“Oh, this is magnificent,” I breathe because the view has emptied me of every other word.
“Just you and me tonight,” he says, still holding my hand. “How does that sound?”
“Exciting. Slightly terrifying. And hoping this cabin has very strong locks.”
He laughs, squeezes my hand, and pulls me toward the porch. “Locks and so much more. Come see.”
I follow him up the steps that creak under my weight while heat coils in my belly from the fact that I’m about to spend a night alone in a cabin with an Alpha whose scent matches mine and whose mouth just made me forget my own name.
I need control. Deep breaths. Boundaries. Rational thought.
Except rational thought checked out somewhere around the baby bird and hasn’t been seen since. And if last night with Jakob taught me anything, it’s that my body doesn’t negotiate with my brain when it wants what it wants.
I step through the cabin door.
God help me.
18
CLAIRE
“After you, sunshine.” Corey holds the front door, and as I step inside, my mouth drops open.
Wait, this isn’t just a cabin. It’s a five-star hotel that someone dropped into the middle of a mountain and wrapped in timber.
“Is this what they call glamping?” I spin in a slow circle, excited. “Because if so, I’ve been doing outdoors wrong my entire life.”
He chuckles behind me. “The property owners run a few lodges up here. Different tiers. We’re on the Wolfden package.”
“Oh?”
“Named for the wolves that roam these mountains.” He drops his backpack by the door. “Kitchen’s fully stocked, fireplace is already going, and there’s a hot tub through the back room.”
I’m nodding, gobsmacked, and taking in the huge living room. Vaulted ceilings crisscrossed with exposed timber beams, the wood dark and honey-stained. A stone fireplace dominates the far wall, flames already crackling behind the glass, and two deep leather couches face it in an L-shape, draped in thick woven blankets. A flat screen is mounted above the mantel. The floor is polished hardwood scattered with sheepskin rugs, and the wallsare decorated with framed photographs of the mountain, the valley, the coastline below—black and white, moody, beautiful.
Behind the living space, the kitchen opens up. Dark granite countertops, a gas stovetop, a large fridge, and a window above the sink that frames the forest outside, the trees so close their branches almost brush the glass. Everything is warm, golden, designed to make you feel held by the mountain instead of exposed to it, and I am loving it.
I drift past the kitchen toward the short hallway and find the bedroom at the end and another two doors that seem to lead to a bathroom and outside.
A king-size bed sits against the back wall, low-framed, draped in white linen and a heavy charcoal throw. The headboard is rough-hewn timber. Huge windows stretch across two walls, blinds open, and the view is insane. Forest on one side, dense and dark and layered. On the other, the mountain drops away, and the sea beyond it stretches silver to the horizon in the far distance.
One bedroom. One bed. Wait a minute! There are no other rooms.
I glance back. Corey’s in the doorway, hands gripping the top of the frame, leaning into it, his biceps flexed, grinning at me with the subtlety of a man who planned this.
“The other lodges have multiple bedrooms,” he explains. “But this was the only one available.”
“I’m sure you’re devastated.”
“Crushed.”
“Well.” I push past him, my shoulder brushing his chest, and the contact sends a bolt through me. “I hope the couch is comfortable enough for you.”
“Interesting assumption,” he says behind me, his voice dropping. “Bold, too.”
I keep strolling so he can’t see my smirk.
The bathroom is large, tiled in dark slate, with a rainfall shower behind frameless glass and a claw-foot tub I want to climb into immediately and never leave. Then the last room that I assumed headed outside stops me.
