Timber Lake (The Snowy Range Series, #2) by Nya Rawlyns Read Free Book Online Page B

him of the biker and how easily Michael had defused the situation with finesse. Finesse masking a coiled core of violence, like a slow burn joined at the hip with the rolling boil of a hair-trigger temper.
    Below the thin line of lips he’d almost kissed, a deep cleft split the strong jawline, still visible despite the heavy growth of beard.
    The image of the man was square and balanced, the muscling pronounced on tree-trunk thighs that had tormented him to the point of begging. But he hadn’t begged. He’d done far worse. He’d apologized, trivializing his own needs and cutting himself off at the knees.
    Michael muttered, “I have to go,” but still he held tight, rough palm to bony flesh, the thumbs flicking at Sonny’s waistband. It seemed a nervous gesture rather than sensual exploration.
    Sonny peered down into eyes now shadowed in confusion, mirroring his own state of mind. He had no experience for this, no explanation for why he leaned down, cupping the whiskered cheeks, tilting his own head to the side. The whisper of regret overrode good sense—regret he would forever endure if he didn’t, just this once, taste the man jousting with his emotions.
    Attraction was one thing. Lust was another. But this... this was on a different level. A level so wrong he had no choice but to pursue it, taste it, scent it, cradle it, worship it... It, that it was Michael Brooks.
    Granite and satin, dry heat and slick moisture greeted his retreat and advance. Probing and opening, Sonny thrust his tongue into a cavern of resistance, sweeping aside the pain as Michael punished his flesh with sharp nips and lit his nerves in an agonizing reminder of who was stronger.
    It was no contest.
    Michael’s neck arched up and away, ceding his advantage. Sonny pressed on the man’s windpipe, merciless and relentless. Dropping his arms, Michael submitted to the pursuit, the illusion of passivity just that... an illusion.
    A chill bled into the crevasses, oozing in and around the small spaces buffering skin stretched thin. Caving to the warning signs, Sonny eased up, allowing his thumbs to trace a meandering path along the join of bone and throat. Palms flattened, he cradled massive pecs and taut buds, his fingers issuing a final challenge—a vicious pinch, an intake of breath, then release.
    Conflicted, he felt the pull of the safety of his cabin and the lure of his bed, wondering if he headed up the incline, would Michael follow and finish what they’d started the previous night? Or would he simply walk away once more, without explanation. Cold, cruel and distant.
    Michael said, so softly it might have been Sonny’s imagination, “I have to go.”
    The space next to him emptied, but he felt no need to fill it with pursuit or questions. He stood at the fence and watched the aspen quaking in the freshening breeze, appreciating how it soothed and cooled his overheated flesh and whisked away the sounds of retreat, leaving him to mourn for both of them.
    ****
    I t was too early to check in, but late enough everyone who was going to check out would have already done so, yet still... there was a middle-aged woman in capris and sandals, tugging on the hand of a five or six-year-old, muttering mom words. Threats, the kind that ended up with her counting to ten while the kid learned the wrong lesson.
    Sally tended the counter as always. Dolly hovered behind her, bearing hoagies wrapped in white paper from the dive across the road. Comfort food. Dripping with coleslaw on roast beef. The fragrance made Michael’s stomach growl. He’d skipped breakfast.
    The contrast between mother and daughter had always been pronounced. Sally was hawk faced with beady eyes and sunken cheek bones, lines etched deep from a lifetime of disapproving. Her daughter had always been doughy and plastic, perpetually infantile and subservient, eyes blank and downcast.
    None of that had changed, not the physical bits, the overall impression. You had to stare for some time,