9.

D UB

I was in that limbo between sleep and consciousness when I became aware of a couple of things. The most pressing was the need to get to the bathroom, and a close second to that was the worry that I’d developed a fever.

My entire right side was hotter than the sun and felt as if a heavy weight were pressing me to the earth. Whatever force was holding me down had made my arm fall asleep, and it felt like pins and needles in my fingers as they started to wake. I wiggled my hand and tried to lift it only to have the weight against me move. At first, it was subtle, but then something slid over my thigh and then my cock that was already at half-mast. It came awake faster than my arm or my brain when I realized that the weight was none other than the woman who had made it her mission to make me crazy, which made sense because if she kept moving her soft body against me, that’s exactly how I would end up.

I opened my eyes to find the earliest rays of dawn giving the room a soft glow and lifted my head to see a glorious sight. Elizabeth’s black hair trailed over my arm, falling over her face, and a lock of it tickled my side with every exhale. Her right arm was wrapped around my waist just above where her knee now pressed down on my painfully hard cock.

As I tried to figure out how to extricate myself from this heaven, I took stock of how I was feeling. For the first time since my procedure, I was clear-headed, but I didn’t have any pain. I shifted my jaw and wondered how I’d lived with the pain in my mouth for so long. Somehow, I’d become accustomed to almost constant agony until it got so bad that I couldn’t ignore it anymore. The only problem with my mouth now was the horrid taste of morning breath and the need for at least half a gallon of water to quench my thirst.

But to take care of any of my problems I’d have to figure out how to remove my arm from under Elizabeth without waking her, which seemed almost impossible.

I heard a thump and then another coming from the window. I turned my head and found Hercules staring at me like I’d just insulted his mother. As I watched, he bumped his nose against the window a little harder than before. I glared at him, and he glared right back, turning his head so he could give me the side-eye he usually reserved for Aleta when she came near him.

Suddenly, Elizabeth tensed, and I knew she was awake. I turned my head away from the window and looked down at her face just as her eyes fluttered open.

Without aiming my toxic morning breath at her, I said, “Morning, sunshine. Sleep well?” Elizabeth reared her head back and stared at me in shock. Her leg moved just a fraction, and her eyes got even wider as I said, “Can’t control it, but wiggling around on top of it isn’t going to make it go away.”

Elizabeth snorted and then let out a raspy laugh, and I thought it was probably the sexiest thing I’d ever heard. She yawned and then relaxed against me as she said, “I’m not a cuddler.”

“If this isn’t cuddling, then I’m not sure what is.”

“I’m serious. I’ve never been a snuggly person. Not that I’ve spent the night with that many people to test the theory, but I can honestly say I’ve never woken up like this before.”

“It’s a first for me, too, thank God.”

She almost sounded offended when she asked, “What does that mean?”

“Well, for the first sixteen years of my life, I shared a bed with two of my brothers, and for the next sixteen years, I was in prison. Getting this close to any man in there was something I avoided at all costs.”

Elizabeth’s laugh was interrupted by another thump on the window. She lifted her head to look outside before she smiled and said, “Good morning, Schmoopie!”

“Oh, good grief,” I mumbled when I heard Hercules whinny in answer. “What have you done to my horse?”

“He needs his morning treat.”

“He needs to stay where I put him,” I grumbled as Elizabeth pulled away. I instantly felt chilled and hated the loss of such softness pressed against me. “I don’t want to get up.”

“I don’t either, but duty calls. I’ve got dogs to feed, clean up after, and train as well as a horse that needs my attention before he decides to come through the window.”

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong? Are you hurting? Do you need . . .”

I sat up and looked at Elizabeth who had stopped in the doorway and asked, “If I say yes, will you get back in bed and snuggle with me?”

“I told you, Kevin, I’m not a snuggler.”

◆◆◆

“I swear that if you don’t stop being an asshole, I’m going to send you to the glue factory!” I said angrily as I tugged on Hercules’ reins. It had taken forever to get the bridle on him because I couldn’t get him far enough away from Elizabeth to even try. After I did, he threw a fit worthy of a two-year old and was now dragging his feet as I walked him across my sister’s property to mine. “I saw the way you were acting around her, pretending you were limping just so she’d give you attention. Fucking drama queen bullshit. I’m not sure where the hell that came from, but it better disappear or you might.”

