Page 13 of Her Forbidden Mountain Man

“I know,” he says quietly. “Me too.”

He carries me to the bed and sets me near the headboard. I kick at him, but he catches my ankle without hurting me. When I try to claw his face, he traps both my wrists in one hand.

His body comes over mine. Everything stops.

Samuel braces himself above me, one knee pressed into the mattress between my legs. His broad chest rises and falls. Dark hair curls at the open collar of his shirt, and his beard frames a mouth I suddenly can’t stop looking at.

His gaze locks onto mine. Heat rushes across my skin. This is wrong. Everything about this is wrong. But my body doesn’t understand right or wrong when Samuel is above me, his enormous hand circling both my wrists, his muscular thigh brushing mine.

“I won’t hurt you,” he says.

His voice is low and rough.

“Then let me go.”

Agony twists across his face. “I can’t.”

“Please!”

I can see the pain in his face and I know I have to exploit it, otherwise I’ll never be free. He looks down and then looks up at me again.

“Please,” I beg. “I swear I’ll stay in this bed the whole night.”

I see hesitation in his face. Then he reluctantly says the words I’ve been wanting to hear, “Okay. But if you leave, then I’ll have no choice. Please don’t make me regret this.”

“I won’t. I swear, I won’t.”

“Go to sleep, Sophie.”

He walks out of the room and lays on the couch. It takes less than fifteen minutes for his breathing to deepen and his snoring to take over. I wait another ten before I move.

I could wake him and ask about the money again. I could force him to explain why my father told me he was a thief. Instead, I slip out of bed.

I find my clothes in the bathroom and pull them on without turning on the light. My boots are beside the front door. Samuel’s truck keys hang from a hook in the kitchen, but I don’t take them. The truck is loud enough to wake him, and the road is too narrow for me to risk crashing in the dark.

I’ll reach Mrs. McCrae. Eleven miles. It sounds impossible, but impossible is better than the risk of being tied to Samuel’s bed.

I unlock the front door. The witch decoration cackles again. My heart nearly stops.

I glance toward the couch. Nothing moves. I ease the door open and step onto the porch. I descend the steps and mud sinks beneath my boots.

The pumpkins grin at me as I pass, their carved faces bright and eerie in the darkness. I reach the edge of the clearing before I realize I have no idea which way Samuel drove in. The road disappears beneath a carpet of leaves. There are no lights. No signs. Nothing but mountains, rain, and forest.

A branch cracks somewhere behind me. I spin around. The cabin sits thirty yards away, warm and glowing in the darkness.

The safest place for miles. Except for the man sleeping inside. Another sound comes from the trees. Closer this time.

I hug my arms around myself. Maybe it’s a deer… or a bear? Or maybe the men from the market followed us after all? I turn away from the cabin and force myself into the darkness.

CHAPTER

THREE

SAMUEL

One moment I’m asleep. The next, I’m sitting upright with my hand wrapped around the pistol beneath my pillow.

The fire has burned low. Rain taps against the bedroom window, and the wind pushes a branch against the cabin with a scrape that sounds like fingernails on glass.