Killian Read online

  everyone here calls it a highway even though it’s nothing more than a two-lane road heading out of town - and I mean to ask where we’re going exactly, but I don’t.

  "Don't you know your fairytales?" I tease.

  Killian laughs. "I think it's very safe to assume that the answer to that question is definitely fuck no."

  "Except you know who the Beast was."

  "A misunderstood loner living by himself in a castle? I empathize with him."

  I snort. "So you fancy yourself misunderstood?"

  "I have many layers. Like an onion,” he says, his tone indignant.

  "You're smelly and you make people cry?"

  "Tell me you haven't cried over me."

  I sniff. "You're awfully full of yourself, aren't you? You think I've cried over you?"

  "With frustration?"

  I choke back a laugh. "Okay, I can imagine you drive lots of people to sob with frustration."

  "Exactly."

  "But not me,” I add.

  "Not even when I put the rules up at the bakery?"

  "Were you trying to make me cry?"

  "Of course not. I'm just saying that you were probably pretty frustrated obviously because of your intense sexual attraction to me. Having to be around a man this intoxicatingly good-looking really had to be difficult."

  "Yes, that was clearly the source of my frustration."

  “It’s hard to lust after something you can’t have.”

  I snort. “I’m pretty sure I could have had you any time I wanted, caveman.”

  “Just so we’re clear, cupcake,” he says, glancing over at me with a grin, “you can have me anytime, anywhere.”

  He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively before turning his attention back to the road.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘Likewise, caveman.'”

  31

  Killian

  There are a few minutes of laughing and bantering back and forth in the truck before Lily turns to ask if we're headed to my cabin.

  "You said you didn't want to be seen in public with me."

  "I did not say it like that," she protests, shaking her head. "Not exactly."

  "It's alright. I'm not offended in the least that you want to keep me your dirty little secret." Lily punches me playfully in the arm. "Your boy toy."

  "Stop," she says, laughing.

  "Your sex slave."

  "You wish you were my sex slave."

  "Yes, ma'am, I do."

  "You know, this is like the beginning of every bad thriller ever," she notes as we turn down Burnt Pine Road and begin the winding climb up the mountain.

  "Bad thriller?" I ask. "I was hoping it was more like awesome porno."

  "Very romantic," she says. "This is the part of the thriller where the girl goes to the remote mountain cabin with the questionable man and you scream at the screen, 'No, don't do it!'"

  "Who are you calling questionable?"

  She laughs, but she doesn't answer.

  "I'm kidding. This isn't the start of a porno," I say, pausing. "Unless you want it to be, I mean."

  "We'll see how the date goes."

  "That sounds promising," I admit. "Just so you know, I do put out on dates."

  She laughs. "Just the words I wanted to hear."

  I cover her thigh with my palm, keeping myself from not sliding it further until it's between her legs the way I want to do. She shifts at my touch, squirming the way I know she does when she's turned on. It's all I can do to keep my eyes on the road and refrain from pulling over to the side to debauch her. But I'm determined to have a real date, the kind I think she wants. Something respectable, that shows her I'm not just trying to land her in bed.

  I'm definitely trying to land her in bed, though. It's just that – and this is a surprise to me I think I want more from her.

  "We're almost there." I put my hand back on the steering wheel and clear my throat.

  "What made you pick a cabin way up here?" she asks.

  I shrug. "I wanted to be alone, I guess. Didn't want to be bothered with people."

  She nods. "Yet you decided to keep coming down to the bakery and bugging me."

  "You didn't annoy me."

  She laughs. "I definitely couldn't say the same thing about you."

  "I only annoyed you because you were so hot for me. Just admit it."

  "Fine. I was a little bit hot for you."

  "I knew it."

  "Don't let that knowledge go to your head." I snort, and she laughs. "Don't even say it."

  "I said nothing."

  "You were going to ask which head I meant."

  "You have a dirty mind." I make my voice as innocent-sounding as possible, when in reality my mind is as far from innocent as it can be. I force my eyes back onto the road, and definitely not on Lily and the way her long legs look in that little floral dress. Or the way her light blue button-down sweater should make her look more conservative but somehow fails to do so, making her look sultry and sexy instead and failing to disguise the way the fitted top drops low on her breasts. Her hair falls down her shoulders, one lock across the front of her chest, the tip disappearing just inside the top of her dress. I want to follow it with my fingers, then slip that cardigan off her shoulders. . .

  I clear my throat, shifting in the seat to disguise the fact that I'm getting a hard-on just thinking about undressing her. I'm trying to behave myself, to show her that I'm not a complete and total Neanderthal.

  I'm completely screwed.

  We pull into the driveway. "Your cabin looks really nice."

  I spent yesterday finishing up all my of unfinished projects and cleaning up the cabin so it would be suitable for a date -- at least, the kind of date I think a woman like Lily should have. I lined the driveway with solar lights and strung lighting over the back deck.

  Luke helped me create a dinner menu today and prep all of the ingredients. That's right. A fucking dinner menu. One that doesn't include something I hunted. All right, but it does include fish I caught from the river early this morning.

  Can't take the mountain out of the man entirely.

  Opening the passenger side of the truck, I take Lily's hand as she steps out, my heart suddenly starting to thump faster. Shit, I'm nervous more nervous than when I showed up at her house. I'm definitely more nervous than when I was fucking her.

  Why the hell am I so nervous all of a sudden?

  She pauses in the middle of the driveway, looking up. "The sky is just so. . . big out here."

  "Yep. I like to sit on the deck at night." Standing behind her, I draw her against me, my hand sliding to her abdomen, and she shivers. My cock twitches and I try to focus on anything except the way she smells when I breathe her in something just barely floral, lilac I think.

  "I bet the view of the stars out here is just fantastic at night."

  "It is. You'll see as soon as it gets dark. There are so few lights out here, they're perfect. It was a selling point of the cabin. Come on."

  I walk to the cabin with her, only because I'm afraid if I stand there with my arms around Lily much longer I'll be stripping her down right there in the driveway. She stops just inside the cabin door, unmoving as she looks around, her hands clutched together. Shit, she's just as nervous as I am.

  "You can come inside, you know," I tease. "I'll even give you the ten-dollar tour if you want. It's not much, but I made it, so I'm proud of it."

  "You made this?" She shrugs off her sweater and I take it from her hands, laying it across the top of my leather armchair when we reach the living room.

  "Not entirely," I explain. "I bought it off this guy Bill Dunham, this older guy. His wife died a few years ago and his kids came to take him to move in with them. The mountain was just too harsh for him anymore, and this place was too much for him to take care of. It had really gone to rot, but the bones of it were still here. I tore out a lot of it and reworked it myself."

  She still stand