by Pam Godwin
The images crash through me, awakening memories and grief I’ve tried so hard to lock away. Resistance leaks from my bones, and I slump onto the stool, trembling. Cold. Hollowed out.
“I’m sorry, Raina.” He crouches before me and brushes the hair from my face. “I can’t risk your safety. I won’t.”
He rises and opens the door.
“Everything okay?” Cora stands on the other side, her arms loaded with clothes.
“Fine.” He takes the bundle from her and steps aside. “I’ll change out here while you get started with Raina.”
She slips in and shuts the door. “Hey, honey. Are you—?”
“I’m good.” I shake out of my stupor and stand.
“Okay, um…” She looks me over. “Do you know your sizes?”
I did before I lost weight in John’s restraints. “No.”
Without asking me to remove my clothes, she takes my measurements and exits the dressing room.
Lorne leans against the adjacent wall, dressed in the clothes he arrived in, cowboy hat tilted down, and arms crossed over his chest.
“Already finished?” She glances at the pile of folded garments beside his boots.
“Everything fits.” He lifts a stack of denim and random ruffly things from the rack beside him. “Do you have these in her size? Also, she needs bras and panties.”
Her face goes slack, paling slightly.
I shoot him an incredulous look, but his attention wanders across the room, scanning the displays of women’s clothing.
What is he doing? I can’t keep up with his ever-changing personality.
“Let me check my inventory.” Cora takes the clothes from him and turns toward a wall lined with packaged underwear.
“Not those.” He gestures at the mannequins in the back dressed in stringy lingerie. “The lacy ones.”
“Those are pretty.” She glances over her shoulder at me.
Gone is her smile, replaced with a frown of accusations.
I only lied about the illness. The rest surprises me as much as it does her.
When she shuffles away, I curl my finger at him in a come-hither motion.
He prowls toward me and braces his hands on the doorframe above his head.
“Who are you?” I flick up the brim of his hat to see his eyes.
“The guy you’ve been mentally undressing for three days,” he drawls.
“You are so—!” I press a hand against my forehead and breathe until my heart calms. Then I hold up a finger. “One. You didn’t try on those clothes.”
“I tried on a pair of jeans. They’re all the same size.”
“Different brands fit differently.”
He gives me a blank look.
“Never mind.” I hold up a second finger. “Two. Why are you picking out my clothes? I can’t afford any of that. And the granny panties”—I wave a hand at the wall—“will do just fine.”
“Which finger are you on? I’m losing count.”
“Are you listening to me?”
“I hear you.” His bottomless, vibrant green eyes swirl with startling depth. “Every unspoken thought. Every emotion you cover up.” His expression softens. “I hear you.”
My breath slips away. The room fades, and I’m left with a horrible pang in my chest. “Don’t do this.”
“What?” His gaze dips to my mouth.
“Don’t pull me in and push me away. You’re jerking me back and forth, and it’s cruel, Lorne. I don’t deserve this.”
“Are you ready to try stuff on?” Cora breezes around the corner, carrying enough clothes to outfit a drag show.
Lorne pushes off the door frame and gives me a look so deep-reaching it lingers long after he stalks to the other side of the store.
Thirty minutes later, I stand near the front door as he and Cora bicker over money. Or rather, Cora bickers while Lorne holds out the cash without saying a word.
Finally, she accepts his payment and leans in for a hug. “Let me at least take you to dinner. Or drinks?”
“Another time.” He pats her arm and steps back, his focus shifting to me. “Ready?”
He already loaded all the bags into the truck and walked the perimeter to check for signs of unwanted company. After we say goodbye, he leads me outside with a hand on my lower back.
On the drive home, Just A Kiss by Lady Antebellum plays on the radio. The tires hum along the pavement, and the man behind the wheel vibrates with things left unsaid.
I squirm in the silence. “Lorne…”
He lowers the volume, his gaze fixed on the road. “I didn’t want her to touch me.”