“Why are you cussing at your horse?” I heard Laura ask. I stopped walking and looked around before seeing that she was camouflaged in the canopy of the tree we were passing under.

“You scared the shit out of me.”

“I’m not feeling very safe after I heard you threaten Hercules, so I guess we’re even.”

“One of these days, your alligator mouth is gonna overrun your hummingbird ass.”

“I don’t even know what that means, Dub.”

“I just said you have a big mouth for such a little girl.”

“Rude.”

“Why are you hiding in the tree?”

“Aleta’s looking for me.”

“Why?”

“I might have told her to leave me alone and then stole her hairbrush.”

“Did those happen together, or were they separate incidents?”

“She was trying to do my hair and make me put on one of those ugly dresses because she wanted to take pictures of me.”

“What?”

“I don’t ever want to wear those dresses again, and I don’t want my hair braided either. She slapped my head with the brush, so I took it away from her and came out here to hide.”

“Where’s your sister?”

“She’s reading in her hiding spot.”

Laura and Mary were such different children that I was amazed they’d even come from the same gene pool. Laura would spend every waking moment outside if she could, and Mary wanted nothing more than a quiet place to read. The one thing they had in common when they came to live with me was their timid nature. I was happy to see that was fading and knew that too much time with Aleta, especially if she took them away, would bring it back with a vengeance and the girls would pay mentally and physically.

“Did Aleta say why she wanted pictures of you?”

Laura shrugged and said, “She said she wanted to show the important people how sweet we look.”

I felt my heart lurch at the implications of that simple statement and, not for the first time, wondered how I could make Aleta’s death look like an accident.

“Stay away from the house until I come to find you,” I told her.

“Is there going to be yelling?” Laura asked.

“Something like that,” I muttered.

“Oh! There she is!”

Hercules jerked on his lead, and it took every ounce of strength I had to hold him in place. When he was settled, I looked up to see Elizabeth jogging in the distance, her black hair swinging behind her and those powerful legs of hers pumping away. Unfortunately, she was too far away to see much detail, but the bright running shorts she was wearing were like a neon sign begging me to study every inch of her ass. I was almost as upset as Hercules that the sight was fading too fast for me to enjoy.

I thought it odd that she was running into the forest rather than taking the path around the edge or even just running along our road, but I didn’t have time to ponder her choice very long as I was too busy trying to keep my horse at my side since he really wanted to join her.

“I like her, Dub. She’s great.”

“I like her, too, kid,” I readily admitted. “If Charlotte’s not busy, you can hang out with her until I get finished at the house, but I want you to find your sister and tell her the same thing.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to speak the language that Aleta understands and hopefully keep the two of you safe,” I told her as I started walking again. I thought about what I could do to accomplish that - other than killing Aleta, which wasn’t completely off the table at this point - and came up with a few ideas that required a specific kind of help that I luckily had access to through some good friends.

I pulled my phone out, and once I’d found the number I needed, I put it up to my ear.

“Dub, my friend! What’s up?”

“I’ve got a problem.”

◆◆◆

ELIZABETH

I leaned back on my hands so I could look into the tree line and find the birds who were making such a fuss and smiled when I saw a hawk perched on a branch staring down at the water. The stream that passed through the woods naturally curved past the huge rocks where I was resting. I found it so relaxing to sit and watch the water and bevy of animals who thrived near it, that I tended to make this my stopping place before my trek home.

Every minute I spent alone in the forest helped me chip away at the fear I had of wooded areas. The training I’d had - either officially or through my own research - helped too.

For instance, under a tree that had an easily recognizable tilt that I could see from a distance at the right elevation, I had buried one of the five survival kits I put together using the knowledge I’d gained through my studies. The one beneath the tilted tree included bottled water, a canteen and water purification tablets, as well as electrolyte powder. There were protein bars and various other food items along with a basic medical kit, a few pairs of clean socks, waterproof matches, two hand crank flashlights, a survival knife, and a handgun.

At first, I worried about leaving a weapon out in the open for anyone to find, afraid that a child might come across my bag and hurt themself or someone else, but Charlotte assured me that the forest I was exploring was protected land as part of a nature preserve and told me outsiders never ventured into it.

