STORY EXCERPT

Aliana

A hand closes around my upper arm. I spin, heart hammering, and find Beau beside me.

Rain darkens his hair and sends the loose waves falling across his forehead, the lighter strands catching whenever lightning tears through the trees. He wears a dark long-sleeved shirt plastered to his chest, and every breath expands the fabric against muscle before the rain flattens it again.

“What are you doing out here?” His voice cuts through the storm.

“My tent’s flooding.”

“I can see that.”

“The branch is diverting the water.”

“I can see that too.”

I yank my arm from his grip. “Then help me move it instead of narrating this disaster.”

His eyes narrow, but he steps past me and grips the thicker end of the branch. I take the other side, and together we drag it several feet downhill, releasing a rush of muddy water that spills away from the tent.

For one breath, relief floods me. Then the rear corner of my tent collapses.

The stake tears free from the saturated ground, and the wind catches the loosened fly, snapping it violently against the poles. I run toward it, but Beau catches me around the waist before I make it two steps.

The contact empties my lungs.

His arm locks across my stomach, dragging me back against the hard heat of his body as a broken limb crashes down where I was about to run. It strikes the ground with a wet, splintering thud, spraying mud across my legs.

For a moment, neither of us moves.

Rain pours over us as his forearm remains firm across my middle, his palm spread against my side. Every line of him presses into my back, solid and hot despite the cold water soaking through our clothes. My body responds with a violent awareness that leaves no room for fear, weather, or common sense.

His breath touches the shell of my ear. “Don’t move until I tell you.”

I nod because my voice has abandoned me.

Beau releases me slowly, his hand sliding away from my waist with enough reluctance to make me wonder whether I imagined it. He steps around the fallen limb and examines the tent, tugging once at the damaged pole before looking toward the water running beneath the floor.

“This is done.” Beau stares at the wreckage, his expression already settled.

“I can fix it.” I step toward the scattered gear, reaching for anything I can salvage.

“Not tonight.” His voice stays calm, but firm.

“My sleeping bag is in there.” I look back toward the mess.

“So is half the hillside.” He gestures toward the debris scattered down the slope.

“I can’t leave everything.” The words come out sharper than I mean them to.

Another gust tears through the camp, and the loose fly snaps hard enough to drown out my words.

Beau turns toward me, rain cutting over his face as his patience finally breaks. “Allie, your tent is sitting in moving water beneath damaged trees, one pole is bent, and the ground won’t hold another stake. We’re exposed out here, and every second we stay puts you at greater risk.”

The use of my name stops me more effectively than the force in his voice. He’s never said it before. Not to me. I didn’t even realize he knew it.

Lightning flares between the trees, illuminating the camp in stark white pieces. Somewhere to our left, Mikey shouts that the other tents are secure. Tia answers from farther uphill.

Beau bends into my tent, grabs my sealed clothing bag and sleeping bag, then shoves both against my chest.

“Take these.”

“Where am I supposed to go?”

“With me.”

I stare at him through the rain. “What?”

“My tent is on higher ground, and it’s built for two.”

The storm seems to pause inside me, even as it rages around us.

“I can go with Melanie and Tommy.”

“They’re already sharing a tent too small for two people.”

“Tia?”

“She has medical equipment spread through half of hers, and I’m closer.”

His gaze drops to my mouth for one searing instant before returning to my eyes. “Move.”

I clutch the bags against me as he gathers my pack and slings it over one shoulder. Before I can argue again, his free hand closes around mine. The contact is warm, rough, and absolute.

He leads me through the rain, placing his body between mine and the worst of the wind as we cross the dark campsite. Water rushes around our boots, branches thrash overhead, and lightning fractures the sky beyond the ridge, but all I can feel is the grip of his hand around mine and the impossible steadiness of him pulling me forward.

Two weeks of distance collapses in less than twenty yards.

We reach his tent and I’m soaked, breathless, and following Beau Calder into the one place he has spent fourteen days making certain I never got near.

ADULT EXCERPT

Her eyes close for half a second, and the look on her face is so openly affected that my control narrows to something thin and dangerous.

“I’d spread your thighs and slide my fingers through your pussy, feeling exactly how wet you are for me. I’d stroke you until your body started chasing my hand, then push my fingers inside you and keep going until you couldn’t hold back the sound of my name.”

A moan slips from her lips and my cock jerks hard against my pants. A hot bead of precum leaks at the tip as my hand moves toward her before I drag it back. I lock my jaw and hold her gaze, desperate to hear that sound again.

“I’d keep you right on the edge until you forgot there was anyone beyond this tent. Until every thought in your head narrowed to my hand, my voice, and whether I was finally going to give you what you were begging for.”

Her mouth opens, but no answer comes.

The silence is worse. It leaves me free to imagine her undone beneath my hand, my name broken apart in her throat as her body tightens around my fingers as I watch every reaction I’d spent weeks pretending not to want.

“Beau.” This time, my name carries need, and my cock throbs hard enough to make me grind my teeth.

Still, I don’t reach for her. I stay where I am, close enough to see the fine tremor in her legs and the strain in her hands, as she stands there looking at me as though the things I’ve described have already happened somewhere inside her.

One move would make them real.