His hand cups my jaw, fingers sliding into the hair at my nape. Grip tightening, possessive and firm. He tilts my head back, exposing my throat.
He leans closer. Lips millimeters from mine.
Then he freezes.
Lethal tension locks his jaw. He squeezes his eyes shut, a mask of restraint.
"You’re high on morphine," he grounds out.
He snatches his hand away. The loss of touch hits like a gut-punch. Cold air rushes in.
"Tristan?"
He stands, putting distance between us, pacing toward the window like a caged animal. Shoulders rise and fall with heavy breaths.
"Go to sleep, Alex." His voice leaves no room for argument. "I gave you another syrette an hour ago. You're still floating on a cloud of morphine, and the pain is going to stay buried for a while longer. You need to rest."
"I’m not tired anymore," I whisper, the arousal in my blood battling the haze in my brain. "I want... I want you to stay."
"Sleep," he orders, his voice a jagged rasp as he keeps his back to me. "I'm not touching you like that—not when you're drugged out of your mind and can't feel exactly how much I'm going to ruin you. I want you wide awake and screaming my name when I finally slide my cock inside you. I’m not that kind of man to take a half-conscious woman, but don't think for a second you're getting away once you're sober."
Like that.
The implication hangs in the room. He wants to touch me. He has almost done it.
I sink back into the pillows, body humming with frustration and a terrifying sense of safety. He could have done anything he wanted. I was helpless. But he stopped.
I watch his silhouette against the stormy window. A silent sentinel between me and the world.
He wasn't keeping me here just to heal my leg. And the scariest part wasn't being trapped.
I don’t want to leave.
4
TRISTAN
Rain hammers against the tin roof of the loft, a relentless drumbeat drowning out the rest of the world. Twenty hours since I found her broken on that ridge, and the storm has only grown teeth. It settled over Grizzly Peak like a shroud six hours ago, sealing us in. The road down to Pine Valley is a graveyard of mud and rock now, a slurry that would stop anything short of a tank.
Good.
Sitting in the worn leather armchair in the corner, I work a piece of wood in my hands, my knife shaving off thin, curling strips of pine. I’m not making anything, just giving my hands something to do so they don’t reach for her.
Alexandria is asleep on my bed. The second syrette of morphine I gave her five hours ago has finally started to lose its grip, though it knocked her out cold for the better part of the afternoon. Her head turns on the pillow, dark hair fanning out like spilled ink against the white cotton. Every few minutes, a soft sound escapes her throat—a whimper of pain or a fragmentof a dream. Every time she makes a noise, the knife pauses. My muscles lock. I force myself not to cross the room and wake her up just to see her eyes, to confirm she’s still breathing.
This feral, clawing need to hover is foreign territory. I’m the Tracker. The Road Captain. I value silence and distance, the ability to disappear into the tree line. But since I found her broken on the ridge, since I carried her warmth against my chest, the idea of distance feels like a physical threat.
She shifts, her good leg kicking at the heavy quilt. The oversized hoodie I put her in rides up, exposing a stretch of pale, creamy thigh.
My mouth goes dry.
I stare, my eyes tracking the way her skin flushes in her sleep. I have no right to look, but I’ve already claimed her, so I don't look away. She’s too fucking soft for a place like this—a world of grease, cold steel, and men who take what they want. She belongs in a library or a lab, tucked away from the dirt.
But she isn't there. She’s in my bed, under my roof, and the predator in my gut is already mapping out every inch of that softness I'm going to own.
And the terrifying truth settling in my gut is that she’s safer here than anywhere else, because I am the only thing standing between her and the dark.
She groans, louder this time, eyes fluttering open. Hazy, confused, they scan the unfamiliar timber beams of the ceiling before landing on me.
