CHAPTER 23 #2
I shifted in my seat, unease coiled tight in my stomach. “What I don’t understand is…why choose to live so close to something like that?” I asked. “Doesn’t it scare you living up here with it so near?”
May didn’t answer at first. She reached for her mug, sipped, then set it down with care.
“My whole kind is from here,” she added, eyes steady on mine. “Besides, it’s not too close. Ya know that ’cause it took you a few hours to hike it and ya have to know the way. And ya won’t find it unless you’re tryin’ to. It keeps hidden for a reason.”
She adjusted the shawl around her shoulders, her tone unbothered but not dismissive.
“Whatever once lived there died there long ago. And whatever that place holds now, well, it stays put. It doesn’t come wanderin’.
” Then her gaze shifted slightly. “Speakin’ of stayin’ put…
” She tilted her chin toward Jonathan. “Jon-boy won’t ever be takin’ ya on a tour out there again. Ain’t that right?”
It was more decree than question.
Jonathan didn’t flinch. He nodded once, slow. “Yeah. I think we’ve got more than enough moonshade berries.”
By the time we stepped back out into the night, the air had cooled. Clouds had gathered, veiling the stars, and the path between cabins lay in complete blackness.
Jonathan held the blanket tighter around his naked shoulders. After a few steps, he muttered, “I should probably get some clothes on before walking you back.”
I glanced at the blanket draped around him. “But I like this toga look on you,” I teased. “It suits you.”
He let out a low chuckle, leading me away from the main path toward my cabin and wrapping around the reception cabin. “Keep up the flattery and I may never get dressed,” he warned.
Up ahead, I could make out the faint outline of a porch light, flickering like a dying ember.
The cabin we came to was the one at the farthest end of the lake but a short distance away from reception. When we stopped at his front porch, he muttered, “I’m not used to visitors. I have to warn you—it’s a mess.”
“You should see my apartment when I’m on a work deadline,” I said lightly, tossing a small smile. It wasn’t quite the truth—I was allergic to clutter—but I wanted to put him at ease, given the way his shoulders had bunched up at the admission.
He opened the door, nudging it wider with his foot, and stepped aside to let me in.
Inside, the warmth hit me first. Then the scent…
a mix of cedarwood, ash, and worn leather.
Not unpleasant, just undeniably him. His cabin was cluttered but lived-in.
Papers and books stacked along one table, boots by the door, a flannel draped across an armchair, as if he’d gotten distracted while getting dressed.
“It’s my first time actually being in your space,” I murmured, taking it all in.
Jonathan closed the door behind us and exhaled. “Like I said, no one comes in here,” he said, peeling the blanket off and tossing it across a chair. “Except May.”
Under my lashes, I eyed his exposed body without trying to make it obvious. The ridges of muscle lining his back, the way they shifted under his tanned skin as he moved…it was oddly mesmerizing. The fresh stitching along his arm looked like a line of dark ink down his bicep.
When he disappeared down the hallway, I was too curious not to follow.
Lingering in the doorway of his bedroom, I saw it was pretty bare bones but comfortable.
A king-sized bed, the coverlet a little rumpled but neat, a dresser on the opposite wall beneath a window that looked out over the lake.
A navy-blue patterned rug lay beneath the bed.
Jonathan crossed to the dresser, and I watched as he pulled out a pair of loose pants, tugging them up his legs.
I only got to momentarily appreciate the firmness of his backside before it disappeared from view, even though I vividly remembered sinking my fingernails into the flesh there when he was deep inside me.
I shivered…but then shook myself. After the events of today, and after May’s warning, remembering how Jonathan Wolfe had felt between my thighs was the last thing that I should be contemplating.
But who could blame me? He’d rewritten something in my brain tonight, a language of dangerous magic and ferocity and desire.
When his eyes flicked to mine as he came to the door, it tilted up my chin. My heartbeat ticked up a bit, wondering if he could somehow sense the thoughts that curled inside me.
His smirk made me want to kiss it off him. “C’mon,” he murmured lowly, sliding his hand to my low back, leading me back down the hallway.
