Chapter 22
Asher
Iwake to the taste of whiskey. Ivy's hair spreads across my chest, her breath warm against my ribs. My head pounds—a vicious reminder that stealing that bottle was either genius or stupidity.
Probably both.
I pull her deeper into my chest, lips finding the nape of her neck. She tastes like salt and that vanilla lotion she pretends she doesn't buy specifically because I mentioned liking it once.
She giggles—actually fucking giggles—and pushes her ass back against me. The sound shoots straight to my cock, already half-hard from waking up with her wrapped around me like she belongs there.
I bite down on her shoulder, tasting sleep and whiskey on her skin.
“Ash—”
The way she breathes my name makes me want to pin her down and show her exactly what waking up like this does to me. Instead, I force myself to roll away before I do something stupid. Like fuck her into the mattress when we both smell like a distillery exploded.
“Up.” My voice comes out rougher than intended. “Come on.”
She groans, burying her face deeper into the pillow like she can hide from me there. “It's not even light out.”
“Exactly.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don't.” I yank the covers off her in one swift motion, ignoring her shriek. The cold air hits her bare legs and she curls into herself, glaring murder at me. “Grab your board.”
“Are you insane?” She sits up, hair a complete disaster, mascara smudged under her eyes like bruises. She looks wrecked. Perfect. Exactly how I want her to look every morning—thoroughly fucked and furious about it. “My head feels like someone took a sledgehammer to it.”
“Fresh air helps.”
“Sleep helps.”
She flops back dramatically, arm thrown over her eyes. I watch the rise and fall of her chest, the way my t-shirt rides up her thighs. My jaw clenches.
“Ivy.” I lean down, caging her against the headboard. “Get. Your. Board.”
Her eyes narrow, but there's heat there. Always heat with us. “You're such a dick.”
“Mm-hmm…” I flash a wicked smirk. “But it's yours.”
She shoves me, but she's smiling. That real smile. The one that makes my chest do stupid things I refuse to acknowledge.
Twenty minutes later, we're trudging through the pre-dawn darkness toward the gondola. Ivy's wrapped in my jacket over her gear, looking like a pissed-off marshmallow. She hasn't stopped complaining since we left the house.
“—could literally be sleeping right now. Like normal people. People who don't drag their—whatever I am—out at ungodly hours to freeze their asses off on a mountain that's probably haunted—”
“You done?” I shove my mask over my neck.
She glares at me, but all it does is make her look even more fuck-able. “Not even close.”
We load our boards and climb in. The doors seal with a hydraulic hiss, and we start ascending into darkness. The town shrinks below us, lights scattered like broken glass.
Ivy presses against the window, breath fogging the glass. “Where are we going?”
“You'll see.”
“I hate surprises.”
I chuckle, pulling her beneath my arm. “You hate not being in control.”
She turns, studying me in the dim emergency lighting. “Pot, meet kettle.”
Fair.
The gondola jerks to a stop quarter-way up the mountain. Not at a station—just suspended over nothing. Ivy's hand shoots out, grabbing my arm.
“What's happening?”
I stand, pulling the manual release. Cold air floods in, sharp enough to cut. “We're getting off.”
“Here?” Her voice pitches higher. “There's no platform!”
“There's a maintenance ledge.” I secure my board to my back, then hold out my hand. “Trust me.”
She stares at my hand like it might bite her. Then at the door. Then back at me.
“You're certifiable.”
“Probably.” I wiggle my fingers. “Coming?”
She takes my hand. Of course she does. Because underneath all that control, all those walls, Ivy craves the chaos as much as I do.
We just hide it better than most.
The ledge is narrower than I promised. Ivy's fingers dig into my forearm hard enough to bruise as we edge along the frozen metal, boards scraping against the gondola's undercarriage. Her breath comes in sharp puffs that crystalize instantly in the brutal cold.
“If I die—” she starts.
“You won't.”
“—I'm haunting your ass forever.”
I pull her against me once we reach the access point, her back to my chest. Below us, the mountain drops away into nothing. No lights. No markers. Just virgin powder and the promise of pain if we fuck this up.
“On three,” I murmur against her ear.
She tenses. “Asher—”
I don't give her three. I give her one, then we're falling.
The impact rattles through my bones, but I keep us upright, carving hard left before she can process what just happened. Her scream cuts through the pre-dawn silence, half terror, half exhilaration.
“You fucking—”
“Focus!” I shout over the wind.
