The first thing Ashley knew when she awoke was the pleasant tingle still warming her entire body. The second thing was Preston’s self-satisfied face, entirely too close. “Good morning,” he said, and she instantly yanked the sheet up over her face. His voice when he spoke next was full of amusement. “What’re you doing?”

“I don’t want you to see me like this,” she mumbled.

“Hmm.” His hand found her beneath the sheet, trailed over the softness of her belly. She realized, with a deep jolt of shock, that she didn’t mind him touching her there—not last night, in passion, and not now, in the light of day. She felt lifted by it.

“Like what?” he asked, hand drifting lower, over her pubic bone. Her breath caught. “Rested? Natural?” He paused, and then in one swift, smooth move, slipped fingers between her legs, straight over her newly interested clit. “Totally satisfied?”

She yanked the covers off her face, blew her stray hair away. “You’re so arrogant,” she said.

“Yeah,” Preston said, smirking filthily, “but I’m not wrong.”

“What time is it?” she asked—or tried to. He’d started a rhythm on her clit, rubbing over it, and what at first felt like a little exploration, had now become something she had a feeing might end well for her. She rolled her spine, relaxing into it. “Oh…”

“Just past seven.” He leaned down, pressed his forehead against her temple as he worked her clit harder, circling it in a maddeningly perfect pattern that made her entire lower half flood with heat. “The storm’s passed.”

“O-oh, really?”

“Yeah,” he said, licking the shell of her ear in the instant before he pushed a finger inside her, making her gasp. “That’s the good news.”

“And the—oh god—the bad news?”

“Hmm, I’ll tell you in a minute,” he said, and then gave all of his focus to bringing her off.

She grabbed his arm, flung her head back, gasped, “God, I’m gonna…”

He breathed, “Yeah, come on,” and she did, as pulsing pleasure spread through her body, making her toes curl and her back arch.

After, with him trailing damp fingers back up her belly to circle a nipple, she asked, “The bad news?”

“The snow is now piled halfway up the building,” he said, rolling forward slightly, until she could feel the press of his hard cock against her hip. “No one’s getting through that today.”

“Shit.”

“We’re okay. But we should get up and check on the others.”

Except he was hard, and she was pretty sure she was okay with making the whole world wait.

“I need a shower first,” she said, and then, “In two minutes…” as she reached for him, wrapping her fingers around the length of him and watching his eyelids flutter.

“Make it one, please,” he groaned.

He cut off her giggle with a searing kiss.

The glass door opened, a blast of cool air setting goose flesh across her skin, and she looked over her shoulder to see Preston—naked and breathtakingly perfect with it—stepping into the shower with her. Briefly, she considered panicking, pushing past him and racing to the nearest towel to cover herself with. But she found she didn’t really feel inclined to anymore. There was a spike of self-consciousness in her gut, the urge to tuck herself into the corner away from his wandering gaze, but nothing that truly made her want to run and hide. It wasn’t that she had been magically cured of her insecurities, but he’d managed to find a way to make her feel comfortable around him at her most exposed, and that was more of an achievement in one day than her ex-husband had managed during the entire span of their marriage.

“Mind if I join you?” Preston asked, the most cliché line ever, and she smiled to herself at the corniness of it.

“Sure. Just shut the door before I freeze to death.”

The shower stall wasn’t really big enough for both of them, but he seemed to take that as a positive—crowding up behind her, not quite touching, but close enough that she could feel the heat of him. Her heart tripped on its next beat.

“Pass the soap.”

Wordlessly, she grabbed the bottle of body wash and handed it behind her, and a moment later she heard the cap click open, the muted thunder of shower water raining down on the plastic, and then nothing for a long moment.

Just as she started to think she was putting herself on edge for nothing, he touched her—one large hand against the back of her shoulder, pressing soap into her skin.

She breathed in a sigh, tilted her head forward into the water a little to indicate her submission, and lost herself in the act of him washing her back. He swept his hand side to side and up her spine, down to the rise of her ass and around, along the curve of her hips and up over each ridge of her ribs, back to her shoulders and down the length of her arms. Reached her hands and laced their fingers together before pulling back to get more soap, then stepped right up close to press his front all along her back and looked down at her body over her shoulder, the steam of the hot water giving everything a sensual, almost mystical air as he rubbed the soap into her front, across her tummy and waist, up her chest to lather her breasts, wash the peaks of her nipples.

Then down, down, to the valley of her thighs, and she parted them, instinctive and needy, dropping her head back against his shoulder and feeling the hardness of him ghost the sensitive skin of her lower back. He slid soapy fingers over the mound of her pussy, between her folds, the heat and the soap and the softness of his touch making her legs shake, and she made a noise spill from her chest that sounded filthy and wanton.

