"Don't argue with me, Tiff." I walk toward the hallway. "Bathroom is on the left. Towels are clean. Wash the flour off. You smell like a cookie, and it’s making it very hard for me to think."
I leave her sitting there, stunned and flushed, clutching my whiskey glass.
I turn back to the stove, cracking eggs into the skillet with a harsh sizzle. I stare down at the cooking food, my blood still thrumming. The beast paces in my chest, scratching at the back of my ribs.
She’s here. She’s under my roof. Safe.
I pull up the security feed on my phone again. The perimeter is clear. The mountain is silent. But they’re out there. And when the sun comes up, the real war begins.
I listen to the sound of the shower turning on in the other room. I close my eyes and visualize the water running over her body, soap suds sliding down those curves I’ve only memorized from a distance.
I groan, scrubbing a hand over my face. It’s going to be a long fucking night.
3
TIFFANY
Cedar and hot iron saturate the sheets, a scent so aggressively masculine it wakes me before the sunlight does.
My eyes snap open, and the first thing I see isn't the unfamiliar timber of the ceiling. A heavy leather chair sits empty in the corner. He’s not here. The nightmares start to creep in, a physical weight pressing down on my chest. Air traps in my lungs like a cold fist.
For three seconds, the cage closes in. Ramon’s house. Then I turn my head. The steel-reinforced door, heavy deadbolts, and gunmetal grey walls slam my reality back into place.
Blake.
Wariness settles deeply in my belly, but it’s not panic. I left Ramon’s manicured prison for the beast’s den, but at least this beast looks me in the eye. I sit up, the massive duvet pooling around my waist. The bed is enormous, a custom-built frame of dark, welded pipe and distressed wood taking up half the room. I’m wearing his t-shirt. He gave it to me last night after scrubbing the fear off my skin in the shower. It hangs off myshoulder, the hem hitting my mid-thigh. The fabric feels heavy, weighted with his essence.
Clang.
The sound rings through the floorboards. A rhythmic, deep-bellied impact vibrates in my teeth.
Clang.
Steady. Precise. Controlled violence.
I slide my legs out of the bed. Heated polished concrete warms my bare soles. My body aches from the adrenaline crash of yesterday. The terrifying drive up the mountain, the men trying to break into my bakery, Blake’s terrifying efficiency as he extracted me from my life and planted me here.
Clang.
Working.
I should stay in this room. Three inches of solid oak and steel separate me from the rest of the house. But the silence in the room is loud. My thoughts swarm like bees I can’t outrun. Ramon found me. After two years of hell and six months of looking over my shoulder, of startled jumps every time a door slammed, he found me. And Blake knew.
I wrap my arms around myself and walk toward the door. The handle is cool industrial pipe. I turn it and step into the hallway. The house is structured like a bunker disguised as a cabin—open concept, high ceilings, sightlines that feel tactical rather than aesthetic. The rhythmic hammering grows louder, coming from the heavy steel door at the end of the main living space. Heat bleeds from beneath it.
I move toward it. The pull is magnetic. Blake Gunnar terrified me yesterday, but he also stood between me and the nightmare I’ve been running from. He looked at violence and didn’t blink. I push the heavy door open.
A physical wall of dry, scorching air slams into me. Sulfur and coal dust coat my tongue. It tastes like a thunderstorm trapped in a bottle. The workshop is cavernous, a cathedral of industry attached to the side of the mountain. One wall is natural rock, weeping slightly with moisture that sizzles where it meets the air. Racks of tools, sheets of metal, and welding rigs fill the rest of the space.
In the center, bathed in the orange glow of a gas forge roaring like a jet engine, stands Blake. My breath hitches. Stripped to the waist, his skin glistens with sweat and soot. I’ve seen him in the bakery, massive in his leather cut or flannel. This is different. This is the raw animal.
His back is a landscape of muscle and trauma. Ridges of scar tissue weave through the ink covering his shoulders—thick, jagged lines telling stories of knife fights and shrapnel. As he swings a heavy hammer down onto a glowing bar of red-hot steel on the anvil, the muscles of his back ripple like pythons moving under silk.
Clang.
Sparks shower around him. Deadly confetti bounces off his heavy leather apron and denim-clad thighs. He ignores it, completely absorbed in the violence of creation. He lifts the tongs, flipping the glowing metal with an ease that belies the weight, and strikes again. His biceps bulge. Veins pop against the tanned skin of his forearms. He looks like Hephaestus forged from the mountain itself.
I watch, mesmerized. My ex-husband was a businessman. Soft hands, expensive suits, cruelty living in his words. Blake is purely physical. A weapon. Watching the sweat drip down the channel of his spine, my pussy is already drenched, the heat dripping between my thighs in a heavy, rhythmic pulse. I shouldn't be turned on. I should be running. But I’m not running.
