Dating the Mountain Man Veteran (Valor in the Mountains #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

ZARA

Three things I know about the man I'm meeting tonight: he's an accountant, he's a dominant, and he goes by the handle QuietControl on the most questionable hookup app I've ever downloaded.

So either I'm about to have the most thrilling night of my life, or I'm going to end up on a true crime podcast.

I check my reflection in the rearview mirror one more time.

Lip gloss intact. Edges laid. The burgundy wrap dress I borrowed from Yasmine's closet does exactly what it's supposed to do, which is make my breasts look like they deserve their own zip code.

I spent thirty minutes on my lashes alone, and if this man turns out to be a catfishing serial killer, I will be furious about the wasted effort before I am anything else.

"You are a grown woman," I tell my reflection. "You served two tours in Afghanistan. You have extracted shrapnel from a screaming nineteen year old while mortar rounds shook the walls. You can walk into a sex club and meet a stranger."

My reflection does not look convinced.

I grab my phone and check the app one last time. His last message sits on the screen in neat, controlled sentences. No typos. No unsolicited pictures of his dick. In the cesspool of anonymous kink dating, that alone made him remarkable.

I'll be at the bar. Blue henley. You'll know me when you see me.

Confident. Not cocky. I liked that about him from the first message three weeks ago when I'd swiped on his profile because he listed "aftercare" before "anal" in his interests. A man with priorities.

The parking lot of Club Crimson is surprisingly full for a Thursday night.

The building itself looks nothing like the dungeon I'd pictured when I first heard about it.

It's a converted mountain lodge with warm lighting spilling from massive windows, stone and timber and class.

The kind of place that serves craft cocktails while people get tied to Saint Andrew's crosses in the back rooms. Crimson Hollow is full of surprises like that.

I've been in town exactly nine days, and I've already learned that the pretty little mountain town running on wine and gossip has a whole lot more happening beneath the surface.

Kind of like me.

I push through the front entrance and the Ember Lounge opens up before me.

Rich wood paneling, leather booths tucked into alcoves, a fireplace big enough to roast a whole pig.

The vibe is less "sex dungeon" and more "expensive lodge bar where everyone happens to be criminally attractive.

" Low music pulses under the conversation, something with bass that I feel in my sternum.

I scan the room. My pulse is doing that thing it does when I'm about to walk into a situation I can't fully control, which is the same thing it did the first time I loaded into a Black Hawk in Kandahar. Adrenaline and anticipation braided so tight I can't separate them.

Blue henley. Blue henley. Blue henley.

And then I see him.

He's sitting at the far end of the bar with one hand wrapped around a glass of something amber, and the other resting on the bartop with the kind of stillness that only comes from training.

I know that stillness. I've seen it in the bodies of men who learned how to be quiet in places where noise got you killed.

Blue henley stretched across shoulders that have no business being that broad on a man who does math for a living.

Light brown hair that's a little too long, like he keeps forgetting to cut it, or maybe he just doesn't care.

A jaw that could cut glass. And a scar bisecting his right eyebrow that sends a hot, inappropriate jolt straight through the center of my body.

That is not an accountant's scar.

He hasn't seen me yet. He's watching the room the same way I was just watching it, cataloging exits and threats and patterns of movement.

I know that scan. I invented that scan. And seeing this man do it while looking like a lumberjack who wandered out of a thirst trap makes my mouth go dry in a way that has nothing to do with fear.

Okay. Game time.

I straighten my spine the way Sergeant First Class Montgomery always did, which is to say the way my mother taught me before she deployed and never came back. Shoulders down. Chin up. Walk like you own every room you enter because the alternative is letting the room own you.

I cross the lounge and slide onto the barstool next to him. He smells like pine and something woodsy and warm underneath, like he spent the day outside and didn't bother to cover it up with cologne. Good. I've always preferred men who smell like the earth instead of a department store.

"QuietControl?" I ask. "I'm Zara."

