Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
I stood there, half-aroused, half-panicked, blinking into the sunrise like I’d walked into some kind of fever dream. My gun was still in my hand, and my bladder was still demanding action.
Gabby looked up mid-pose, spotted me, and smiled.
“Morning,” she called, cheerful as hell. “You okay?”
I finally regained some of my cognitive functions. “I thought someone was being murdered.”
She tilted her head. “What? Why?”
“The noises.” I gestured helplessly. “The grunting and moaning. I—”
“Oh, that’s just intensive yoga breathing.” She sat back into a seated pose, casually wiping sweat from her neck with a towel. “It helps with stress, flexibility, and digestion, apparently.”
I rubbed the back of my neck and then cracked it to relieve some tension. “Right.”
The raccoons chittered, one of them casually licking its paw like it, too, had been confused and slightly aroused.
I put the gun into the back of my shorts, turned slowly back toward the outhouse, and muttered, “I’m gonna go... not shoot anyone and reevaluate my life.”
Behind me, I heard her laugh, and God help me, it made me want to kiss her all over again.
Gabby
Webb came back from the outhouse looking like a man deeply and existentially rattled. He still had his gun in one hand, his expression unreadable, and he walked like someone who’d just stared into the abyss and hadn’t liked what stared back. I was mid-stretch, sinking into a sun-drenched warrior pose, when he stopped at the edge of my yoga mat. He stared at me as if I were doing something profoundly inappropriate. Though, to be fair, yoga poses in the right humidity and the wrong clothes could probably land someone in trouble. Especially when that someone was sweaty, breathing deeply, and wearing a sports bra that was currently fighting for its life.
“Are you okay?” I asked, shifting smoothly into a child’s pose, watching him through the corner of my eye. “You look like you just saw a ghost or a frog doing taxes.”
He didn’t answer right away, he just kept staring, but not at my face. His eyes weren't even close to that part of my body.
“You’re acting weird,” I informed him as I pushed myself up to sit on my knees.
“I’m not,” he replied, far too quickly to be convincing.
“You one hundred percent are.”
“I thought you were being attacked.”
“By what? Enlightenment?” I lifted my arms over my head in a slow stretch, letting the heat and the tension in my shoulders melt away. “You said my stress levels are high, and this helps.”
He nodded absently but still didn’t seem present. His gaze flicked away from mine and landed somewhere around the tree line like he was trying not to make eye contact with the sun.
I narrowed my eyes. “Okay, now I’m sure you’re acting weird.”
His eyes met mine again, and this time, they didn’t dart away. They dropped, trailing slowly from my mouth to my collarbone to my stomach and then lower before he caught himself and looked sharply to the side.
Ohhh!
I stood and took a slow, deliberate step closer. “You sure everything’s fine?”
He swallowed like his throat had suddenly dried out. “No.”
I smiled, a little too pleased with myself. “Wanna try some yoga?”
“Not really.”
“Scared?” I teased.
His gaze snapped back to mine, intense in a way that immediately turned my stomach inside out. “Not of yoga.”
Everything shifted at that moment. One second, we were exchanging sarcasm, the usual sharp-edged back and forth. The next, we were standing toe to toe, the tension between us thick and buzzing with electricity. Webb tilted his face down toward mine, and I could feel the heat radiating off him. My breath caught as the tip of his fingers brushed against my hip, featherlight but deliberate.
I tilted my face up toward his, and he leaned in until our noses brushed. The air between us shifted—charged and expectant. I knew he was going to kiss me. I could feel it in every nerve, every cell, every heartbeat.
And then it happened—a loud snap cracked through the air, followed by the rattling clatter of tin and the unmistakable screech of a flare igniting.
The sound echoed through the trees like thunder. We both froze for a heartbeat, then jerked apart as instinct took over. Webb was already moving, his gun in hand, his stance sharp and alert.
“Shit,” he muttered, his eyes scanning the tree line beyond the clearing.
I looked where he was looking and felt the blood drain from my face. A thin streak of orange smoke rose between the trees, curling skyward from the direction of the eastern trail.
“Is that—” I started.
“One of the traps,” Webb said grimly. He was already stepping off the mat, his entire body coiled with purpose. “Something tripped it.”
My heart was suddenly pounding in a very different rhythm now. The kiss, the yoga, the teasing—all of it evaporated in a second. The warmth of the morning sun felt distant, washed out by the chill of what that flare meant.