“Let me make love to you,” he murmured into her ear, and her eyes shot open.

Was she ready for him, finally? To feel the exquisite fullness of a man pushing inside her body? She’d not been with anyone since her husband, hadn’t even entertained the idea, and while she’d found torturous pleasure in the ways Preston played her body with his hands and mouth, she didn’t know if she could take him—if she could stand the emotional intimacy of…making love.

Because she’d never been one to treat actual sex as anything less than an act of emotion, of closeness, an expression of love. She’d always been a hopeless romantic like that, maybe even a bit prudish and old-fashioned—but she couldn’t help how she felt. Sex to her was accepting a man into her heart as well as her body, and it was the reason why she’d only had it with two men in her whole life—her high school boyfriend and her ex-husband. Why she’d pretty much given up on the idea of ever having it again.

Until Preston, that is, and his skillful hands, currently soaping up her pussy, teasing slick fingers around her clit and melting her brain.

Preston, who made her feel safe and secure, free in her body to express her pleasure.

Preston, who she trusted to care for her, even if this never went any further than their stay up on this mountain.

She wanted him, all of him, there was no denying that—and all she had to do now was say yes.

But the word wouldn’t come, the verbal commitment to letting him join with her, even after taking a fortifying breath. So she did the only thing she knew how—turned in his arms and kissed him, poured all of her need into that kiss, all of her desire.

He released a groan against her tongue and fumbled to turn the shower off, almost toppling them both over in his haste. He lost his footing, stumbled, the pair of them crashing into the shower wall and knocking a laugh out of them.

“Smooth,” he said, charmingly self-deprecating, and she felt a surge of affection for him, even as she clung onto his shoulders and tried not to break her neck.

“Yeah, it’s not exactly sweeping me off my feet, is it?”

“I planned that so much better in my head,” he admitted, taking her hand to help her out of the stall.

The absurdity of it, of them both naked and slippery, holding on to each other so they didn’t fall and crack a bone in the pursuit of adult fun in the next room—it made her giggle again, clutch the shower door as her foot slid on a particularly soapy bit of tile floor.

He glanced wide-eyed down at her feet, exclaiming, “The hell, is this thing made out of ice?” and then pulled her out and to safety. “I’m gonna have to tell my people about this.”

She lifted an eyebrow at him. “Withholding some details, I hope.”

“You say that like I don’t want to boast about nailing the hottest girl currently in Colorado.” His tone was cheeky and playful, his eyes dancing, and she didn’t know whether to slap him or kiss him.

She settled on saying, “You’re really setting the mood here,” in the most deadpan voice she could muster, and he smirked in the instant before he leaned down, hooked his arms behind her knees and back, and swept her up into his arms.

“What was that about sweeping you off your feet?”

“Okay,” she said breathlessly—both at the shock of the abrupt movement, and his sudden proximity to all the interesting parts of her body. “That was a little smooth.”

With a wink, he carefully sidestepped a puddle of water and headed out, carrying her effortlessly and making her heart strum with the masculinity of it all. He was a bit of a joker, a hell of a charmer, but sometimes she was reminded of how much of a man he was beneath it all, and it took her breath away.

They were still dripping wet when they returned to the bedroom, and she made him put her down and go back to get a towel before she even considered getting on the bed. He grumbled about it, good-natured and playful, and then spent a few delicious minutes drying them both off, touching her more with his bare hands than the towel and making her skin tingle all over.

“Happy now?” he asked, eyebrow raised.

“Dry, at least,” she responded. “Could be happier.” And he growled, dropped the towel, swept her back up, and tipped her flat on her back on the bed, smiling at her breathless laughter.

She expected him to climb straight on with her, but instead he went rummaging around in a bag. When he returned, he had a condom in hand, and the reality of what they were about to do sapped away all of Ashley’s good humor, reigniting her nerves.

He noticed, and he settled beside her, dropping the condom somewhere down the side of the pillow as if it was meaningless.

“Don’t think about that until you want to,” he said, and then, “I’m going to kiss you.”

She knew what he was doing—a distraction, a diversion—and she was glad. If she allowed herself to spend another moment thinking about what was going to happen, after so long since her last time, back when it was with a man who made her feel worthless and completely unappealing—

“Shh, come here,” he said, and she hadn’t spoken, but he’d heard her distress all the same. Her mind quieted as he drew her into a kiss.