“Didn’t look that way.”
He rubs a palm along his thigh and returns it to the wheel. “In my head, it was your hands.”
I turn toward the window and rest my fingers against my mouth to hide my expression. A scowl? A smile of pleasure? My lips teeter up and down, as volatile as the cowboy at my side.
“Are we being truthful?” I pick at the frayed hem of my cut-offs.
“Always.”
“Okay.” I breathe in slowly and release. “I told Cora you have an STD.”
He catches his bottom lip between his teeth. Biting down on a smile?
I lean back, stunned. “Are you laughing?”
“It didn’t deter her.”
“No, it didn’t. After the half-naked show you gave her, I’m pretty sure she’s planning a night in with the girls.” I wriggle my fingers. “Couch hockey for one.”
He shakes his head, and that time, his smile breaks free. It makes him prettier, sexier, and harder to be mad at.
Wait. Is that a dimple?
I bend closer, and he drags a hand over his mouth, erasing the grin.
“Please tell me you don’t have dimples.” I sit back.
“Not intentionally.”
That V-cut, those arms, that ass, those eyes, that dimple… Damn him.
“The security guard…” He adjusts his hat. “You didn’t tell him you were with me.”
“I didn’t give him any names. I described what John looks like and what he drives. Said he was a dangerous ex-boyfriend.” I swallow. “Ford wasn’t willing to help me until I made him that offer.”
“Guys like that aren’t content with a taste, Raina. Considering the kind of men you’ve been with, I know you know this. He would’ve thought about it for a day or two and called with more demands. More of you.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe about it. You’re the hottest woman he’ll ever encounter in his miserable life. He’s probably beating off right now.”
“Was that a compliment? Because you said I wouldn’t be getting any more of those.”
“It’s a fact, Raina.”
My skin heats. “You like me.”
“I tolerate you.” He steers the truck under the archway of the ranch and parks.
“You’re the most mercurial man I’ve ever met. I swear you have a different mood for every hour in the day. How do you deal with the whiplash?”
“I’m not myself.” He kills the engine and lifts his gaze to the estate. “Everything feels backwards, like my cell is my true home, and in there is the prison.”
“You can’t sleep outside in the winter.”
He stares at the dash, his eyes losing focus. Then he blinks. “I’m not adjusting well.”
It can take years. Some inmates never acclimate outside of their cells. But Lorne was only down for eight years, and he has the support of a family that loves him.
I clear my throat. “If there’s anything I can do…”
The one thing I’m good at is the last thing I want him to take. It was easy to offer my body when I first met him. The time I spent chained to a wall shoved me into a torpid state of detachment.
But my insides are a jumbled mess now, churning between hatred and desire. I can’t have sex when my emotions are so close to the surface. It would break me.
He sets his gaze on me. “Your tea helps.”
I sigh my relief. “Then I’ll make tea.”
Every night, Raina brings me a thermos of tea. It becomes our ritual—her, me, sleeping bag, open field, vast sky, and quiet conversation. Then I send her inside to sleep in safety. Every day, she prepares our meals, cleans the house, and spends the rest of her time with me. I might not be adapting to life outside of prison, but day by day, I’m adjusting to her.
When I’m with her, I feel alive. Needed. Motivated. A little less angry, and a whole lot hungry.
Like now.
In an unused pasture with the sun beating down and humidity clinging to our clothes, I lean over her back and inhale the sweet scent of her hair.
Most of her bruises have faded. The surface cuts are healing without infection. The worst of John’s destruction dwells too deep inside her for me to examine.
I’m all too familiar with the need to bury demons. I have plenty of my own.
She’s safe here, under the watch of cameras and surrounded by me and the others. But right now, I have her all to myself.
There’s nothing around for miles, except her tiny denim shorts, full tits, the curve of her backside against my groin, and the gun in her hand. It’s a goddamn religious experience.