Those blue green eyes swing to me, and for a full second, nothing happens. He just looks at me. Not a scan. Not an assessment. A look. The kind that starts at my face and stays there, like he's trying to read something written in a language he wasn't expecting.

Then his gaze drops. Just once. A quick sweep down to the neckline of my dress and back up that's so fast most women wouldn't catch it. But I'm not most women. I've been trained to notice when someone's attention shifts by millimeters.

Something moves across his face. Surprise, maybe. Or recognition of a different kind. His jaw tightens, and a beat of silence stretches between us that lasts just long enough for my stomach to drop. He's going to say it. Wrong guy. Sorry. You've got the wrong person.

His eyes meet mine. "Zara." My name in his mouth sounds like a decision he's making in real time. Low and careful, like he's testing the weight of it against something only he can measure.

Not a confirmation. Not a denial. Just my name and an invitation delivered with the kind of quiet authority that makes my knees forget how they work.

I don't know what the etiquette is for meeting your potential dom in a sex club and I fall back on bravado when I'm nervous. "Nice to finally put a face to the... profile."

He takes my hand. His grip is firm and warm and he holds it exactly one second longer than a handshake requires. His fingers are calloused. Not keyboard calluses. Working calluses. The kind that come from rope or tools or gripping things that fight back.

"You're real," he says, and there's something in his voice that sounds almost bewildered. Like he's the one who should be surprised.

"Last time I checked." I pull my hand back before I do something embarrassing, like not let go. "Although if you turn out to be a sixty year old retiree using someone else's photos, I want you to know I will make a scene."

The corner of his mouth twitches. Not a smile. Not yet. But the ghost of one, haunting the edges of a face that looks like it doesn't give them up easily. "No stolen photos. What you see is what you get."

"What I see," I say, letting my gaze travel over those shoulders and back up to that scarred eyebrow, "is not what I expected from an accountant."

That does something to him. A flicker in those blue green eyes that's gone before I can name it.

He takes a slow sip of his drink, and I watch his throat work, and I think about all the messages we exchanged at two in the morning when neither of us could sleep.

How he told me he understood what it felt like to come home and not recognize the person you'd become.

How I told him things I haven't said out loud to anyone, not my therapist, not my best friend, not the God I stopped praying to somewhere between my first tour and my second.

"Numbers are deceptive," he says finally. "They look boring until you understand what they're hiding."

"That your sales pitch?"

"Do I need one?"

The confidence in that question is quiet and absolute and it makes my thighs press together under the bar. This is what I came here for. Not the whips and chains and whatever else is behind that rumored hidden door. This. A man who speaks like he means every single word and wastes none of them.

I signal the bartender. "Whiskey. Neat. Whatever he's having."

He watches me order with an expression I can't quite decode.

Somewhere between amused and assessing, like I'm a puzzle he didn't expect to find interesting.

Then he angles his body toward mine, and the movement is slow and deliberate, and I feel the full weight of his attention settle on me like a hand pressing gently against my sternum.

"So," he says, and the way he angles toward me narrows the entire bar down to the two of us. "Tell me what you're looking for tonight."

Direct. No games. My skin prickles with something electric.

"Honestly? I want to explore. Submission. The whole thing." I take a sip of whiskey and let it burn through the nerves. "I don't have a list of hard limits because I've never done this before. Not really. I don't know what my limits are yet."

His expression shifts. The easy almost warmth tightens into focus, and he sets his glass down with a deliberateness that draws my attention to those calloused hands all over again.

"That's not freedom, Zara. That's a blind spot." His voice drops, and there's an edge to it now that wasn't there before. Not anger. Authority. "Everyone has limits. Even if they haven't found them yet. Especially then."

Most men would hear "no limits" and see an open invitation. This one hears it and sees a gap in my defenses. And instead of exploiting it, he flags it. Like a medic marking a wound before treatment.

And just like that, sitting on a barstool in a mountain town sex club next to a man who smells like pine and speaks like someone who understands the weight of responsibility, I feel something I haven't felt in six years.

Safe.

Which is terrifying. Because the last time I felt safe, people died.