Protected by My Brother's Big & Rough Mountain Man
(2026)(A book in the Big & Rough Mountain Men series)
A Story by Sara Hazel
AMBER
My brother’s best friend is standing in my studio, and my body remembers him before my mouth can catch up.
Dallas Marshall. Wesley’s best friend. The mountain man who vanished from Sunday dinners the summer I turned twenty and started watching his hands. He’s thirty-six now. Broader. Rougher. Looking at my curves like he’s been starving on that ridge for six years and just found the thing he denied himself.
I own Bright Side Movement Studio. I do not need a wilderness guide issuing orders over a broken hinge and a threat against Saturday’s dance showcase. I also do not need the way his voice drops around my name, or the way heat rolls through me when he tells me I’m sleeping in the loft and he’s taking the door.
Then my apartment floods. One bedroom. One couch that will never hold him. I tell him we keep our hands to ourselves unless invited.
I fist his shirt in the rehearsal room and put my mouth on his.
He tastes like coffee and six years of restraint breaking. His hands span my waist. His body is already hard against mine. He stops us before adrenaline makes the next decision, and I hate how much I respect him for it.
Tomorrow, I take him to bed. I tell him exactly what I want. I do not ask him to be gentle with the wanting.
DALLAS
I stayed away from Wesley’s sister because I wanted her when I had no right to.
I took the winter routes. I skipped the holidays. I told myself twenty was a line, and wanting Amber Hayes was a betrayal I would not commit.
She’s twenty-six now. She built a movement studio that accepts women's bodies as they are. She argues with every order I give, then puts coffee where I can watch the stairs. Someone is trying to scare her out of her lease, and I came here to stand between her and the threat.
I did not come here to back her into those mirrors. I did not come here to feel her hips roll against the part of me I’ve been punishing for six years. I did not come here to learn how she sounds when she finally lets me put my mouth on her and take my time.
The loft is too small for how badly I want her. The bed is worse. She leads me there. She tells me not to treat her like glass. I put my hands on her the way she’s been asking for since she was old enough for me to answer.
Her brother trusted me with three days. I am already in love with the woman she became while I kept myself away.
This does not end when the showcase does. I want her in my bed. In my life. On that mountain and in this city. And when she tells me I’m wrong, I listen—then I take her apart the way she asked me to.
Genre: New Adult Romance
My brother’s best friend is standing in my studio, and my body remembers him before my mouth can catch up.
Dallas Marshall. Wesley’s best friend. The mountain man who vanished from Sunday dinners the summer I turned twenty and started watching his hands. He’s thirty-six now. Broader. Rougher. Looking at my curves like he’s been starving on that ridge for six years and just found the thing he denied himself.
I own Bright Side Movement Studio. I do not need a wilderness guide issuing orders over a broken hinge and a threat against Saturday’s dance showcase. I also do not need the way his voice drops around my name, or the way heat rolls through me when he tells me I’m sleeping in the loft and he’s taking the door.
Then my apartment floods. One bedroom. One couch that will never hold him. I tell him we keep our hands to ourselves unless invited.
I fist his shirt in the rehearsal room and put my mouth on his.
He tastes like coffee and six years of restraint breaking. His hands span my waist. His body is already hard against mine. He stops us before adrenaline makes the next decision, and I hate how much I respect him for it.
Tomorrow, I take him to bed. I tell him exactly what I want. I do not ask him to be gentle with the wanting.
DALLAS
I stayed away from Wesley’s sister because I wanted her when I had no right to.
I took the winter routes. I skipped the holidays. I told myself twenty was a line, and wanting Amber Hayes was a betrayal I would not commit.
She’s twenty-six now. She built a movement studio that accepts women's bodies as they are. She argues with every order I give, then puts coffee where I can watch the stairs. Someone is trying to scare her out of her lease, and I came here to stand between her and the threat.
I did not come here to back her into those mirrors. I did not come here to feel her hips roll against the part of me I’ve been punishing for six years. I did not come here to learn how she sounds when she finally lets me put my mouth on her and take my time.
The loft is too small for how badly I want her. The bed is worse. She leads me there. She tells me not to treat her like glass. I put my hands on her the way she’s been asking for since she was old enough for me to answer.
Her brother trusted me with three days. I am already in love with the woman she became while I kept myself away.
This does not end when the showcase does. I want her in my bed. In my life. On that mountain and in this city. And when she tells me I’m wrong, I listen—then I take her apart the way she asked me to.
Genre: New Adult Romance
Used availability for Sara Hazel's Protected by My Brother's Big & Rough Mountain Man