Switchback by Lilith Ember

Ines Morel is thirty-four, olive-skinned, dark chestnut hair, bottle-green eyes, and a body built for trails and for being thoroughly claimed. She arrives at the locked gate of a private two-hundred-acre mountain property with a three-day contract to design a low-impact interpretive trail. She expects soil surveys and flagging tape. She does not expect the owner.

Andre Laurier is forty, salt-and-pepper hair, thick mustache, warm brown eyes, broad and solid from real work. He meets her at the upper trailhead and walks her the corridor himself. The first mile is professional. The first overlook is not. On a rocky stretch screened only by young hemlock, with day-use hikers possible on the lower loop, he asks if she is sure. She is. He takes her against a fir, then on her knees with his mouth, then deep and steady while the risk of discovery sits sharp under her skin.

What begins as a single charged afternoon on private switchbacks becomes nights in the caretaker cabin, breeding talk that is not only talk, and a quiet decision to stay. He fills her on the trail and in the bed and against the wall. He takes her ass with patient focus. He covers her mouth when voices drift up the grade and f***s her through the almost-caught silence. She answers every claim with yes.

The three-day contract lengthens. The cabin key becomes permanent. The finished trail is elegant and protective. Ines Morel does not leave. She stays for the work, for the mountain, and for the steady, filthy, reliable heat of the man who owns both.