I dove into his massive arms like I hadn’t seen him in years. He held me, squeezing me, stealing my breath. He turned me, put me on the porch of the cabin, and then touched my face.

We kissed.

My body instantly went on fire.

“I quit my job today,” I said. “I saw Thad. I talked to Lenore. And I gave up my apartment.”

Osiris’s eyes went wide. “I went to see Michelle. I punched Dane in the jaw. I hung out with Adley. Then I cried like a baby in front of Michelle when I was leaving.”

“Holy shit,” I whispered. “Syi…”

I started to smile.

He kissed me. The kiss broke. I grabbed for his beard.

“Talk later?” I asked.

“Fucking right,” he growled.

Osiris turned and took me into the cabin. He took me right to the bedroom. He tossed me on the bed and I hurried to jump back off. I ran to him, my hands clawing up his shirt. I had this fantasy of just ripping it open, sending buttons everywhere.

I pulled and nothing happened.

Osiris started to laugh.

“What?” I asked.

“You wanted to rip my shirt, huh?”

“Stop.”

“Did you bring some clothes?” he asked me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

He got this wicked sexy grin on his face. He grabbed my shirt and pulled, lifting it over my head. Then he grabbed the front of my pants and opened them. Pressing his body to mine, he knocked me back and down to the bed and stripped my pants off my body.

I felt my toes curl as I watched him work.

Then he put his massive hands on my panties.

“This is how you fucking do it, sugar,” he said.

Like they were made from paper, Osiris ripped my panties from my body. Ripping them down the middle. Then ripping the sides. Pulling them off of me in pieces.

My jaw dropped, but more importantly, I was ready for him.

His hands touched my inner thighs, opening my legs, and he came forward.

It was unexpected.

I felt the roughness of his beard against me a moment before his tongue flicked against my soft wetness. I tilted my head back and let out a long sigh of relief. But that sigh wasn’t good enough for Osiris. He wanted more. And he got just that. The tip of his tongue slid down and thrust forward, entering me. I gasped and grabbed for the sheets. As quickly as his tongue entered me, he eased out, up, and curled his tongue around my clit. His lips came together and he started to drink me. Suckling against my wetness.

“Fuck,” I growled.

That was the last word I’d get for a few minutes. The harder he sucked against my sex the less words I knew and the less air I could find.

My back arched and then slammed down to the bed. My legs pulled against the edge of the bed as my ass lifted up. Osiris slid his massive, strong hands to my ass and squeezed tight, pulling me against him even closer.

I couldn’t think straight, at least not until I started to come. My hips rocked up and down, working against the movements of his tongue, making everything feel even better. I moved my hands from the bed to Osiris’s shoulders, trying to grab them, but there was no use.

My hands fell to the bed again, and I was just there. All his. The deepest parts of my core throbbing, pulsing with my racing heart, my desires coming to life, a wild sense of relief pouring through me. And at the same time there was a devil resting alongside me, wanting more.

Osiris began to kiss up my body. Kiss after kiss, inch after inch, letting his naked, hard body touch mine. Then I felt him. I felt his thick cock resting between my legs. Nestling up close against me, but not inside me.

Torturing me for a few seconds as he hovered over me.

My hands touched his chest. I scratched at him.

“Syi… I need you.”

“I know, sugar,” he whispered. “I need you, too.”

He came down and kissed me. As he kissed me, he pressed forward, opening me, plunging into me without hesitation. Just the way I wanted him to do it. To take me. To have me as his. Going deep and holding there for a second and then bucking his hips, making sure there wasn’t a spot he hadn’t claimed inside me.

I groaned as we kissed.

Then he pulled his mouth from mine.

My hands slid around to his muscular back.

We stared for a second before Osiris curled his lip. That was my warning.

A second later he pulled his body back like the hammer of a gun. He thrust forward with force, and that was just the beginning.

I gasped and clawed at his back, wanting him to kiss me again.

He did.

And in that moment… I was finally home.

* * *

I fell asleep in his arms and opened my eyes to find the bed empty beside me. I had dozed off for a couple hours. I reached across the bed and touched Osiris’s pillow. All my decisions for the day suddenly hit me. I expected to be in a panic, but I wasn’t. I was happy. Damn me for being that crazy, but I was happy. Losing everything. Starting over. It was scary, but it didn’t matter because of how I felt on the inside.

I grabbed the sheet and rolled it around myself as I stood up. I wandered from the bedroom through the quiet cabin. It was so calming. It was so soothing. I totally understood why people bought cabins in the woods and just stayed there.

From the corner of my eye I saw a faint light.

It was Osiris at the desk again. Just like I found him that one time. When he was looking at a map. The difference this time was that when I crept up the stairs to see him, he didn’t turn the light off and he didn’t get mad at me.

Instead, he sat there, hands on the desk, his eyes scanning left to right. On the desk were several maps.

“Syi?” I whispered.

“There was a time when I had this figured out,” he said. “I would do something nobody else could. My head convinced my heart I could do it. It didn’t matter we had police up here. We had search teams. Helicopters. To me, I could fix it. So I started going out for hours, days, whatever it took. And I tracked everything. Right here.”

Osiris looked at me and nodded to the desk.

I approached, hugging the sheet tighter to my body.

The maps were insane. He’d literally marked everything down. Different color lines with their own color coding key on the side of the map. Dates. Times. Anything that seemed out of the ordinary. A man who spent days, weeks, months, years up here trying to find the woman he loved.

I put my hand on his back and started to rub.

