I woke up in the morning on top of Logan, my face buried in his broad chest, arms wrapped around his waist. I was clinging to him, pressed tightly against him, but the look on his face was peaceful and sweet as he held me. I lifted my face to kiss his jaw, then his nose and his forehead until his eyelids finally fluttered open and he smiled at me.

“Hi,” he said softly, and I felt my heart flutter. His voice was low and gruff from sleep, sexy, and I couldn’t help but remember all of the filthy things he’d said to me as he fucked me the night before. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced—sex had just been something I’d had to get through with other men, something to pass the time. I’d never really hoped that it would ever be good, and certainly had never imagined being so into it that I’d been absolutely wild with Logan the night before. I blushed just remembering it and his face broke into a smile as he put his hand on the back of my neck and pulled my face to his.

“Hi,” I said against his lips.

He yawned then, stretching as he looked at the clock. Then he groaned.

“I have to get to work,” he said.

“No,” I said, wrapping my arms around his body.

He leaned in to kiss me again. “I have to, baby,” he said. “But I’ll come back tonight.”

“Let me go with you to the worksite,” I said, sitting up in bed. I’d almost forgotten about what he’d said had happened at the worksite, but now the memory of the conversation came back to me.

“Why?” he asked.

“I want to see the markings on the logs,” I told him.

I hoped he wouldn’t ask me why. I wanted to be sure of what I suspected before I told him the truth. He paused as if he knew there was something behind my interest but didn’t want to ask. I was glad when he didn’t press me, but nodded, then buried his face in my neck.

“I really wish I could fuck you all day long,” he said softly, planting a hot kiss on my throat. “I love how much you enjoy my cock.”

I blushed and he smiled, kissing me again before he got out of bed.

“We’d better go soon,” he said, though he looked like he regretted the words.

I would have happily stayed in bed with him all day as well, despite the rational side of my brain telling me to run away from him. I didn’t regret last night but I didn’t feel like things were perfect, either. I knew I was just setting myself up for heartbreak, but the night before I hadn’t cared, especially in the moment he’d filled me with his cock.

We got ready to go to the worksite after Logan brought me some clothes from the girl who’d left them. I remembered that he’d said she had disappeared, though he hadn’t provided any other explanation. It only deepened the mystery of this place, the curse, the ghost and the fire. I hoped that once I told him my truth, that he would be more inclined to open up to me about what was going on at the retreat, what exactly I was missing.

I got dressed, looking down at myself in distaste. They weren’t exactly my style of clothes—more decadent than anything I wore. Almost everything had some sort of sparkling accoutrement or low-cut neckline. The coat he’d given me was hardly practical for traipsing across a snowy mountain—it was covered in thick, luxuriously soft fur, warm but not waterproof. Logan watched me as I looked myself over, a small smile on his face.

“You hate it,” he said. I nodded. “I think you look sexy,” he told me. I rolled my eyes at him but couldn’t help but give him a pleased smile as we left the suite together. It was so much nicer now that we were getting along—I’d been hell-bent on staying away from him, but that hadn’t brought me anything but frustration so far.

There were people milling about the lounge on the second floor, talking in quiet voices as we made our way down the stairs. Most of the first floor was blocked off—every bit of it other than the stairwell had been at least singed by the flames and needed to be inspected. We were walking through the lobby when Logan was stopped by the woman I’d spoken to before about getting my room switched. He waved me on when I paused to linger with him.

“I’ll meet you outside in a minute, Lily,” he said, and I nodded before heading out into the cold. I hugged the fur around my body, grateful for the extra warmth that the outrageous garment provided me. There were people outside, but not very many—the wind was cold today, not pleasant and crisp as it normally was, but almost oppressive in how uncomfortable it was. I was about to go inside and wait when Logan came up behind me, putting his arm around my waist as he guided me in the direction of the worksite.

“You’re a pretty popular guy around here, aren’t you?” I asked him.

“What do you mean?”

“You seem to do everything at this place,” I said.

“I’m a handy guy. Useful in many situations,” he said with a grin.

I stood on my toes to kiss his cheek and he captured my lips in a kiss, standing in place for a long moment before we started back to the worksite. I wondered how long this would last, if it was even possible that this connection between us could continue beyond this trip. I tried not to think about it even as he took my hand in the cold. We approached the worksite to see men busy all over the place.

“Hey, guys,” Logan said as we approached them. They mumbled greetings to him, most of them without even looking up from their work. One of them did look up, though, and he raised his eyebrow when he noticed me.

“She the cause of all this trouble?” the old man asked.

Logan shook his head. “I’m afraid she has an alibi. One less suspect on the list,” Logan said.

“She’s no ghost, that’s for sure,” said the man, looking me over.

