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I lick my lips, looking for words. I shiver, cold from head to toe.
Rye stands. “I need to start us a fire. It's not warm enough in here for you. You're freezing,” he says.
He reaches for a wool blanket and wraps it around my shoulders. “Don't move,” he says.
I nod, trembling as he goes out to the front porch. He carries in a stack of firewood, then he puts on a shirt that was atop the pile. There's a wood-burning stove in the corner of the room and he begins to build a fire, striking a match then adding kindling. I watch as the blaze begins to burn.
He turns to me after he closes the door on the stove. “It'll warm up here real quick. I'm sorry there wasn't a fire already going,” he shrugs. “I live down in Home. Came up here for a few weeks to clear my head. If you had come through the clearing even a few hours earlier, I wouldn't have been here. I wouldn't have found you. The timing…” He shakes his head, running a hand over his beard. “The timing was…”
“Like fate?” I ask. The two words hang in the air as he stares back at me. Eventually he nods. “Yeah,” he finally says. “Fate.” He reaches for the flask in his back pocket. “Do you need a strong drink before you tell me the truth of what's happened to you?”
I shake my head. “I've never had a lick of alcohol in my life.” I tell him.
His eyes narrow. “How old are you?”
“I'm 22,” I tell him. “What about you?”
“I'm 28,” he says.
I nod, slowly taking the information in. “I’m so lucky to have found you,” I tell him. My voice cracks as I look him over, feeling like he is my protector. “I know I can trust you.”
Then the words begin tumbling out. The words I've been holding in for so long, so many years. I tell him where I was, in the woods with Marjorie and Horace. How they kept me as their daughter, locked in a room.
His eyes fill with rage. “I'm going to go kill him,” he says. “I'm going to go find that bastard. And I'm going to—”
“It's too late,” I tell him, shaking my head. “I killed him before I left. I shot him. He's dead. It was my only chance to get away. Marjorie died in her sleep or something. And he was distraught,” I explain. “I knew it was my only chance to catch him off guard. I knocked the gun out of his hand and I pulled the trigger.”
I squeeze my eyes shut tight. My shoulders start to shake. Rye sits on the couch next to me. He wraps his big arms around me.
“It's okay. It's okay, Prairie. You can cry all you need. Just let it all out.” He runs a hand over my back, soothing me. Growling under his breath. “Goddamn it. That monster… what those people did to you… It's so fucked up. It's so wrong.
My God, Prairie, what you've been through.”
I steady myself, willing my hands to stop shaking, and I look into his eyes.
“Rye, I am not a victim. I am strong. I told myself every day that I would get out, eventually, and I would be okay. I wasn't going to let what happened to me for those years define me. I know I have problems and PTSD and things I'm gonna have to work through—but I'm not weak.”
“I never said you were weak,” Rye says. “Hell. You ran through those woods into that clearing on a mission. You knew what you needed.”
I lick my lips, leaning close enough to kiss Rye Rough. “Yes, I knew what I needed. I needed you. I know it sounds crazy. I know you probably think I'm delusional or concussed. But I’ve had a vision of you all these years. I had this idea of a man who was big and strong and would take care of me, a man just like you. And then there you were. When I needed you most. You were here for me.”
“Prairie,” Rye says with a look in his eyes, a look of concern, of intensity, “you need to see a doctor.”
“I know,” I tell him. “I know I do. But first, please, let me kiss you.” I’m pleading, really. I lean in and he doesn't pull back.
My lips press against his and I give myself the gift I've been dreaming about for so long.
Soft lips. Strong man. Arms wrapping around me and holding me tight. I sink into that kiss, crawling into Rye’s lap. He doesn't let me go. It's like he knows what I need.
I need him.
He cradles me in his arms, making me feel safe and secure. Like I'm protected, and that's what I've needed all these years. Someone to protect me.
The kiss lasts for ages. My tongue finds his and the kiss deepens and becomes something desperate, electric.
I'm on my back on that couch and he's kissing me harder. I feel the swell of his cock against my belly. And I wrap my legs around his torso. Needing him, needing more, needing everything.
I'm panting against his mouth. My nipples hard, my pussy wet. I'm aching for him. Him. His hands against my core. I want his body against mine.