I could only shake my head.

This was what true love looked like. Not many people in the world could understand it.

Osiris grabbed for my other hand to kiss it. I gasped and had to take my hand off his back to keep holding the sheet together so it didn’t fall off my body.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I know what my next step should be and I don’t like it, sugar.”

“Which is what?”

Osiris looked up at me. “To say goodbye. For good. Not for me but for Adley. The drawing she made me is on the fridge. She’s beautiful, Lara. Looks just like Mila, too. The way Michelle and Dane are raising her is so good, though. Me and Dane will always have our moments. But he’s good to her. And I have a purpose in it all, too.”

“Of course you do,” I said. “You were there for her.”

“I abandoned her.”

“You…” I sighed. I nodded. “You have time now.”

“I know that. And the only way to begin to figure it out is to say goodbye.”

“How are you going to do that?”

Osiris swallowed hard. He took his right hand and slid it across all the maps. Then he began to fold them up, one at a time.

“They have a memorial for her,” he said. “A grave with no body. It’s wrong. I get why they did it. It’s closure. I’ve never been there. To admit she’s gone?”

“I understand,” I said. “But I hope you know that by going there doesn’t change a thing, Syi. It doesn’t mean you forget about her. Or that you have to stop looking for her.”

“Yes I do,” he said. “Fuck, sugar, yes I do.”

That’s when Osiris stood up. Towering over me again. His hands touching my shoulders.

“I love you, Lara. So I have to do this the right way.”

“I don’t expect you to do anything you don’t want,” I whispered.

He nodded. “How about I build a fire for us?”

“I’d love that.”

Downstairs, I sat on the couch and watched him stack some logs. I knew nothing of hunting, fishing, cabin-ing, camping, surviving in the woods. If I was cold, I would walk to a thermostat and turn it up.

I watched as a small flicker of a flame turned into a roaring fire.

He did it so fast, so efficiently.

Then he stepped back to his chair and plopped down. He held his hand out for me.

“Come here, sugar,” he whispered.

I stood and walked to him. He pulled me down to the chair, on his lap. We were cuddled up together. Kissing. Smiling. Flirting a little with our eyes and the way we touched each other.

“So tell me about your day,” he said.

I laughed. “I don’t know what happened.”

“That’s all true?”

“Yeah.”

“Thad…”

“He showed up. I hit him.”

“You hit Thad?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Osiris said.

“He thought he could just have me back,” I said.

“Scum.”

“I agree.”

“He has a woman somewhere else with his kid? And then he comes to you?”

“That’s what he was used to, probably. I wonder sometimes how many women he did that to. And doing it to me over and over. But I had no desire for him, Syi. It was pathetic to see. Then Lenore called me to find out if he was there. She wanted to talk, to apologize. And it was kind of strange for me because I didn’t care. I felt bad for her. She has a baby now and Thad is going to be Thad for the rest of his life. Percy showed up and threw Thad out. I never thought Percy would have the balls to do that.”

“Good for him,” Osiris said. “I owe him a beer.”

“And then Calvin showed up to check on me. That’s when I realized I was in that flower shop like a kid in a blanket fort during a storm. I’d never get my shit together being there. So I quit. Right there. Right on the spot. Took my apron off and walked out.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. I’ll call everyone and meet up with them tomorrow or later. I just need to be me, Syi.”

“I understand that.”

“Then I got home to the apartment. What the hell was I doing there? I went to the office and paid what I owe for the rest of the lease and gave it up.”

“Where are you going to live, sugar?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. I have two months to figure that out. Along with a job. I’ll get there when I get there. I’m happy right here. Right here with you, Syi. This moment.”

He held me tighter and kissed the top of my head. I smelled him. It made me think of sex. My body tingled. We still had plenty of night to go. I smiled.

“Sugar,” Osiris said. “You should move some of that stuff of yours in here.”

“What?”

“You heard me. And I can talk to Jerry about some office work for you.”

I looked into Osiris’s beautiful dark eyes as the reflection of the fire flickered in them.

I touched his face. “No.”

“What?”

“No. I mean, I appreciate it. I love you for it. You trying to take care of me. But, no. I don’t want it, Syi. I’ll figure this out on my own. I don’t want any favors.”

“Favors?” he said with his lip curling. “This isn’t about favors, sugar. I don’t want you to leave. Ever. Not having you near me today left me feeling empty. I hated it. Even though I was with people. You… you’ve managed to find whatever was left of my heart. And you have it, Lara.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Syi,” I said with a smile. “I’m just going to take care of myself a little. Find out what I want. What I like. Start over with nothing. It’s sort of exciting, you know? Get a crappy little apartment. Get a couple jobs to scrape by. Spend my nights at this cabin in your arms. And not once worry about the future.”

Osiris slowly nodded. “You know, sometimes I don’t understand how fucking lucky I was to find you sleeping on that bench. That sounds creepy as hell, I bet. But it’s true.”

“Well, I guess this is the one time getting blackout drunk paid off.”

“Yeah, let’s not tell anyone that, though.”

“Deal.”

We kissed.

Fuck talking.

I had the sweet lips of the mountain man against mine. The fire snapping and crackling in the background. His left hand gently tugging at the bed sheet wrapped around me, opening it, leaving me exposed. That same hand slowly running down my body, stopping between my legs. I showed him then there was more than one fire burning.

In a matter of a few seconds I was on top of him, fighting to unzip his jeans, needing him to love me again.

And he did.

Three more times that night…