Logan lifted his hand and slapped the man gently on the side of his helmet. “Get to work,” he muttered, and the man skittered away.

I followed Logan over to the edge of the clearing, where there were three logs separate from the rest of the pile on the truck. As we got closer, my heart started to pound. I swallowed hard, staring down at the logs with wide eyes. It was exactly what I thought it would be—gibberish, carved into the bark, the word “die” the only one that was legible.

“What is it?” Logan asked, studying my face. I shivered, wrapping my coat tighter around me, looking up at him.

“I, uh—” I began. “I don’t think we should talk about it here.”

“Are you okay? Is there something wrong?”

“Something definitely isn’t right, that’s for sure,” I said, looking down at the log again. Even the handwriting was the same as I’d seen before. It made a chill run down my spine as I turned away, looking up at him. “Do you have to do work here? Should I go back?”

“I don’t think you should go back on your own,” he said. “I’d rather go with you.”

“Michael’s gone. Nobody’s out to get me. Not even your ghost,” I said.

He gave me an annoyed look but had a playful smile on his face as he leaned in to kiss me.

“Be careful,” he said softly, and I nodded to him, starting back in the direction of the retreat center. It wasn’t a long walk, but most of it was uphill, and after how worn out my body had been with Logan last night, it was almost hard to make the walk. But my head was spinning with what I’d seen and the cool air helped me calm my breathing, steady my heartbeat until I had a chance to tell Logan everything.

I was walking up the hill when I heard a noise behind me, the crunching of frozen branches. I looked over my shoulder but saw nothing save a slight movement out of the corner of my eye. My head whipped to follow it, scanning the trees behind me, keeping my eyes sharp for any sort of movement. When I saw nothing, I started forward quickly, walking as fast as I could without slipping on the snow. I’d only stepped forward a couple of feet when I was knocked over flat onto my face. I tried to lift my head out of the snow but somebody held my face down, smashing it into the ground so that I couldn’t breathe. I flailed underneath them, struggling to get up, but they were putting all of their weight into holding my head down, and I could do nothing but struggle. I felt the world around me starting to go dark and gave my body one last push, bucking out from underneath the person and gasping for breath as my face broke from the snow. They got up and I heard them running. I was choking, trying to get air into my lungs as I turned around and watched them run into the trees. I couldn’t tell who it was, couldn’t even tell whether it was a man or a woman—they were wearing a puffy, shapeless coat with a hood that obscured any detail of their appearance. I sat up, my whole body trembling violently as I made my way toward the retreat center. I felt frozen and numb when I stepped inside, felt a tingling sensation as my body began to thaw.

I went upstairs and into the suite, passing by everybody who was in the lobby. People were trying to check out and move on, and judging by the line of people waiting to do so, I imagined that the retreat would only be half as full as it currently was by the end of the day. It was a relief to me to know the more people who were here, the more suspects there were as to who might be trying to hurt me or the retreat. I had no idea if they were connected, I only knew that I had to talk to Logan about the whole thing as soon as possible.

I was relieved when he showed up later that evening. I had gone down to dinner without him, avoiding everyone, doing my best to hide in the corner. It seemed like every time I walked by a table I heard whispers, even from people I’d never seen before. I felt like everybody knew what I’d done with Logan, though I knew the reason they were looking at me had more to do with Michael. I swallowed my annoyance and paranoia and got through the meal without a word to anybody, though on several occasions I tried to catch Marilyn’s eye.

When Logan opened the door, I couldn’t help but smile when I saw him smudged with dirt, his whole body covered in it.

“Sexy?” he asked, looking down at his soiled clothes. I nodded, grinning at him. He came toward me but I put my hand out.

“I already took a shower,” I said.

He laughed, leaning in to kiss me without getting his body too close.

“I’ll be right back,” he said and disappeared into his room. I thought of joining him in the shower but I had a feeling if we started touching each other, we wouldn’t stop long enough to talk. And I really needed to talk to him, to share with him something that had been on my mind since it had happened.

He came out of the bathroom scrubbing his hair with a towel, another wrapped around his hips. He looked mouthwatering, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him as he crossed the room and sat next to me on the couch. The towel fell low on his hips and I saw the v-lines that dipped just below, disappearing beneath the towel. I wanted to trace them with my tongue, all the way down to his cock, to take it in my mouth and watch his face as I made him come.

“You’re a dirty girl,” he said, as if he could read my thoughts.

I blushed but smiled at him.

“How did the rest of your day go?” I asked. I was still shaken by what had happened on my way back from the worksite but I was afraid to tell him, afraid that it would make him freak out too much and insist that I stay locked away in this room. I didn’t want to be trapped, to be protected.

“It was fine. Uneventful. Now tell me what you’ve been waiting to tell me.”