He kissed her as if he had all the time in the world, like he wanted to learn the taste of her mouth and commit it to memory. Like she was an exquisite wine, and he wanted to get drunk. His tongue met hers, and she moaned into it, reaching up to grasp his shoulder, pulling him in closer as his hand started wandering—fingers tracing the rise of her breast, the firmness of her nipple peaked stiff with arousal, sending tiny shocks of pleasure down to her pussy, and making her clit throb with anticipation.

He pulled back for a moment, lips glossy and eyes soft, smiling as he shifted himself closer and kissed her mouth open again, the line of his cock swelling to thickness against her hip.

His wandering hand moved lower, traced the path from breastbone to navel and below, over the soft curve of her belly and to the neat thatch of hair at her groin.

She sighed into the kiss, a pleasant tingle spreading through her gut, and parted her legs.

He didn’t immediately dip into the heat of her pussy, instead spending time trailing his fingers around it, through the hair and down the inside of her thighs, skirting the very edge of her outer folds and driving her insane with need. She whimpered, gripping his shoulder tighter and rolling her hips towards his touch in a desperate attempt to guide his hand to where she needed him.

He smirked against her lips in the instant before he dragged his hand over to cover her whole aching pussy.

She breathed out something like a cry, letting her mouth fall slack against his as she pushed up into his hand, desperate for some kind of friction or pressure, anything to ease the torturous throb of her clit.

He grinned, wickedly pleased with himself, and started kissing a slow path along her jaw to her ear while she panted and keened, awash with the most blissful frustration.

“Problem?” he murmured, and she grabbed his wrist, trying to make him move his hand against her.

“Please…”

“Please what?” He leaned down to take a nipple between his lips, flicking his tongue over it, sending more electric shocks of pleasure to her clit.

“Please touch me.”

“Mm, I am touching you.”

God, she could actually kill him—before he killed her with this torture. She reached between her legs and covered his hand with her own, holding it there while she tried to grind up against him, the deepest part of her pussy pulsing and flooding with heat.

“Look at you,” he said, sounding awestruck, lifting his head to gaze down at her, at her frenzied attempts to get some friction. “So desperate for me.”

“Yes,” she hissed, past caring, all worries gone. “Please, Preston—please—”

“I want you to sit on my face,” he said, and she didn’t take a moment to think about it—scrabbled onto her knees while he moved onto his back, then shuffled up the bed until she could grasp the headboard, swing a leg over his head, and lower her wet pussy onto his face.

They released simultaneous groans, and she didn’t give him a chance to catch his breath, but started rubbing her clit against his mouth and whimpering when he flicked his tongue out, a continuous attack that had her thighs shaking as she rolled her hips over him, almost riding his face, back and forth across his lips and tongue and moaning with it, loud and without shame, louder still when he brought a hand up to push a finger into her.

The pressure was instant and perfect, and she rocked down on to it, wanting more, needing to feel fuller, whimpering in desperation as she ground down hard on his face, seeking a release that she couldn’t quite find, not right now, not when she knew she had a different kind of fullness available to her, something she couldn’t stop thinking about as she palmed her breasts, rocking down on his face, the pleasure spiraling through her but not quite enough…

She pulled back off his face and said breathlessly, “Put the condom on,” as she moved back on her knees, down his body.

His hazy eyes blinked at her, his mouth shiny and swollen, and he asked, “You sure?” in a broken, cracked voice that made her clit throb anew.

“Yes.” She didn’t want to think about it, to give her doubts and nerves a chance to set in. What she wanted was to take him inside her, feel the glorious thickness of him filling her up so perfectly, until she couldn’t breathe with it, until she sobbed and screamed and begged for release.

He nodded, looking as if he wasn’t quite able to focus, and groped for the condom down the side of the pillow. Then he reached behind her and started fiddling while she sat on his chest, staring at his face, wanting to remember how he looked in this moment, almost mindless with arousal. Because of her.

“Okay,” he said, flicking the condom wrapper to the side and settling his hands on her thighs. “You ready?”

She took a moment to gather herself, then lifted and moved back, until she hovered over his groin. He took his sheathed cock in hand, held it upright, and she locked eyes with him in the instant before she lowered herself onto him.

The stretch was shocking and intense, making her burn for a moment before she paused and took a few breaths, focused on relaxing her muscles, then moving down another inch or two. When her pussy met his fingers wrapped around his cock, he sighed and released himself, giving her the freedom to impale herself right down to the base. Her groin met his, and his eyes fluttered shut, his throat bobbing, as if he couldn’t quite handle his feelings in that moment.

She held still for a few seconds, breathing through it, and then palmed her breasts again, thumb and forefinger pinching each nipple as she lifted up and dropped back on him.

