Chapter 10 Thorne
Thorne
They say a man knows the second something stops being casual—and starts being his.
I knew the exact second it happened to me.
The night she fell asleep in my arms, breathing into my chest like she belonged there. Like I was a place she could rest instead of a storm she should run from.
Now—a few nights later—she thinks she can laugh with someone else like that moment meant nothing.
The Devil’s Brew is louder than it should be for a Tuesday night—Zane’s idea of “low-key” is apparently a live DJ and three fog machines.
The storm stopped dropping snow a few hours ago and now all of Devil’s Peak is covered in a cold blanket of white but that doesn’t stop the locals from throwing a party.
When I push through the Brew’s doors, heat hits me first. The place is dressed up—cobwebs in the rafters, pumpkins gagging at the bar, string lights tangled like a constellation.
People scatter when I walk through, not out of respect so much as recognition.
I’m a thing they know—predictable as a storm.
And there she is.
She’s a contradiction made flesh: a sweet little witch, half fairy tale half fierce.
The skirt of her dress flares around her hips, and every inch of her is deliberate.
Black leather corset cinched against the pale sweetness of the dress.
Lace kisses her collarbone; a wreath of tiny dried flowers and twine sits in her hair.
Someone should have called the authorities.
She looks like every dangerous myth I ever wanted to believe in.
My chest tightens. It’s a physical thing, sharp and ugly, and the sound in the room dulls around it.
Some guy with a costume badge—city boy, hair slicked like he thinks sweat is an accessory—leans into her with the easy, practiced charm of someone used to getting his way.
He grins at Aspen like he’s selling her something.
She laughs, a bright sound that lands somewhere in my ribs, and he presses closer. His hand flicks toward her arm.
I move before I think. My boots hit the floor; the crowd parts. I go straight to where he is, to where Aspen is. I put myself between them like a place no one is allowed to cross.
“You alright?” I ask the man, voice low enough that it’s a threat wrapped in a question.
He blinks like he’s been glare-struck. “Uh—yeah. She’s—look, man, I was just—”
“You were just hitting on my girl,” I say. I don’t mean the word. It fits me like a shard of glass. It’s inaccurate in one tense but right in the other. He swallows.
Aspen’s eyes flick to me, amused and dangerous. There’s that smile—full of trouble. “Thorne,” she says. “You came.”
“You’re avoiding me,” I tell him, and it’s not a question.
He laughs too quickly. “No way. I’m just—never mind.” He lets out a breath he didn’t need to take, moves back, and finds a new target—someone less dangerous and more grateful for attention. I watch him fail to hold eye contact, the way men do when they’ve been shown a lion that can’t be tamed.
Aspen steps closer, hand finding mine, and the current that runs through me when we touch is the kind that demands an answer.
“You showed up,” she says, like I had a choice. Her voice drops to something softer, meant for me and me only. “I knew you would.”
“Thought you’d be easy to babysit,” I mutter.
“You’re the worst babysitter in the world. Also the worst at costumes.” She tilts her head, taking in my usual worn denim and flannel outfit. “But you’re also the best at making sure I don’t get kissed by idiots.”
Her laughter nudges the corner of my mouth and I almost grin, but the grin turns hard when I see the way another man watches her. The look is hungry in the kind of way that thinks every woman is a meal. I move again, smoother this time, taking her with me. “Let’s go.”
I move in the direction of the door but on the way Winter finds us, all flounces and white hair and that grin like she’s already wrecked several innocent things tonight. She squeezes Aspen’s shoulder like she owns a piece of this decision to show up in the first place.
“You two are breaking my heart,” she teases. “Dance with me, Aspen.”
Aspen shrugs, letting go of my hand long enough to hook an arm through Winter’s. “One dance. Just one.”
I watch them go and the tightness in my ribs goes primeval. People we know line the edges of the floor—Perry and Ruby flirting with a T-rex couple; Fox and Cal in an argument over whether zombie or vampire is more accurate for 80s nostalgia.
I try not to care about the way Aspen moves. Not really. Her skirt sways and sparks small fires under my skin. She catches my eye mid-spin and mouths something like stay, and I swear I almost left then and there. But I stay.
The song slows and the DJ chants for “slow dances.” Aspen’s partner slips away, and in the crowd someone hands her a drink—some idiot with a bad smile. I don’t think. My hand clamps around his wrist like a vice; he flinches.
“Not tonight,” I say.
