Chapter Twenty-One
At some point during the night, Jas woke. Elation filled her for a moment, then it was supplanted by fear that the previous evening had been a dream. She moved her hand and encountered a muscled chest. Carl was still beside her, warm and very, very real.
She turned on the cabin’s half-light. Her lover was deeply sleep. One of his hands was tucked between their two bodies, and the other rested on her breast, rising and falling with her breathing. Running down his visible arm and the side of his body were long, silvered scars—burn scars. She traced them with a finger.
What had Carl been through in the years they’d been apart? He had always been lean, but now he looked positively gaunt. Barely a trace of fat softened the outline of the muscles in his arms, legs, chest, a
