Kate's POV
I woke to a scent I couldn't name.
Not the usual coffee or laundry detergent that pulled me from sleep on ordinary mornings. This was something I felt before I smelled it. Cedar and cold iron, laced with something deeper, something that belonged to the edge of a forest at night, where trees dissolved into darkness and the air carried the earth's own exhale.
It had seeped into my skin, as though I'd been soaking in it all night.
And it stirred something inside me. Something urgent.
I'd rarely woken up like this during my marriage to Ronald. Never this desperate, this aching, this unbearably aware of the heat pooling between my thighs. But Ronald would have left for work by now, wouldn't he? So I let my hand drift slowly downward, past the waistband, between legs that were al
