Page 50
“And who ate it?”
“We split it.”
I stare at him. I don’t know why that answer affects me more than any of the others, but I find myself picturing Boone at twelve years old, sitting across from his father with almost nothing between them except three potatoes and still trying to give half of his away.
Boone looks down at his hands, the laughter fading into something softer. “That was my father. We could have almost nothing, and somehow he still made it feel like we had enough.”
He pauses, but the silence doesn’t last long.
“Rhys,” he says softly, and the sound of my name makes me look up at him. “My father is old. He’s not well…”
“No,” I growl, already knowing what he intends to ask. “We have a deal.”
He looks past me toward the fire and watches the flames. Whatever warmth had been in his expression while talking about his father slowly disappears. “I guess we do.”
He says it so quietly that I almost don’t hear him.
“You’d rather starve down there?” I ask in disbelief, unable to understand how returning to a life where he never had enough food could possibly be preferable to everything I can give him here.
His eyes meet mine, and despite the sadness in them, he doesn’t hesitate. “Than be held prisoner?”
“I’ve given you freedom,” I snap.
He swallows hard but doesn’t back down, even as he grips the arms of the chair and draws his shoulders inward. “It’s not the same thing. Even—”
“Enough,” I growl, unwilling to hear whatever argument he intends to make. “I’m not letting you go.”
He drops his head back against the chair and stares at the ceiling. Silence fills the room. Neither of us speaks or looks at the other, and it takes me several moments to realize he’s crying quietly, tears slipping from the corners of his eyes and trailing down his cheeks. He makes no attempt to wipe them away.
One clings briefly to the bottom of his chin before falling, and I catch it on the tip of my finger before bringing it to my mouth.
Then I stand and offer him my hand, waiting while he stares at it with an expression I still can’t entirely understand. He doesn’t have a choice and he knows it, but he can make the time he spends here bearable for himself.
20
Boone
He pulls my clothes off with such single-minded focus that I know fighting him is pointless. Even when he pushes me back onto the bed, I let him because he’s all I have left and he’s made it abundantly clear that none of that is changing.
Ever.
He’s still completely dressed, and when he widens my legs and crawls between them without making any move to undress himself, I realize he’s intent on focusing entirely on me.
“I…”
“Shh,” he cuts me off, his attention remaining fixed on me. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
His fingertips trail lightly along the insides of my thighs, the touch so different from what I’ve come to expect from him that I remain still.
“You make me want things I’ve never wanted before,” he says quietly.
When his hand wraps around me so gently that I arch into his touch, desire, or something close to it, streaks through me.
Despite all of it—him keeping me here, ripping me away from my father, locking me up—that physical demand for touch and closeness, especially now, overwhelms everything else until it becomes difficult to concentrate on anything except what I’m feeling.
He strokes me, and I moan.
With him hovering over me, touching me and taking the time to learn what I like, for a moment I forget that I’m afraid of him and everything that has happened between us.
