AVA
Iwake to the steady thump of Scott’s heartbeat under my cheek and the low crackle of the fire still alive beside us.
For a moment, I don’t move. I just lie here, wrapped in his warmth, skin still humming with the afterglow. My core aches in the best way, and the scent of him—sweat and cedar mixed with a hint of me—makes my chest tighten in a way that has nothing to do with sex.
But something feels off.
Even with the heat at my back, my skin prickles with awareness. The room’s almost pitch black, the fire not doing much to keep my eyes from imagining movement beyond the curtains as I strain to look past Scott.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I scold myself for letting my mind constantly run away with itself up here. I’m not worried about the dark back on campus, yet up here it’s all I can focus on.
The fire’s occasional pop and Scott’s steady breathing almost wash away my incessant worries enough to lull me back to sleep.
But then I hear it.
It’s faint, a barely there scratch along the outside of the cabin. And now that I’ve heard it, I strain to listen closer. See if I can mark it for what it is, but it stops, leaving me just as unsure as I was last night.
My breath catches, my heart rate spiking with anxiety.
I stiffen, every inch of me on alert now. My eyes snap to the front door across the room, clocking the locks in place. It looks normal. Right as I’m about to write it off, the sound comes again, low and slow, like fingernails drawing down old wood.
I press my hand to Scott’s chest.
“Scott,” I whisper, shaking him lightly back and forth.
He doesn’t wake. A soft snore answers me, and he shifts, pulling me closer to his side.
I pinch him, hissing out his name this time. “Scott!”
Still nothing, the man’s dead to the world.
I sit up enough to look at him. His sculpted arm, not wrapped around my body, is flung over his head. Those sinful lips that had me screaming his name are parted slightly. The beard, which hints at his age with its salt-and-pepper streaks, is scruffy. I bet if I leaned down to kiss him right now, he would still smell like me. But the peaceful look across his face, like he hasn’t turned my world inside out, is what makes my lips tick. He looks serene. Thoroughly used and deeply unconscious.
“Guess my pussy really did knock you out cold, old man,” I murmur.
He doesn’t even twitch, but my body shakes at my own joke. He probably wouldn’t have appreciated my humorous dig anyway.
“Should’ve warned you about the stamina gap,” I say under my breath, dragging the heavy wool blanket with me as I stand.
The fire throws a stretched shadow of my form across the floor. It creeps up the wall like a ghost come to join me in my investigation. I step carefully, minimizing the sound of my movements.
The scratching stopped the moment I sat up, and I wonder if it was just the quiet drawing me into its tricks. It was probably just the wind against the unsettled wood stacked on the porch.
The logic doesn’t keep my heart from crashing against my ribs as I reach the door. I lean in close, pressing my ear against the cold surface, listening.
Silence.
Just the fire crackling steadily behind me. My own shallow breathing bounces back off the door.
BANG!
Something slams against the door hard enough to shake it in the frame, while pushing my body from its place on the other side.
Raw fear claws up my throat, escaping into an ear-piercing scream. I stumble back, feet tangling in the blanket, before I crash into the small entry table. A ceramic lamp goes flying, shattering treacherous pieces across the floor.
“Scott!” I yell, voice breaking, tears threatening to pool on my lashes. “Goddamnit, wake up!” I beg.
He bolts upright, eyes wide, hand reaching for where my body should be. The other is scrambling across the floor for anything he can use as a weapon, but there’s nothing within reach.
