Mandolin will never be able to find me again.
I keep that burner phone in my pocket at all times, always charged, always checking to make sure the prepaid minutes loaded on it haven’t expired.
I can’t miss that one call from her.
All of this can’t be for nothing.
Though calling it nothing hardly seems fair.
This month spent rediscovering Oliver has been something, too.
I always remembered him as this high-class executive in expensive power suits, a luxury penthouse, a wine cabinet worth more than the GDP of some small countries. The beast hid behind the suit, his twisted and beautiful menagerie of birds of prey inked on every inch of him, ready to devour me the instant we were naked.
In Canada, I meet another side of this man.
A hint of the Oliver Major I knew and an encore of the man he’s become.
And getting to see him as this rustic country man out in the wild, chopping wood with an axe like he’s let his inner lumberjack out to play?
Okay.
I won’t lie.
It’s nice.
It shows me who Oliver is without corrupt companies and never-ending cloak and dagger games.
Without Galentron, even if Durham and his wolves took his leg, took his eye, took so much of his life the same way they took mine.
And even if the mushy, snowy ground is hell on stiletto heels and the rigors of wilderness life have ruined my manicure, it has a certain charm.
I think I just might love it.
I know I still love him.
It’s tentative at first. We’re shy around each other, after my ugly cry and that first passionate reunion kiss.
Me.
As if Fuchsia Delaney could ever be called anything like shy.
But there’s a night when we’re sitting on the patchwork-quilt-covered sofa in front of the fireplace. Glasses of cheap wine that still taste just as good as ones many years ago, especially when they’re flavored bittersweet like my candy.
So much laughter my sides hurt in the best ways.
I don’t ever remember laughing so freely, but we’ve been trading half-drunk stories all night over our drinks.
Him telling me about a trip to Alaska, getting chased down a frozen river by an angry mama grizzly bear in the middle of a December blizzard with his prosthetic barely hanging on by its clasp lock.
Me telling him about the time I spilled hot chocolate fondue down the front of a Congolese war leader’s crotch and had to pretend I’d done that on purpose to seduce him back to my room to clean it with my tongue.
Instead of dispatching him with a poisoned dart to the neck.
But there’s a smoldering look at that mention of my tongue. A growl half interested, half possessive, as if I’m still his after all these years and he doesn’t like the idea of me even pretending to use my tongue on another man.
A tongue I flick at him mockingly, rolling that glistening bit of candy to the tip and catching it with my teeth, inviting him to take it—if he can.
A challenge he accepts.
His mouth crashes against mine, the bit of candy caught between us in hot little sugar-sweet, passion-wild tastes.
Then suddenly we’re on the floor, tearing at each other on the rug in front of the fireplace.
“Fuchsia!” he snarls my name with hunger.
Every wicked, long dormant bit of me tingles.
It’s just as magical as the first time.
Spontaneous. Insane. Frantic.
Pinning each other against the hard surface, rolling, grappling, then gasping, thrusting, writhing.
Oliver’s no slower for that prosthetic, no less keen with only one eye to rake over my bare skin. He watches me with an intensity that makes me bite my lip, devouring every reaction.
He makes me writhe for him even more than he did years ago, makes me impatient, draws it out until I get so angry I take what I want like I always do.
While he wakes up a passion inside me I thought had died out forever.
I blaze so bright, so free, under his touch.
My need, my hunger, my longing, my love all painted in magnetic, vivid colors.
It sounds ridiculous, but yes, I bloom for Oliver Major again.
Spreading, panting, hissing my pleasure in every kiss and seeing new shades of life.
They’re pink and hot and wild.
His tongue dips inside me and tastes me like candy.
I scream so loud I think I must scare every living creature in the forest surrounding this cozy little hideaway.
And I wrap my thighs around his hips, pulling him into me and crashing down on him, losing myself in the idea that just maybe…
This could be forever.
This could be us now.
For real this time.
Because one way or another, Oliver kept his promise.
We’re going to be together.
We’re going to be okay.
We’re going to reconnect with Mandolin.
Though we have to take a short vacation from our secluded pseudo-honeymoon.
When the time comes, we need to relocate to another cabin buried in the snow, even farther north outside Fairbanks, Alaska.