“Back off.” She trains the shotgun on a row of cans and kicks back with her boot, nailing me in the shin. “I mean it.”
“You’re holding it like a T-Rex.” I grip the butt of the gun and tuck it tightly against her. “Your stubby arms have these things called shoulders. Use them.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my arms. The problem is your stubby dick rubbing against my ass.”
It’s been four days since our visit to Cora’s shop. Four days of spitting, snarling, kicking, and fighting. Sometimes I rile her just to hear the creative ways her poisoned food will rot off my dick.
It feels a lot like foreplay, because let’s face it. She loves to talk about my cock.
“You’d focus better,” I say, “if you weren’t thinking about it all the time.”
“Why don’t you stand in front of me, and I’ll think about it while I shoot it off.”
I nudge up my hat and grin at her.
Her eyes hone in on my cheek, and she laughs through a groan. “That dimple, though!”
It’s her weakness. My discovery of that has given me every reason to smile.
“Loosen your arms.” I glide a hand along her elbow, adjusting, caressing. “Just like that.”
Her breath shivers, and goosebumps pebble her skin. “Lorne.”
“Raina.”
“You’re distracting me.” She fidgets with her ear plugs.
“See that coffee can? It’s John Holsten’s hollow heart.” I drift into her space, touching her with my hips, my chest, my arms. Then my lips, just barely against her neck. “When you shoot him, you’ll have distractions all around you, and he’ll be on the move. Shoot him in the chest.”
Her jaw locks. Her finger slides to the trigger, and determination tapers her eyes.
I pop in my own ear plugs and maintain my hovering proximity.
She inhales and squeezes on her exhale, just like I taught her.
Gunfire booms through me, and the shot goes wide, missing the can by a foot.
“Fucking fuck!” She flicks on the safety, sets the gun down, and yanks out her ear protection. “I’m only hitting like one in ten!”
“That’s why we’re practicing.”
“I’m terrible.”
“You’ll learn.”
“Not while you’re all up on me.” She storms off toward a cluster of trees, where Captain waits in the shade.
We’ve been out here for hours. She’s tired. Frustrated. I should let her cool off, but my boots are already chasing. My pulse quickens. My hands flex, the instinct to hunt firing beneath my skin.
I catch her around the waist and lift her off the ground.
Her elbows rear back, bouncing off my ribs as she thrashes and kicks the air. “Put me down!”
Swinging her toward the closest tree, I spin her in my arms and press her back against the huge trunk.
“If he restrained you like this,” I say calmly, “how would you escape?”
She goes ballistic, clawing and bucking and seething past clenched teeth. But she only succeeds in knocking off my hat.
“Stop.” I pin her hips with mine and wrap a hand around her throat, applying slight pressure without blocking her airflow. “Take a deep breath and listen.”
She gulps for air, and her arms drop to her sides.
“Your hands are free.” My gaze locks onto her bee-stung lips, and a rush of heat gathers beneath my belt. “You’re going to strike calmly with your thumb or the heel of your hand.”
“Where?”
“Target the cartilage right below the bridge of my nose and shove upward.”
“The mustache area? Thank you, by the way, for not growing one.”
“Yes. And you’re welcome.”
“Now?”
“Go ahead.”
Her hand snaps up, and she opts for the thumb, slamming it above my upper lip and driving upward.
Fuck, that hurts. Even though I expected it, I still drop back, my face forced skyward and my fingers slipping from her throat.
“See what happened there?” I hold my position, one foot behind me and arms out to my sides. “You redirected me and put distance between us.”
“Wow. Cool trick.”
In a blur, I’m on her. I clap a hand over her mouth and effectively restrain her small body with mine. “That maneuver only gives you a second. A second to scream, run, or prepare to block the next attack. You hesitated, and now you don’t have your voice.”
Her eyes widen above my hand, her breath hot against my palm. I release her and step back.
She rubs her cheek, peering up at me beneath long black lashes. “You’ll teach me to block?”
