Page 69 of The Woman with the Handcuffs

There was intimacy in it.

And a comfort I never could have expected.

For both of us, I would guess, seeing as Caitlin slept like a fucking rock, only moving to snuggle her face in closer to my neck.

Not even my whole right arm going numb would let me move, relieve the pressure, risk her waking up and getting off of me.

And it was a good thing I was willing to endure the pins and needles because feeling her rock against my cock, her soft little noises filling my ear, and driving herself up and through an orgasm had been worth it all by itself.

The blowjob had been an unexpected perk.

Getting the perfect opportunity to peel off her shorts and panties and taste her, that was the fucking icing on the cake.

Though knowing how loud she got when she didn’t have a hand over her mouth kept me constantly distracted the whole morning as we drove the final leg to her father’s last known location.

Caitlin was quieter than usual, and I had no idea if that was because the fun of the road trip was over and the reality of what we might come upon was dawning on her. Or if she was simply overthinking everything that had happened between us. With her, it could have been either, neither, or a combination of them.

I was armed with my knife and a heavy-duty flashlight, and Caitlin had a serious-looking bottle of bear spray and a stick she found in the field as we scoured every inch of the grass leading from where the semi would have been parked and the tree line.

“We would cover more ground if we split up,” she said as we stepped under the canopy. Even with some of the leaves changing and falling to crunch under our feet, it was still significantly darker inside the woods than out.

“No.”

If this was a situation where we were going to come upon her father’s body, there was no fucking way I wanted to risk her being alone when it happened.

“But…”

“I don’t want either of us getting lost,” I told her, gesturing into the expansive woods.

I didn’t get claustrophobic, but it felt like the woods were closing in on me. I couldn’t imagine she was faring any better. Especially considering she was already probably amped up with concerns about her old man.

“Okay,” she agreed, sighing. “We’ll stay close but look on opposite sides then.”

“Sounds good to me. Point anything out, no matter how small it seems. Footsteps, fabric, even candy wrappers. Never know what might be significant.”

With that, we started moving, checking up into the trees and down under our feet, kicking freshly fallen leaves out of our way to inspect the forest floor.

I didn’t expect to find much within the first few dozen yards. I didn’t have a lot of faith in cops, but I figured even some backwoods force would check the first fifty or sixty feet inside the woods when they suspected a missing person.

It wasn’t until the trees obscured even the road from view that I really started searching off in the distance.

She told me that her father was a big guy—tall, broad—but this many weeks in, if something happened to the guy, there might not be a whole lot left of him to find. So I had to really look.

And that was what we did.

Up and down, changing sides, spreading out wider. For hour after hour. The flies bit us up. Then, as dusk came down, so did the damn mosquitoes.

But I wasn’t about to give up until Caitlin was willing to.

Eventually, she leaned back against a tree, sweaty, flushed, eyes sad.

“He wouldn’t be any further than this,” she said. “Not even if he was disoriented or being chased or anything. We are so far in.”

“You okay?”

“I don’t know what I thought we would find. I mean, he went missing weeks ago. If he was here… he would be… he wouldn’t be…” She swallowed hard before continuing, “He wouldn’t be my dad anymore.”

“We had to check,” I reminded her. “It would have eaten you alive if we didn’t.”