Page 4 of The Mountain Man's Curvy Trick-or-Treat

Only this time, it isn’t the storm calling. It’s her—some signal older than my bones, tuning me to a frequency I’ve never heard before.

I stare at the flannel thrown over the couch. Do I slide back into it? It’s Halloween, might as well enjoy being myself for once. Still, I keep my edges blurred, light under skin tamped down.

I stand, slow, every board in the floor creaking under my weight. Outside, lightning cuts across the window, just long enough to silhouette a figure on the porch. Small and curvy, soaked to the bone.

For one impossible second, the rain halos her in light. My pulse stutters … like the mountain itself just took a breath.

The next thunderclap swallows her shout. “Hello? Mrs. Camden? Just returning your cell phone. You left it earlier in the bakery bathroom.”

Wrong cabin. Wrong mountain, for that matter.

I unbolt the door, and the storm throws her straight into me—red curls plastered to her cheeks, eyes wide and wild, a paper-thin French maid costume clinging where it shouldn’t.

“Sorry!” she gasps. “I think there’s been a mix-up—my GPS?—”

My brain short-circuits halfway through the apology. The scent of cinnamon and vanilla rolls off her, sweet and alive. Heat punches through me, the hum answering back like a tuning fork struck against bone.

The regulator pings a warning—elevated pulse, irregular heat pattern—but the data means nothing. I’m already lost to it.

Every cell in me leans forward, hungry. Not for touch, but recognition. As if I’ve waited through a hundred lives for this exact scent, this exact heartbeat.

“I’m not Mrs. Camden,” I say.

She blinks up at me, rain dripping from her lashes. “No, you’re glowing?”

Not fear in her voice—wonder. And something inside me answers it, the way planets answer gravity.

Then, I grunt.

“Your skin,” she says, eyeing my shimmering flesh. “It’s like one of those deep-sea creatures you see in the Mariana Trench. How in the heck did you make your costume look like that?”

“Easier than you think,” I say, vibrating low in my core. I shouldn’t register her at all, not like this—not as a signal, not as heat.

“It’s downright mesmerizing.” Her eyes round, fingers lifting in an almost touch.

This is nothing, barely letting my energy whisper through skin. But the cabin’s dark. I flick a switch, dampen the visual impact. Her shoulders relax.

My throat tightens. So do my Wranglers, more human than I’ve ever felt before. Maybe it’s the centuries finally getting to me. Or the genetic drift that’s happening with each new clone body, attuning us more closely to this planet, despite our best attempts to remain pure.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I growl.

My voice comes out rougher than intended. I mean it as a warning, but it sounds like a plea.

“Neither should you,” she teases, the corners of her pretty pink lips turning up.

“What does that mean?” I ask gruffly.

Her eyes continue to sear my flesh, like she’s memorizing every angle, slope, and valley of my topography, even though I’ve tamped the glow down completely now.

Boom!Thunder crashes; lightning flashes so close it lifts the hairs on my arms. The woman startles, gasping, and I motion for her to have a seat on the couch. Relax.

“I’ll build the fire back up,” I murmur, brainstorming ways to keep her here.

Thiscan’tbe happening.

But it is.

I eye her warmly for a moment, feeling the return sizzle in her appraising gaze as I shut the door.