Considering that I’d been held hostage in a small cabin at the edge of this same forest, I knew that was bullshit, but then again, no hunters happened by the shack, and I never saw a single hiker the entire year I was there. More than once, I’d managed to escape into this same forest that I found solace in today, but since I had no survival experience, I was quickly caught by my captor and punished for trying to flee.

It took almost a year after I was rescued by Sin Tempest for me to even consider sitting beneath a tree in the middle of a park as my nightmares all revolved around a dense forest I couldn’t escape. For years after I rejoined the real world, the thought of seeing an expanse of trees would send me into a full-blown panic attack, but luckily, there weren’t a lot of trees in Rojo, Texas.

Hell, I couldn’t even watch a television show or a movie that was centered around nature because my heart would start to race and I’d begin to hyperventilate.

One day, while attending a birthday party at the city park for my former boss’s youngest daughter, Rylee, one of the children I knew talked me into accompanying her on to the play equipment. I never even considered that the tight confines would make me nervous, but that’s exactly what they did and then some.

My boss’s wife, Terra, climbed up onto the play equipment and talked me through my panic attack. During that time with her, she helped me decide to take my fears and turn them into knowledge. Since Terra had grown up in a remote part of Alaska and was raised by a man who would now be considered a ‘survivalist,’ she was a fountain of knowledge and became a mentor during my exploration of wilderness survival. That day was a true turning point in my life.

When my curiosity surpassed Terra’s knowledge, she connected me with a friend of her husband’s who knew even more about the subject, and we struck up an unlikely friendship. He taught me how to start a fire with nothing but sticks and dried grass, how to use a rock to sharpen a stick to make a weapon, and how to use that weapon to defend myself. Those lessons turned into a passion for me and an outlet for the rage and fear that I’d tried to tamp down for so long. With the help of my service dog, Rudy, I was able to start taking treks down into the canyon where my mentor lived, and after a while, I got comfortable camping out under the stars.

A person who had been through the trauma and hell I’d lived for a year would never be completely healed, but after years of hard work, I was doing more than just functioning. Training dogs to service others who had some of the same problems I did, and surrounding myself with animals who loved unconditionally and people who accepted me for who I was starting to become rather than the victim I had always been had helped me become the thriving adult I was today.

Moving to Colorado so close to the forest where I’d been held captive was my final fuck you to Troy Black, the man who had kidnapped an innocent young girl and turned her into a shell of herself. Flourishing in a scenario I’d once considered my biggest fear was something that made me so proud, I could barely contain my joy. I felt the urge to share it with the man who had taken me under his wing and taught me so much.

I pulled my phone out and hit the button to dial his number. When he answered, the sound of his voice almost made me long for my life in Rojo.

He answered the phone by asking, “Is everything okay?”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at his abrupt greeting. Bear Dumont wasn’t the most articulate person on a good day, and I knew for a fact that I was one of the lucky people whose calls he would actually answer.

“Life is good. I’m sitting on a rock in the sun next to a stream that winds through the forest near my house.”

“I bet it’s so peaceful there,” Bear said wistfully. “That’s it. I’m going to run away from home and come stay with you.”

“You’d miss your canyon too much, and I know you’d miss Autumn even more.”

“Probably.”

“But you’re welcome to come visit anytime you want.”

“We’ll be there in a few weeks for the annual reunion,” Bear informed me. “You’ll be there, right?”

“Sin invited me, and you know I can’t resist seeing everyone, so of course I will.”

“And will you be bringing a guest?” Bear asked.

“How did you . . . Who called you?”

Bear chuckled before he said, “You know I don’t answer the phone unless I have to.”

“What did you hear?” I pressed, knowing he was the type of person who sat back and silently took in his surroundings while he listened to everyone talk.

Bear ignored my question and ordered, “Tell me about this man.”

“I’m not sure there’s much to tell,” I said honestly. “He’s my friend’s older brother, and I guess he and I have become friends over the last week or so. It was a rocky start because he was sort of an asshole to me the first time we met, but . . .”

“An asshole? Do tell,” Bear drawled.

“Nothing too horrible. He called me Karen.” When Bear started laughing, I grimaced and said, “I wasn’t very nice to him because I assumed he was a horrible person.”

“You know what assumptions do.” Bear cleared his throat uncomfortably and then asked, “And now the two of you are friendly?”

“You sound like such a prude.”