He tries some joke about small-town charm and I answer with the kind of silence that eats men’s guts.
He stumbles away as Aspen’s mouth quirks; she looks at me like I’m the problem and the solution at once.
The heat between us isn’t just what our bodies do to each other; it’s what we do to everyone else.
It’s a liability and a promise and this bar is full of people who don’t understand boundaries until I make them.
“Thorne,” Aspen murmurs, voice low and amused. “You’re ferocious.”
“Only when I need to be,” I say.
We leave the floor, drift into the part of the Brew that’s quieter—a corner near the fireplace where the shadows stretch long.
I pull her close enough that the heat from my chest ghosts along her back.
She presses into me voluntarily, and the world narrows to the scrape of our bodies and the hum in my ear.
“You look ridiculous,” she says against my throat. Her breath is sweet with cider.
“Ridiculous is the new black,” I answer, but my fingers are already at the tiny buckle of her corset, thumbs drawing the leather over the lace like a ritual. I don’t undress her; I don’t need to. This is not the slow undressing of lovers. This is the quick reveal of a hunter who knows his terrain.
“Don’t start,” she warns, but her voice is thin and fragile the way it is when she’s dangerous and tired. I love that version of her. It’s honest.
“Start what?” I ask, and I don’t even try to make my voice lighter.
She looks at me, eyes fusing shadow and fire. “Thorne—don’t be an idiot.”
“Been that all my life.”
She laughs, short and incredulous. “And somehow I still show up.”
“You shouldn’t feel like you have to prove anything to me,” I say, not a question.
She shifts in my arms, hips brushing the seam of my jeans like a minor war. “You think I do?” She bites her lower lip, the little motion that makes me forget to breathe.
“Maybe I’m selfish,” I admit. “Maybe I need to know that no one can just walk in and make you laugh like that.”
She stares at me, the way I stare when I’m trying to decode her. “Everyone makes me laugh,” she says. “Not everyone makes me want to move in with a man who hoards wood for no reason.”
I plant my hand at the small of her back, fingers splaying like I’m claiming the space where her spine meets muscle. “Then stop making it easy for them.”
Her eyes darken. “So possessive.”
I lean my forehead to hers. “Possession is a warm thing.”
She squeezes my hand, teasing, brand-new mischief in her face. “You say that like it’s a compliment.”
“It is.”
A slow heat coils through my gut at the thought of all the men who tried to take what’s mine. She’s not property. She’s a person. A wild thing. A hurricane that wears lipstick and tells me to stop being dramatic.
“You’re also spectacularly infuriating,” I tell her, and it’s true and I mean it and it’s also a declaration.
She snorts, then her expression folds under something tender. “You know I don’t do easy, right?”
“Good,” I rasp. “Me neither.”
She turns her head, and I catch the arc of her jaw, the line down her neck.
I can smell the flowers in her hair—crisp, like autumn.
My hand slides up, under the hem of her dress, fingers finding the warmth of her thigh.
It’s a small, deliberate movement meant to say more than my mouth ever can without sounding like an apology I’m not ready to give.
Her breath clips. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t tell me to stop. She leans into the motion like someone leaning into a promise.
I press closer, not enough to break the rules we wrote for ourselves, but close enough that I can see the pulse in her throat, bright and dangerous.
“Why haven’t you touched me yet?” she asks, and the words are raw and brittle with truth.
The question hits me like a slap. Not because I don’t want her—God, I want her—but because the thing lodged under my ribs is delicate as bone. I built walls with wood and silence. Touching her has always felt like breaking something I’m not ready to fix.
“Because I’m careful with the things I don’t want to lose,” I say, the answer thin with confession.
“That’s not a good reason.”
“No.” I swallow. “It’s a coward’s one.”
She laughs, short and almost unbelieving. “You’re terrible.”
“Yeah,” I rasp. “I am.”
Her fingers curl into my flannel at my chest, anchoring us both. “Then touch me,” she orders, and the word is the sweetest kind of dare.
I don’t move with the skillful patience she expects.
I move with the ugly, dangerous honesty I should have learned how to have sooner.
My hand slides higher, under lace and leather, coaxing the heat of her skin to the surface.
I stop, thumb hovering at the edge, where private heat begins.
I don’t cross. Not in front of people. Not like this.
But I let my fingers rest there, the softest of claims.
“You piss me off,” she whispers in my ear, voice small and big and everything in between. “And also—everything else.”