Bonus Epilogue
ELLIE
The cabin is quiet in that soft, winter way—fire low, wind curled against the eaves, the kind of hush that makes every small sound feel important.
Micah’s just finished doing the dishes (yes, the grumpy mountain man does dishes), and I’m on the rug with a mug of tea that I stopped drinking ten minutes ago because watching him is better.
He catches me staring. He always does.
“You’re thinking loud,” he says, drying his hands on a dish towel.
“I’m admiring,” I correct, and crook a finger. “C’mere.”
He comes—slow, deliberate, each step like a promise.
The firelight turns his edges gold. When he sinks down behind me, his legs bracket my hips, his chest warm to my back, and my pulse lurches to meet him.
He smells like pine and man and something that’s only him.
I relax without thinking. My body learned this man and decided he’s home.
“What are we celebrating?” he murmurs into my hair.
“Us,” I say. “And the fact that dinner didn’t involve a single can.”
“High bar.”
His mouth brushes my temple. Lazy. Teasing. I tip my head back until my crown rests on his shoulder, offering him my throat. His breath catches before his lips find skin. A slow press. A second. The third one drags heat down my spine.
“Micah,” I whisper, just to feel his name roll through him.
He answers without words. His hands slide over my ribs, thumbs drawing soft circles that make my breath stumble. He never rushes. That’s the joke of us: he’s all restraint until he’s not, and then I forget where I end and he begins.
“Turn around,” he says.
I do, knees folding to face him. The world shrinks: his eyes, the steady thrum at his throat, the tiny scar near his mouth that I kiss when he can’t sleep.
I palm his jaw, and he leans into it like he’s been waiting.
When I pull him down, the first kiss is slow enough to slay me.
The second is deeper. By the third, we’re both breathing like we ran here.
“Tell me if you want to stop,” he says against my mouth. He always makes it a choice. He always means it.
“I want everything,” I breathe.
His control frays beautifully. He slides one hand up my back, finds the silk tie at my nape, and tugs.
My blouse slips, soft as a sigh. Cool air kisses my shoulder; his mouth follows, warmer, deliberate.
I thread my fingers under the hem of his T-shirt and feel heat and hard muscle and the shiver he tries—and fails—to hide.
“You shake,” I murmur, smug and a little awed.
“Only for you.”
We smile into a kiss that turns greedy fast. He lowers me onto the rug, the fire popping beside us like applause.
His weight settles over me, careful but real.
I hook my legs around him, drawing him closer until there’s no polite space left.
He groans—low, rough, undone—and the sound lives somewhere I’ll never loan out.
“Look at me,” I say, because I love the way he does when he’s past careful.
He does. It’s a storm breaking and sunlight at once.
Clothes become suggestions, then memories.
Skin learns skin again. He treasures me with his hands, reverent, sure, like he’s studying and praising in the same breath.
I answer with mine, rediscovering familiar lines and the new tenderness that keeps sneaking in.
He whispers things he never used to say—soft, wrecking truths that make my chest ache in the best way.
I tell him every yes he needs, every yes I want.
When he finally moves with me, it’s not frantic.
It’s inevitable—two people who chose this a hundred quiet times and are still surprised by the way it feels like the first. The rhythm finds us, and we find each other inside it.
Heat builds, tight and bright. I hold his face and he curses softly like a prayer.
When I fall, it’s with his name on my mouth and my heart wide open.
He follows, lost and found at once, holding me like he can anchor both of us.
The room drifts back slow: fire crackle, wind hush, the dog’s contented sigh from his bed. Micah rolls so I end up sprawled across his chest, his palm warm and wide at the small of my back, thumb tracing idle shapes that say I’m here without words.
“Hi,” I hum against his skin.
“Hi,” he answers, voice wrecked and happy.
We lie there and trade little kisses—the corner of his mouth, the notch of his collarbone, the pulse I can’t resist. He tucks a curl behind my ear like he’s filing it under essentials. I draw a heart on his sternum and feel it beat.
“What are you thinking now?” he asks, like he doesn’t already know.
“That I’m obscenely in love with you,” I say, simple and true. “And that I want a real tree next year. And lights on the porch. And a stocking for Ranger.”
He huffs a laugh, the sound rumbling under my cheek. “We can do all of that.”
“And pancakes in the morning.”
“Ellie.”
“With marshmallows.”
“Absolutely not.”
I grin and kiss his protest away. He lets me win, as usual, except when it matters, and then he holds the line for both of us. I close my eyes and breathe him in, full and content in a way I didn’t know existed.
Outside, snow keeps falling. Inside, we keep choosing each other—quiet first, then louder, then again when the world tries to test the seams. It’s simple and impossible and ours.
“Stay with me,” I whisper, though I already know the answer.
“Always,” he says into my hair. “You’re home.”
And with the fire whispering low and his heartbeat steady under my ear, I believe him with everything I am.
Thank you so much for reading Snowed-In With The Mountain Man. If you loved Micah & Ellie’s story then you'll love Monroe and Drake in Mountain Man’s Merry Grumpmas by Lara London.