“I’m gonna stop answering the phone when you call. You can talk to me by text like everyone else.”

“You don’t answer texts either!”

“I answer the important ones.” I heard Autumn, Bear’s wife, giving him shit in the background and laughed when he just grunted in response. Finally, he said, “Now, tell me about this guy.”

For the next half hour, I told Bear about all of my interactions with Dub, from the initial ‘friendship’ I’d started to develop with his mother to the things I’d learned that made me want to do horrible things to her before I killed her and scattered her remains across four states. Bear laughed when I told him about my reaction after Dub startled me and then again at his fear of the dentist that turned him into my unwilling roommate for a few days.

“Now that he’s decided to go home, how does that make you feel?” Bear asked.

“Like I needed to take a three-mile run and think about my life.”

“When Terra asked me to give you some instructions about surviving in the wild, I was hesitant because I remembered that young girl who couldn’t stand to have a man near her. I could be wrong, but I think you sound almost wistful at the thought of not waking up with this guy next to you in the morning.”

“I have never sounded wistful about anything in my life.”

“I’d have agreed with you until about two minutes ago. Enough about that touchy-feely shit. Do you feel safer out there since you’ve stashed your supplies?” Bear asked.

“I really do. I’m still not comfortable roaming through the forest at night, but I’m a lot better during the day than I used to be. I’ve explored so much that now I see some landmarks I recognize when I’m hiking, and that helps too.”

“And you put your markers out, right?”

“I did.”

“And your beacons are ready?”

“I’ve got the signals, the lights, and the smoke beacons stashed where I can easily find them.”

“Good girl. I’m not sure that anything is going to help you in the dark other than a flashlight, but I’d say you’ve conquered your fear, Lizzie.”

I smiled at the nickname he’d given me soon after we first got to know each other and heard Autumn calling for him in the background.

“I’ll let you go, Grizzly Adams. I’m sure you’ve almost used up your quota of words for the day.”

“You’d think so, but that wife of mine keeps expecting me to talk.”

“I’ll see you at the reunion.”

“I better talk to you before then,” Bear warned.

“Yes, sir. I’ll keep in touch.” I gasped when I saw movement across the stream, and when Bear frantically asked what was going on, I explained, “There’s a bear. It’s watching me. I think it’s nice.”

“What do you mean you think it’s nice? ” Bear asked. “It’s a fucking bear, Elizabeth. Is it coming closer? Do you have your spray?”

“It’s next to the stream. It’s the same one I saw before.”

“Do not go near it!”

“I won’t,” I assured him. The bear tilted its head and then seemed to nod before it turned and slowly made its way back into the trees. “It’s gone now.”

“You need to get back home,” Bear ordered. “That’s too close for comfort.”

“Okay, I’m going to let you go. I’ll head . . .”

“You stay on the line with me while you’re walking. Hup-hup, girl. Make it snappy, but don’t run.”

“Yessir, Captain Dumont!” I said with a giggle as I hopped up and started back home.

I glanced over my shoulder occasionally and stopped once or twice to listen and make sure nothing was behind me but held the phone to my ear until I was outside the tree line again.

“Okay, I’m going over the fence onto my land.”

“Good. Keep your head on a swivel. Bears aren’t friendly, no matter what you see in the movies and on television.”

“I know that,” I chided. “Give me some credit.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you didn’t sound nearly alarmed enough.”

“I’ll be fine, Bear. I was trained by the best, right?”

“Whatever. I’ll let you go now. Call me if you need me. Day or night. Got it?”

“Of course.”

“You’re doing great, Lizzie. Keep up the good work.”

“I will. Tell your beautiful wife I said hello.”

“Of course. See ya.”

Bear hung up abruptly without letting me say goodbye, but over our years of friendship, I’d become accustomed to his nature and loved him even more for it. His wife was awesome, and their differences made their relationship stronger as far as I could tell. She was just as outgoing as he was surly, so they complimented each other perfectly.

Talking to Bear made me miss home more than I liked, but instead of letting myself get morose, I decided to make another phone call as I walked across the field to my house.

“Elizabeth!”

“Terra, my friend, I need some advice.”

“My first bit of advice to you would be to not count on me to keep you out of trouble,” she suggested. “What can I do for you, honey?”

And just like that, I felt reconnected to the home I’d come to love, which made me feel better about the home I was trying to settle into.