came to rewrite it." The words surprise me. They do not feel like a plan. They feel like the truth.

He leans back. The fire throws a restless shimmer across the ceiling. The floor under my bare feet has the faint warmth of the stove in the next room. I anchor myself to these details because everything else in me wants to float.

"I scared you tonight," he says. "In the bathroom. I pushed you hard."

"You did," I say, holding his gaze, "but I wanted it."

He closes his eyes for a breath. When he opens them, the wildness has faded. "I won't break you."

"You already did," I say, and I do not regret the words. "You broke something that needed to snap. I don't want gentle from you. Everybody who knows about what happened twelve years ago treats me like I'm fragile..."

"You aren't. Most people would have died twelve years ago and again when you came looking for me."

I nod. He understands. "I want truth."

He reaches for my hand. He does not grip. He only holds my fingers between his palms as if they are a fragile bird he plans to warm. The quiet that follows is not empty. It holds promise and danger in equal measure. It holds consequence.

The storm lifts its voice. Ice rattles against the windowpanes. The logs pop in the hearth, and a spray of sparks jumps and dies. He releases my hand and stands.

"I have to check the Toyo stove in the woodshed to make sure Brenner doesn't freeze to death," he says.

"I'll arrange to get him and Weber to the authorities.

They can deal with him. Death is easy. Years of enhanced interrogation is not.

I'll wrap the dead guy in tarps and pack him in snow.

That'll remove the risk of the scent on the wind for scavengers or a sign for anyone else watching the ridge. "

His words are practical. The decision is not. My stomach tightens. "Don't go." The plea leaves before I can leash it. "You said the enemies are circling."

"I'll only be gone for a little bit. I want to move Weber away from us. They'll circle whether I stay or not." He pulls on his coat and checks the shotgun. "If I go now, I can be back before the worst of it hits."

He pauses and looks me over, one slow pass from head to bare feet and back to my eyes. He is not asking for permission. He is not asking for forgiveness. He is memorizing me in case the mountain decides to keep me and not him.

"Promise you'll come back," I say.

"I'll come back."

I want to believe him, but I'm not sure I do. Fear scurries up my spine and takes a seat behind my ribs. It does not feel like the fear of a girl in the storm. It feels like the fear of a woman who finally admitted what she wants and does not know what she'll do if standing this close she loses it.

He crosses to the door. The latch clicks. He slips into the drift and the cold slashes the room, stealing the fire's heat. He glances back once, and the look spears my chest and lingers there. Then he vanishes into white.

The cabin exhales. Wood moans. I sit frozen and count. One hundred. Two hundred. The storm answers each number with a threat. Frost webs the glass until nothing exists beyond it.

The folder waits. My own face stares back from photographs that cut deep.

I don't burn them. They belong to us now, brutal and unmerciful.

I make tea I don't drink, clinging to the ritual.

Water. Flame. Steam. My hands cradle the mug, but my eyes stay on the door.

I listen for his boots, his voice. Only the wind answers.

Time stretches thin. I remember nights whispering to a man I couldn't name, begging him to come. Maybe he whispered back and I never heard. Maybe that's why I'm here, drawn by need I can't kill.

I pace. The floor groans like it resents my weight. The storm blinds the window. Waiting hurts. Still I wait.

Then a sound. Not wind. Not ice. Heavy. Slow. My breath stumbles. I tell myself it's him. I want to believe. But the noise isn't right.

The latch trembles. I press my palm to the wood. "Zeb." His name leaves me like a plea.

The latch trembles again. Then stops. Silence.