Not the summit hotel.
My pulse skipped.
“Is that?—”
“Confirmed,” he said smoothly. “Everything has been arranged.”
Of course, it had.
I stared out the window as snow began to appear in earnest, soft flakes drifting lazily at first, then thickening. The world narrowed to trees and white and the sense of being carried deeper into something I’d only imagined before.
My phone buzzed again.
You’re quiet.
“I’m processing,” I typed.
Another pause.
Good. I like you like this.
The words landed heavy, intimate.
My breath hitched.
We turned onto a long, private road flanked by tall pines. The snow was thicker here, untouched except for our tire tracks. The silence pressed in, vast and complete.
The car slowed.
Then stopped.
I looked up.
The house—no, the estate—rose ahead of us, all dark wood and stone, lights glowing warmly against the cold. It didn’t loom so much as assert itself, solid and immovable, like it had been built to last through worse winters than this.
My chest tightened.
“This is?—”
“Your destination,” the driver said, already stepping out to open my door.
The cold hit me immediately, sharp and bracing. Snow crunched beneath my boots as I stood, the air so crisp it burned my lungs.
The front door opened before we reached it.
He didn’t step out into the snow.
He waited just inside the threshold.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Still.
The light behind him cast his features in partial shadow, but I could see enough: dark hair; a face carved by discipline rather than softness; eyes that caught on mine and held.
Not hungry.
Assessing.
I stopped.