She does. Because that's what Ivy does—adapts, survives, conquers. Her body finds its rhythm, matching mine as we tear down the untouched face. No trails here. No safety nets. Just gravity and instinct and the kind of trust that shouldn't exist between two people this fucked up.
The snow sprays up around us like shattered diamonds. I catch glimpses of her in my peripheral—the determined set of her jaw, the way her hair whips behind her like a war banner. She's magnificent. Lethal. Everything I shouldn't want and can't stop craving.
I bank hard right, leading us through a cluster of pines so tight most people would call it suicide. She follows without hesitation, threading the needle like she was born for this. Maybe she was. Maybe we both were—born for the edge, for the almost-but-not-quite-dying.
“Left!” I call out, barely giving her time to adjust before we hit a natural kicker.
We're airborne.
Time stretches like pulled taffy. I twist, catching sight of her mid-rotation, and fuck—the expression on her face. Pure, unfiltered joy. The kind you can't fake, can't manufacture, can't buy. The kind that only comes from cheating death and winning.
We land hard, powder exploding around us. My knees scream in protest but I push through, carving toward the tree line where I know the maintenance road cuts through.
“Where are we—” Ivy starts, but then she sees it.
The road leads straight into town. Into Veilarath proper, where the streets are still dark, still empty, still coated in last night's snowfall that the plows haven't touched yet.
“You're joking,” she breathes.
I flash her a grin that's all teeth. “Scared?”
Wrong thing to say. Her eyes narrow, and she shoots past me, hitting the road at full speed. The transition from powder to packed snow nearly throws her, but she recovers, leaning into it like she's done this a hundred times before.
We rocket through the sleeping town, our edges carving through the pristine streets. Shop windows reflect our shadows—two figures moving too fast to be anything but ghosts or criminals. Maybe both.
Ivy cuts left at the fountain, sending a wave of snow cascading over the frozen cherubs. I follow, close enough to taste the ice crystals in her wake. We're destroying evidence of the town's perfect morning, leaving scars in the untouched canvas, and something about that feels right. Feels like us.
A light flicks on in one of the apartments above. Then another. We're waking the dead, or at least the nearly dead rich fucks who think they own this place.
“What's the matter, Jameson?” Ivy shouts, but she's laughing. “Scared I'm gonna win?”
I grab her jacket, yanking her into an alley so narrow our boards scrape both walls. We're hidden here, pressed between brick and mortar and bad decisions. Her chest heaves against mine, eyes bright with adrenaline and something else. Something hungrier.
“This was insane,” she says, but her hands are already in my jacket, fisting the leather.
“You loved it.” I crowd her space, backing her against the brick.
“That's not—”
Her board clatters to the ground, followed by mine. We're gonna have to walk back to the house anyway, if we decide not to wake Daniel.
“Then what is?” I ask, caging her in with palms flat against the wall on either side of her head.
She stares up at me, chest still heaving from the ride. Her pupils are blown wide, dark swallowing green. I can see the fight in her—that instinct to push back, to never let anyone corner her. But she doesn't move.
Doesn't try to slip away.
Her fingers slide up my chest, nails scraping over my jacket. “You first.”
My jaw clenches. She's always doing this—turning the tables, refusing to give an inch without taking two.
“What do you want from me?” The words come out rougher than I mean them to.
“Everything.” She yanks me down by the collar, her mouth crashing into mine.
Fuck.
I let her take it. Let her kiss me like she's trying to prove something, tongue sliding past my lips, teeth catching my bottom lip hard enough to sting. My hands stay on the wall even though every instinct screams to touch her, to grab her hips and pin her here until we're both breathless.
But this is hers. This moment. This control.
Her fingers dig into my collar, yanking harder, and I let her.
Let her shove me against the opposite wall, her body slamming into mine like she's claiming territory.
Her mouth doesn't break from mine—it's all teeth and tongue, biting down on my lip until I taste blood.
I growl into her kiss, but I don't take over. Not yet.
She breaks away, gasping, eyes wild. In these seconds, I know what she needs. More than anything and anyone I know what she needs.
Her hands shove at my jacket zipper, pulling it down rough enough to catch skin. Cold air hits my chest, but her palms follow, scraping over my pecs, nails leaving red lines. She's frantic, unbuckling my belt with shaking fingers, and I watch her, letting the smirk creep onto my face.
“That's it,” I murmur, voice low and rough. “Take what you want, baby. Show me how bad you need it.”