Page 11 of Devoured By the Forbidden Mountain Man

His thumb moved lightly against my hip. “Tomorrow was already going to be interesting. And the employment part is still simple.” Rex’s hand remained warm at my waist while he continued, his voice calm. “You work for North Fork under the terms we agreed on. The loft is separate. This is separate too.”

I studied him for a moment, then nodded.

“I know.”

I did know, and hearing him make the boundary clear without turning the kiss into a problem made me want him again.

So I kissed him.

This one was shorter, but there was nothing tentative about it. When I stepped back, Rex let his hands fall away instead of trying to extend the moment beyond where I wanted it to go.

“I should get upstairs before I make tomorrow complicated in a completely different way.”

His eyes stayed on mine. “That would be my recommendation.”

I laughed softly. “Very responsible.”

“I’m trying something new.”

We carried my loft groceries across the property together. Rex took the heavier bag and Gavin’s folder while I kept the smaller one. Thoughts of Gavin and awareness of the man walking beside me occupied entirely different parts of my mind.

The rain had thinned into fine mist. Wet pine and wood smoke hung in the cold air, and orange Halloween lights glowed through the trees from a neighboring property farther down the road.

At the office, Rex returned Gavin’s folder to the locked file cabinet before joining me beneath the overhang by the loft stairs.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “We’ll start with Meredith.”

I tightened my fingers around the spare key. “And the expense desk. If you were hoping the kiss might distract me from that, it didn’t.”

His expression shifted with dry resignation. “That’s unfortunate.”

I smiled and started up the stairs.

Inside the loft, I put away the groceries, set my phone on the bedside table, and pulled my notebook from my bag.

The page I had filled that afternoon began with routine work: receipts, mileage records, vendor invoices, supply ordering. Near the bottom, I had written one name: Meredith Stokes.

I left the notebook open beside my phone, changed for bed, and touched my still-warm mouth once before turning off the light.

Chapter 2

Rex

At four forty-eight in the morning, the wind shoved against the house while I finished another set with the barbell. I’d been getting up before dawn to lift for most of my adult life, long enough that the routine usually worked without requiring much thought. The pattern was weight, breath, controlled movement, then more weight. It burned off restless energy and cleared my head before work.

This morning, it wasn’t clearing a damn thing.

I set the bar down and straightened, breathing hard. Sweat dampened the back of my old T-shirt despite the cold pressing against the windows, and Georgia Dean’s mouth was still the first thing that came to mind when I reached for my water.

It wasn’t just the first kiss. The second one was worse.

I’d made the first move in my kitchen, but Georgia had looked at me afterward with those warm brown eyes and kissed me again without waiting for me to make another move. I could still remember her fingers twisted in my henley and the slide of her hand along the back of my neck.

Remembering it while wearing thin workout shorts was a poor decision.

I took a long drink and gave myself another minute before going back to the weights.

Georgia was twenty-eight years old, fully capable of deciding who she wanted to kiss, and apparently very good at making a forty-six-year-old man lose track of his rep count. None of that changed what we had to do today.