Page 51

"Oh," she said. Small, wondering, from somewhere deep. "Oh. There's — there's nothing to do."

"Nothing," I agreed. "Nothing to guard, nowhere to be, nothing to earn. Every exit's my job now. Every door in the county is my job. You're off shift, little one."

And Derek Kane could not fit in the room. That was the plain engineering of it, and I understood it fully only then, kneeling over her in the firelight: her fear needed slack to live in, needed her own vigilance for a host, and I had taken up every inch of the slack in soft cotton, and there was simply no purchase left in her for a man four hundred miles away. The room held a fire, a bed, a rope, a dog on watch, and the two of us. It was full.

"Warm?" I said, touching her fingers.

"Warm," she breathed. "Daddy—"

I put my mouth on her.

Her throat first, under her jaw, where her pulse was going slow and heavy now, and then down — her collarbones, her breasts, taking my time, taking all the time there had ever been, and she arched up into it and couldn't reach for me and made a sound at the couldn't that went through me like current. That was the discovery of the next long while: everything landed doubled on her held body. Every pass of my mouth, every slow drag of my palm down her belly, her hip, the inside of her thigh — she couldn't manage any of it, couldn't brace or ration or meet it halfway, could only receive, loud and helpless and radiant, her hands flexing open and closed above the wraps, her whole small body pulling gently against the anchor just to feel it hold.

"Please," she said finally, wrecked, when I'd mapped every inch of her twice and my own restraint was down to the last strands of the rope it was braided from. "Please, Daddy. I'm so — I'm right here. Please."

"I know," I said, against her hip. "I've got you. Every ounce."

I settled between her thighs with my shoulders holding them wide, and I took her apart with my mouth, and there was no hurry anywhere in the world.

She was already soaked, already trembling, and the first slow pass of my tongue pulled a cry out of her that the log walls took and kept. She couldn't reach for my head, couldn't grip the quilt, couldn't do a single one of the small managing things her hands had spent a lifetime doing — she could only lie held in the firelight and feel it, all of it, undiluted, and I felt the difference in her body immediately: everything landed deeper. Every circle of my tongue, every slow deliberate stroke, went into her without any of it siphoned off into control, and she climbed fast — faster than she ever had, her heels digging in, her hips lifting against the spread of my hands, her voice going up through registers she'd never let herself use in Bozeman or anywhere else.

"Fingers," I said against her, mid-stroke, because the rule was the rule and the rule especially held now. "Wiggle them."

"They're — oh God — warm, they're warm, Daddy, please don't stop—"

"Good girl. Wasn't going to."

And I didn't. I settled into the rhythm her body was begging for, firm and even and merciless, one hand spread warm across her belly well south of the left ribs, and I felt the coil in her wind down to nothing left, and I said, low, into the center of her, "Let go, little one. I've got every ounce of you. Fall."

She fell. She came against my mouth with her whole body — arms pulling hard against the anchor, back arching up off my bed, my name and the other name breaking out of her in pieces — and the rope held her through every second of it, and I held the rope, and there was nowhere in the shaking length of her that wasn't accounted for. I gentled her down slow, easing off by degrees, and when I rose up over her, her face was wet and open and lit from somewhere inside, and she looked up at me over her own bound arms and said, wrecked, "More. Please. All of you. I want to be held and full at the same time, I want—"

"I know what you want," I said, and I gave it to her.

I went into her slow, the way I'd always go into her, watching her face the whole long stretch of it, her body opening around me inch by patient inch while she made a sound like a held note — and when I was seated all the way home I stopped, braced over her on my forearms, her bound wrists above her head and her eyes six inches from mine, and for a moment neither of us moved at all. Her whole weight was mine. Her arms, her exits, her safety, her pleasure, the fire, the doors, the county — mine, every line item, and I watched her feel the completeness of it and go somewhere behind her eyes that I don't think she'd ever been in her life.

"Still with me?" I said.

"So with you." A tear went sideways into her hair, and her mouth was smiling. "Don't be gentle on my account, Daddy. I'm held. You made sure."

I moved.

Unhurried. That was the whole devastation of it, hers and mine both — long deep strokes with no clock on them, the bed taking it, the house taking it, her body rising to meet me as much as four inches of travel allowed and the rest of the meeting done with sound. She was loud the way I'd taught her to be loud, unmanaged, unrationed, her cries climbing with every stroke, and I kept the thread of my voice running under all of it — so good, look at you, taking me so sweet, held and full and mine — because the voice was part of the rope, the last wrap, the one that went around the inside of her.

The second climb came up in her fast and enormous. I felt it gather — her thighs locking around me, her breath gone to pieces, her arms hauling against the lodgepole just to feel it refuse — and my own control was fraying down to its last honest strands, ten hours of that voicemail in the room and a whole day of watching her be hunted burning off me now stroke by stroke, converted into this, into the only answer I had that was worth anything: her, held, safe, coming apart under me by her own asking.

"Fingers," I ground out, one last time, because the rule held even here, especially here.

"Warm—" she sobbed, "warm, they're warm, Daddy, I'm—"

"With me," I said, against her mouth. "Now, little one. Fall and I'll catch all of it."

And she shattered, and I went with her — drove deep and stilled and let go with her name coming out of me in a register the town had never heard from Boone Calloway and never would, and she came apart around me crying mine, her whole bound weight surrendered into my arms, both of us loud, both of us wrecked, the fire painting the walls gold, and I held her through every last aftershock like the thing I was built for, because I was.

The rope came off first. Before my own breathing had settled, before anything — that was the order of operations and it was non-negotiable: one knot cleared at the headboard and the anchor fell away, then the forearm wraps unwound band by band, slow, my thumb following each one down her skin, and then the wrists last, the cotton coming away to show the faint pink ghosts of where it had lain, no deeper than a shirt cuff, exactly as engineered. I took each wrist in both hands and checked it in the firelight — warm, pink, pulse strong under my thumb — and rubbed the blood through in slow circles, and then I kissed them. Each one. The thin skin on the inside where the pulse went, once, twice, an old man's manners for a debt that ran the other direction entirely.

"Water." I had it poured and waiting, of course, and she drank it in her small obedient swallows with my hand steadying the glass, boneless against my chest, her eyes already at half-mast. Then the quilt, worked up around the both of us. Then I got up — she made a small protesting sound at the loss of me, half asleep already — and crossed my own floor to the mantel and took Butterbean down off her post beside the rabbit and brought the cow back and tucked her under Josie's chin where her hand would find the crooked ear, and Josie's fingers closed around it without her eyes ever opening, and I got back in and gathered up the whole warm negligible weight of her onto my chest where it lived now.

She surfaced once more, right at the edge of going under. I felt her take a breath to say something, and I waited, my hand running its slow orbit on her back.