“Yes. But your best weapon is your voice. Scream until your vocal chords shatter. Most people suck, but they’ll hear you. Someone will come running.”
I spend the next couple of hours teaching her basic self-defense. I show her how to escape zip ties and duct tape handcuffs, as well as quick and easy ways to break handholds on her clothing. She listens, asks questions, and obeys without her usual attitude.
She’s motivated to live, and I’ll make sure she has the tools to do that. But I can’t ignore the knot of dread in my stomach. Every time I grab her, spin her, and yank her up against me, that knot coils tighter, thicker.
Over the past four days, I came to the conclusion I could never allow her to hunt down John alone. I would be with her every step of the way.
Except now, I’m coming to terms with a new realization.
I can’t let her go after him at all.
She adjusts her ponytail high on her head and faces me with a wide stance.
“Want somma this, big guy?” She pops her neck and balls her tiny fists. “Come at me.”
Good God, she’s stunning. Gutsy. Full of life. Mine. My charge, my responsibility, my reason for smiling. If another man so much as touches her, he won’t survive.
John needs to be dealt with, but not at the risk of putting her in harm’s way. I can kill him myself. But if I got caught? I would return to prison for life.
I can’t go back there.
I won’t.
The idea alone strangles me in a fog of nightmares so crippling my lungs burn beneath the pressure. When I sense her watching me, I empty my expression and shove the hat low on my brow.
“Oh, no.” She anchors her hands on her hips and narrows her eyes. “Which Lorne are we now? Broody? Angry? Guilty? Vicious? Definitely not Chummy because…” She pokes a finger at her cheek and makes a twisting motion. “No dimple.”
“I need to head back.” I grab the shotgun and pack up the ammo.
“We’re finished for the day?”
“I’m not keeping up with the ranch work and—”
“Hey.” She crouches beside me
and touches my shoulder. “Talk to me.”
I shrug off her hand and carry the supplies to the horse.
She hurries after me. “Are we being truthful?”
“Always.”
She plucks the ammo from my grip and stows it in the saddlebag. Then she clutches my arm, stopping me from mounting. “How did you learn to fight like that?”
“Jarret and Jake. We started beating on one another the moment we could walk.”
She nods, purses her lips. Then she tilts her head, squinting at me. “You fought in prison, too.”
“When I needed to.” My neck stiffens, and I shift back to Captain, checking the saddle straps.
“Tell me about it.”
“No.” I lift a boot to the stirrup.
She clamps a firm hand on my knee. “Living in that head of yours must be lonely.” She nudges up my hat. “I’m right here, Lorne, seeing you, wanting to hear you.”
“You don’t want to hear this.” I lower my boot to the ground.
“I have a scary imagination, most of it born in real life experience. I’m picturing the very worst. Trapped in a compound with violent men. Broken, bloody, raped…”
I expel a harsh “Fuck” and drop my forearms on the saddle, head down, and eyes on the horizon.
She steps beside me and rests her arms on the saddle, mirroring my pose.
“It’s segregated by races. Then by authority. Influence. Power.” I glance at her sidelong. “The pecking order is established immediately. New guys come in. You either make them your bitch or you become one.”
Standing side by side, we watch the breeze ripple the grasses. She steals peeks at me. I study her out of the corner of my eye.
She fucked men I was imprisoned with. Inmates who could’ve been my friends. Or my enemies. I see the faces of the ones released before me and know their crimes. Most would’ve killed to spend an hour with her. Many could’ve killed her after they got off.
I could demand she give me names and details, but nothing good would come from that.
“They know when the guards aren’t looking, where to attack, and how much they can get away with.” I scratch the stubble on my throat. “I was attacked a lot the first month. I went in too skinny, too young, and woke every day convinced it would be my last. Then I was ambushed in the bathroom.”
Pain stabs behind my eyes. The memories. The fear. The absolute hopelessness.