My rear entrance stings slightly with a shy, secret pulse.
His fingers were inside me there too, gentle and relentless, coaxing me open until I was lost and overwhelmed, begging for more even as I trembled. I have never felt so exposed, so cherished, so utterly owned.
A deep part of me recognizes a truth I don’t dare acknowledge.
I belong to Stryker. Now. Forever.
The cabin is quiet except for the distant, low pop of the fire in the hearth.
He’s stoked it already. Of course he has. Always the protector.
I roll to my side, and the sheet slides across my sore skin like a reprimand. The indent where his head lay is still visible, a shallow valley in the pillow. I touch it with two fingers. The fabric is cold. He has been gone long enough for the heat to leach away.
Intently I listen.
He’s not in the cabin.
Then I hear the rhythmic scrape of metal on snow outside, steady and patient, and I exhale.
He let me sleep. He stoked the fire and went to work while I rested. The thought ripples through me with warmth.
And that sensation is immediately chased away by a chill.
I don’t get to keep this. I don’t get to keep him.
By the end of the day, Stryker and what we shared will be nothing more than a memory.
Sudden tears sting my eyes, and I furiously blink them away.
I’m Lyra Moreau, daughter of an infamous thief, on the run myself, and I have always been pragmatic about facts. Ever since my mother died, I haven’t allowed myself to be burdened with emotions.
So this—whatever is going on with Stryker—is as unfamiliar as it is unwelcome.
Knowing that I can’t lay around any longer now that the snow has stopped, I sit up.
The locket my father stole rests against my sternum.
His voice drifts up from the past, rough with warning. ”Always stay one step ahead of the police, Lyra. Two steps ahead of the bad guys.”
But he always smiled after he said it, as if he somehow thought everything was a game. Like he was a good guy in his own story.
I’m not convinced that I’m two steps ahead of the bad guys, and I’m all but falling for a man who is as dangerous to me as the police.
I freeze.
There’s no way I’m falling for Stryker.
The idea is absurd.
My rational mind screams that I barely know him. But my heart waves the warning aside. He’s taken excellent care of me, and everything we’ve shared at the cabin proves what kind of person he is.
But… My rational mind isn’t done with me.
He’s been sleeping with Allie. Not Lyra.
I know enough about him to understand that he has an unshakable sense of what’s right and what’s wrong.
If he knew the truth about me, he’d turn me in. And I can’t tell if he’d be pissed…or hurt that I’ve been lying to him all along.
