Page 106 of My Big Fat Daddy Issues

The rain keeps falling. The wind keeps blowing. We stay bent over the railing, breathing hard, drenched, steam rising off our skin in the cold air.

He pulls the mask off. Drops it on the porch. Presses his bare face to the back of my neck and holds me with his arms around my middle, my body mounted on him.

Then he pulls out, gathers me against his chest, and carries me inside.

Chapter 7

Billie

He carries me up the stairs with my face against his neck and lays me on the bed the way you'd set down something you were afraid to break.

Neither of us speaks. He disappears into the bathroom and the faucet runs. A minute later, he's back with a warm, wet towel and he cleans me in slow passes, wiping the mud and the blood and everything else off my skin. His hands are so gentle I almost don't recognize them. When he gets between my thighs, he pauses and looks at me with something close to pride.

"Made a mess of you."

"You're a dirty, disgusting man." I snort.

"You love it."

I do. God help me, I do.

I lie there and let him care for me. He puts the warm cloth on my welts, the scrapes on my knees, a nick above my nipple.

His bite mark.

"That's getting antibiotic ointment as soon as I'm done cleaning you up." His face has turned concerned. "Pawpaw got carried away."

He tosses the towel to the floor and lies down beside me. The bed dips under his weight and I roll into him with an exhale.

His skin is still cool from the rain. I press my face into his chest. The thump of his heartbeat slows as the rough pad of his index finger traces down my nose.

His face is flushed, his hair wrecked, sweat and rain drying on his jaw.

But his eyes. God. I could live in the way he's looking at me right now.

"There she is," he says, his thumb tracing circles on the side of my face. "There's my girl."

His girl. My entire being exhales.

"Hi," I whisper back.

He pulls me tight, chest to chest, legs tangled, his arm heavy around my waist.

"How'd you like that little bunny?" he asks into my hair.

"Ask the railing. I think I left teeth marks." His chest shakes under my cheek. "The chase was new though," I say. "How long have you been planning that?"

"Since you wrote that scene. The one with the woman running through the field." He runs his hand up and down my back. "You deleted it, but I'd already read it."

"You have my Dropbox password, Rhett. Nothing is deleted."

"True. I know it all."

I smile against his chest. This is what we are. The man who holds a knife to my throat is the same man who leaves track changeson my manuscripts with comments like "tighten this dialogue" and "this made Pawpaw hard, keep going."

The hands that pin me down are the same ones that rub my feet on the couch while I write. I trust him with my body because he earned that trust with years of other ways of showing me he loves me.

He reads the darkest things I write and doesn't flinch. Doesn't try to fix me. He just shows up and makes it real.