He groaned, she whimpered, and then he shot his eyelids open and stared at her with darkened, lust-filled eyes, making her jolt into sudden motion with the way that look flooded her with liquid heat.

She rocked down on him while he thrust up into her, and together, they found a rhythm that had her gasping with the pleasure lighting up her groin and spreading to all corners of her body. The sounds of their bodies coming together, the breathless moans they spilled, the wetness pooling between them to ease the path of his cock pistoning in and out of her—it was all an overwhelming attack on her senses that made her head spin, her arms and legs tingle, her thighs shake—

And then the world upended beneath her, Preston tipping her onto her back, settling between her legs and feeding his cock back inside her, an instant relentless rhythm that punched high-pitched groans from her chest with each thrust, groans that he swallowed with a messy kiss, making her taste herself, the intense pleasure every time he laid his hands on her, his mouth—

The pleasure tightened in her groin, drawing it into one focused, targeted attack of ecstasy that had her suspended on the edge of bliss for two seconds, three, mouth falling slack and eyes rolling back, and one final push from him before he went still, seized by orgasm, and she shuddered around him, whole body clenching and releasing with continuous waves of climax.

Chen was waiting in the doorway of the kitchen when they arrived, and he didn’t even give them an opportunity to say hello before he asked, “The police, they’re coming today?”

Ashley, internally frowning at the frenzied energy coming off the man, said, “We don’t know. The snow’s pretty packed in.”

Chen looked over his shoulder at his wife, who was standing at the stove, oven glove in hand as if she was trying to make herself look busy. “So they might not come?” he asked again, looking back at Ashley.

Preston clapped him on the shoulder, apparently entirely oblivious to the weirdness of the moment. “We’ll have to wait and see,” he said bracingly, before pushing past him into the kitchen.

Ashley offered Chen an apologetic smile and followed Preston inside, where she found Frank and the sisters having a conversation around coffee at the staff table.

“I still can’t believe what’s happened,” Frank was saying, looking slightly less drained this morning. “Say what you want about the guy, but he didn’t deserve to die like that.”

Maude scowled into her mug. “No, he deserved worse.”

“You can’t say that.”

“You only saw a tiny bit of his disgusting behavior,” Maude said darkly. “Trust me, we had a lot worse to deal with.”

Karen nodded. “We’ll miss him about as much as we miss our late parents.”

“Which is not at all.”

“I’m sorry,” Ashley said, sliding into a seat beside Frank and reaching for the coffee pot. Out the corner of her eye, she saw Preston take over at the stove, the sight of him making her skin tingle and her heart race. She could still feel the aftershocks of the orgasm lingering in her muscles, pleasantly hot, still unable to believe she’d let herself go like that. How did Preston manage to find the key to unlock her desires, free her inhibitions?

She was brought out of her lust-hazy memories by the sight of the Xings slipping out of the room…

Frowning, she focused on the conversation at hand. “I heard about the skiing accident,” she said, and she didn’t know why she brought it up, except a morbid part of her wanted to see the sisters’ reaction.

Maude waved a hand. “Pfft. It was years ago. We’re over it.”

“We were never not over it,” Karen added, eyebrow lifted.

Ashley could only stare at them uneasily. “I’m sure you don’t mean that.”

“Honey,” Karen said, reaching out to pat Ashley’s hand, “not everything in this world needs to make sense to you.” It was so patronizing, with such a chilling undercurrent, that Ashley couldn’t help but think it was ruining her mood. She made her excuses and pushed away from the table, muttering something about needing to use the bathroom. Frank watched her go, wordless and without expression.

She couldn’t have found herself amongst a weirder bunch of people while in the middle of a murder in an isolated resort.

She slipped out of the kitchen and headed up to the room, no particular plan in mind. She did definitely need another shower, since Preston had so sinfully dirtied her back up after her first attempt, but she figured her time would be better spent re-examining that intriguing note, the blood tracks in the foyer, and maybe even the basement. Preston would be busy for a while, sorting breakfast and assuring everyone of their safety. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

It was a sentiment she wished she could take back when she entered the room and found herself suddenly and terrifyingly not alone.

Bao Xing emerged from the bathroom, her husband right behind her, both of them wearing matching steely expressions that made Ashley think of nothing other than the frayed piece of rope in the bottom of their suitcase.

She opened her mouth—whether to scream or shout or demand answers, she didn’t know. But Bao raised a hand, stopping her.

“Don’t make a sound,” she said, advancing on Ashley. “We need to talk, little detective girl.”

Chen slipped past them both to the door and slid the lock into place, and Ashley’s ears rang with the thunderous roar of her own heart.