Page 55 of Captive

“I know,” she says. “I didn’t say it did. I said it’s in there too.”

* * *

She takes my face in both hands and kisses me.

There’s no gratitude in it. No reward for confessing. No bargain. She kisses me like she just read forty-three pages about the worst things I’ve ever done and decided she wanted me anyway, on purpose, with her eyes open.

I keep my hands on my crutches until she takes one and leans it against the wall. Then the other. She offers me her shoulder for the six steps to her bedroom and doesn’t pretend I can’t manage them, and doesn’t let me turn pain into a show either.

The lamp is on. The hall light is on. Her keys and her phone sit together on the nightstand where she can reach them without crossing me. She stacks pillows for my leg and waits till I’m sitting against the headboard.

Then she puts one hand flat on my chest.

“The front door is unlocked,” she says. “The back door is unlocked. My keys are right there. You don’t have any ranch authority, any weapon, any truck here. I know what you wrote. I know what I’m choosing.”

She takes my hand and wraps it around both her wrists.

“Hold me with your hand,” she says. “Nothing else. Red, or three taps.”

My whole body goes still.

I’ve held people before. I’ve held men to stop them leaving. I’ve used my size to make an ugly order feel like it couldn’t be argued with. She knows every piece of that now, in writing, and she’s putting her wrists in my hand anyway.

It isn’t forgiveness. It’s her choice. I don’t let myself confuse them.

“Understood,” I say, and my voice isn’t steady.

She lifts our joined hands over her head. I close my fingers just enough to keep her there, my thumb resting on the fast flutter of her pulse. She settles across my good thigh, careful even now to keep her weight clear of my bad leg.

She bends and kisses me slow until I stop holding myself apart from it. Her hips shift once against my thigh, deliberate, and the sound she makes goes straight through me.

I open her shirt with my free hand, one button at a time, while her arms stay up. She rolls her shoulders back when the last one gives. Her bra is plain beige, made for a long workday, and it hits me harder than lace ever could. I push one cup down and take her breast in my hand and then in my mouth.

Her knees tighten on my hip. She presses closer. Even held, she’s the one steering this.

“Jeans,” she breathes against my hair.

I open them, but they’re too tight to get past her hips while she’s straddling me, so I slide my hand inside instead. She’s wet. She rocks into my palm, and I circle her with my fingertip until her head tips back, and then slide one finger into her, and then two.

Her wrists turn in my grip. Not pulling away. Finding leverage. She rides my hand with her lips parted and a flush spreading down into her open shirt.

Then her breathing changes.

It goes shallow and fast. Her shoulders lock. For one second, her eyes aren’t on me or this room at all.

I open my hand.

Both her arms come down. I take my other hand out of her jeans and set it flat on the bed where she can see it, and I leave space between us without moving far enough to make her deal with my weight or my leg.

Every old instinct in me wants to explain. To say I saw it, I stopped, you’re safe. I let it die in my throat. Making her comfort me about her own fear would be one more thing taken.

She puts both palms flat on my chest. She breathes. One long breath, then another. When her eyes come back, she looks at the open bedroom door, and the lit hall, and her keys on the nightstand.

“For one second,” she says, “I was back in that room. You stopped.”

“Yes.”

She looks at my hand on the bed. The one that held her.