I took a deep breath. “The logs—the marks on them. I’ve seen them before.”

His brow furrowed. “What? Where?”

“Here,” I said, looking away from him. “The night—the night you thought I went to Michael’s room.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Yeah. You and I had that fight and I left. I just wanted to go for a walk outside. I did for a little while—I went out into the woods and walked around on the path with a flashlight. It was nice.”

“How long did you spend out there?”

“Most of the time I was gone. A couple of hours. I didn’t see anybody else until I started back up toward the retreat center.”

“Who did you see?” he asked, leaning into me.

“I don’t know,” I said, chewing on my lip. “I didn’t see their face. But they were—I couldn’t tell whether or not they had been following me.”

“What were they doing?”

“I didn’t know at first. I watched. It seemed like they were—they were just walking along the wall on the outside, staring at it. I hid behind a tree and watched for a minute. Whoever it was made two laps around the building before going inside.”

“Did you follow them inside?” he asked.

I nodded. “I did after a minute. Then I followed the footprints once I got inside. They were icy, so they left tracks.”

“Where did they go?” he asked.

I swallowed, avoiding his eye. “To the lounge on the first floor,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“They went into the lounge on the first floor. I saw—I saw them in there at the edge of one of those big bookcases. They were carving something into the wood with the edge of a coin.”

“They were carving something into the wood,” he repeated slowly, as if he hadn’t quite grasped the meaning of the words.

“Yes,” I said to him. “I was watching. And then they almost caught me—they looked up, but I couldn’t see their face. They were totally in the shadows under that hood. It just looked like a black hole.”

“Then what happened?”

“They left. I didn’t try to follow them again. I went to look at what had been carved into the shelf. It was—it was pretty much the same thing that was on the log out there. It even—it had the word “die” at the very bottom.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “Why didn’t you tell me this, Lilian?” he asked.

I snorted, crossing my arms over my chest.

“I got a little distracted when you accused me of being a slut who slept with my boss just to get back at you,” I said. Just saying the words, remembering the accusation made me angry with him.

“I didn’t call you that,” he said sharply. “I would never call you that. Michael was the one who said you went to his room.”

“And you believed him over me,” I said bitterly. For some reason, there was a heat curling within me, an anger that was threatening to take over. “I guess birds of a feather, you know—”

“I am nothing like your disgusting dead boss, Lilian,” he said. “Do not compare me to him.”

I took a deep breath. “You’re right. You’re different. Even Michael would have thought I was ruined goods after he found out I slept with you. You didn’t even care if you were nothing but sloppy seconds as long as it meant you’d get what you wanted.”

He stared at me, not even responding as I stood up.

“You think I got what I wanted from you, Lily?” he asked quietly.

“Didn’t you?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t gotten half of what I want from you yet.”

“Yet?” I asked, my breath catching in my throat. “What exactly do you think is going to happen here?”

“I think that you’re going to relax and have the best fucking sex of your life with me every minute that you can before you leave this retreat,” he said.

“You think it was that good?” I asked him, my heart speeding up at his words, my pussy feeling swollen and wet in my panties.

“Oh, I know it was that good,” he said with a cocky grin. He put his hands on my hips and pulled me back down onto the couch, onto his lap. Then he softly kissed the back of my neck.

“I’m sorry I thought you slept with Michael,” he said quietly. “I was—I was jealous. Like an idiot.”

“Jealous?”

“I couldn’t imagine the thought of another man getting to touch you before I did,” he said.

I frowned, looking back at him. “Is that what it’s about? Getting to me first?”

“No,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Stop trying to fight with me, Lilian.”

“I’m not—”

“You are,” he said, kissing me again. “You’re trying to make me angry so that I don’t want you. Because if I don’t want you then I won’t tempt you.”

“That’s not true,” I breathed.

He chuckled. “Tell me what else happened that night. Did you come straight back?”

“Yes,” I said to him. It was hard to breathe sitting in his lap like that, especially when I felt his cock press against my ass. I wiggled against him, unable to help myself, and it grew even harder beneath me. “I came straight back and went to bed.”

“I see,” he said. He shifted my body, turning me to the side so that I could look at his face.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked. I looked away from him, thinking about what had happened earlier in the snow and the look on Michael’s face when he’d fallen.

“Nothing,” I said to him, kissing him instead of answering. He hesitated, but then allowed me to taste his mouth, wrapping his arms around me to hold me against him.

It wasn’t long before my legs were open and he had those thick fingers buried in my pussy just the way I liked, fucking me with them as I bucked against his hand. The pleasure was immense as it crashed over me, only getting me wetter to start the rest of the night with him. We didn’t speak anymore, but made our way into the bedroom and spent the rest of the evening with our bodies grinding against each other, trying to enjoy the moments we had together before they ended.