I couldn’t help but notice the desk when we made it to the living room. A large, ornate, wood desk that looked as if it had belonged there for centuries. And it was absolutely covered in paperwork, though the computer looked new, jutting from it like a tower.
“That looks like a lot,” I commented, nudging my chin toward the desk. I knew that Jonathan worked hard on the cabins, but I’d forgotten about what greeted him behind the scenes too.
Jonathan began leafing through the papers casually, half-disinterested.
“I present to you the daily chaos that is my life. When I’m not keeping the cabins and land from falling apart, I play the role of accountant…
permits, bills, land reports. All the things May swears I’ll eventually get around to. Things she can’t really help with.”
“Why is there so much of it?” I asked gently. “I thought you’d been open for a little while.”
He didn’t look up. “My father wasn’t exactly the most organized man.
Never filed anything properly. Let permits expire.
Left half of everything unfinished.” His tone flattened.
“By the end, he wasn’t all there anymore.
” He gestured to the clutter. “And this mess became the shape of his life.” He paused, fingers hovering over an envelope.
“After he passed, the offers started pouring in from the companies that had been wanting to buy this land. They tried to take advantage of his diminished state. Like vultures circling, looking to pick the preserve clean.”
He thumbed through a stack of papers at the edge of the desk.
“Penbroke Mutual. Northridge Holdings. Merritt Corp. Polaris Equity…” he read aloud. “All of ’em want it, have for years.”
I froze, recognition hitting me. “Wait. What was that last one?”
He looked up. “Polaris Equity. You know them?”
“I don’t know…” I said, unsure. “Can I see that?”
He passed the envelope.
My heart skipped. The logo was stylized but unmistakable—an inverted triangle with a sunburst crest. The same one I’d seen from across Erik’s desk. The same name I’d overheard on his call.
I stared at it, pulse quickening. So that was what this was. Or part of it.
But I didn’t say a word because I didn’t know what it meant. Maybe nothing at all—maybe I was just being paranoid. I replaced the paper, telling myself I’d look into it when I was back in the city. It was probably nothing.
Jonathan had already moved toward the armchair, retrieving the flannel slung there.
But before he put it on, his gaze cut to mine.
I shifted from one foot to the other, my hip leaning against the old desk, my fingertip brushing along the ornate edge, tracing the wood pattern. Back and forth, back and forth.
Quiet fell between us. I felt uncertain.
He’d said he would walk me back…but now that I was here, I found that I didn’t want to leave.
The cabin smelled like him, warm and comforting.
Even with the mess, I didn’t mind it because it was like he was stamped into every place my eyes flicked to.
And I kept glancing down at the Polaris Equity logo, another puzzle piece that I couldn’t figure out to join all the others.
The flannel was still in his hands when he crossed the room toward me.
The wood floor creaked under his weight, a hollow thudding from his short strides sounding.
I tilted my chin up to meet his eyes when he loomed.
His gaze had cut down to my somewhat bloodied and torn shirt, remnants and reminders of the evening, a soft frown lining his pensive expression.
Then he crouched, his hand tilting my cheek, and he brushed a sweet, soft kiss across my lips. So soft it felt like a delicate apology. For tonight? I didn’t understand why.
Still, I felt a little knot in my chest release.
I went to my tiptoes, eager, pressing more fully against him to chase the warmth.
Suddenly, a switch flipping, the kiss deepened, becoming harder, more demanding.
His hand went from my cheek to my waist, digging, pulling me flush so that I could feel when his cock thickened in his pants.
Heat was beginning to coil tight in my belly—
But then he broke the kiss with a soft, whispered curse. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears like an echoing drum. For a second, I was worried he would walk me back, back into the black night.
Instead, he tugged my torn shirt over my head, forcing me to lift my arms, but there was no urgent demand to his movements. The material landed on the floor at our feet.
Then…I felt a prickle of relief when he dressed me in his flannel, threading my arms through the soft, worn material, fastening the middle buttons. The shirt hung off me, nearly three sizes too big…but it smelled like him.
“Come on,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me toward the darkened hallway. “We can shower in the morning. Let’s go to bed.”
Fighting a smile, with a flutter in my belly, I followed.