Someone’s carrying me up the stairs and over a threshold—new bride style.
I blink. Blink again. Above me, a ceiling swims into focus. Rough-hewn wooden beams, dark with age. An expansive room with hand-stained hardwood floors. Against the opposite wall stands a stone fireplace, massive. Walls of stripped pine, a worn leather couch, a thick rug in shades of rust and amber.
Books are stacked on every available surface.
A single lamp throwing cozy honey-colored light across it all.
It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen. Instantly fills me with that sense of home that I’ve always been searching for.
I turn my head and the man carrying me like I’m precious cargo comes into focus.
Green eyes. Sharp jaw. A face that looks like it was carved out of a mountain, all hard angles and old scars. Plus something underneath it all that makes my heart do a long slow roll in my chest. And somewhere down between my legs too.
Oh.
Oh.
I smile up at him. My head is full of cotton wool and golden light and I feel absolutely wonderful. "Are you my new husband?" I murmur. "Am I dreaming?"
He grunts.
It’s a very raw sound that skims across my skin like an electric charge. I reach up and pat his cheek, his stubble scraping deliciously rough against my palm. “Thank you, universe, for sending me this mountain man. I take back every bad thing I ever said about you.”
The man spews out a filthy curse that could stain the pretty walls of the cabin. “I got stuck with Snow White.” With that he slow rolls me from his arms onto my feet as if he’s unrolling a dirty rug.
“Oh,” I squeal, my neck and back painfully sore.
The floor rushes up to meet me sideways and I sway hard, the room tilting, my legs made entirely of wet noodles. His arm shoots out—under my breasts, hauling me back against him—and suddenly it’s like I’ve been tied to a sturdy tree.
He's a wall of heat at my back, his forearm a brand just below my breasts, his legs pressed flush against mine. And there’s something poking against my butt cheek before a large hand sits on my lower back and creates distance between us.
My brain feels woozy but my body’s busy feeling things I’ve never known before in my life. Each breath makes my heavybreasts lift and fall against his corded arm, sending a thousand little sparks flying across the rest of my body.
“What’s happening?” I mutter inanely.
Another grunt behind me, the rough exhale raising the little hairs on the nape of my neck in an altogether delicious way.
“You need to wake up, Princess.” His voice is low and rough, like gravel and woodsmoke. “It’s the shot.”
I blink.
Shot.
I frown at the word, turning it over in the cotton wool.
Shot.
Something cold and sharp begins to cut through the golden haze. Trickles down my spine like a cube of ice. And it hits me. Fast and cold.
The church. The wedding. The bullets.
This man carrying me out of the chaos.
Some latent instinct had made me scream about leaving Marco behind, a little too late.
I fought him, tripped and fell on the sidewalk.
He picked me up again.
