8. Silas #2
She has run three miles through scrub pine and salt marsh, climbed out a window on the second floor, dropped to the ground below.
She has done this for me. She has done this because she cannot live without me, because three days was three days too long, because I am her oxygen and she is suffocating.
I stand. Cross to her in three strides. Lift her in my arms, her body light and trembling and real, her smell cutting through the bourbon and sawdust, vanilla and salt and the sharp copper of blood.
She sobs into my neck, her arms wrapping around my shoulders, her legs dangling, her small frame shaking with the force of her relief.
"Silas," she gasps, her voice broken, ruined, perfect. "Silas, I couldn't, I tried, I couldn't?—"
I do not ask questions. I do not ask if she is okay, if she is hurt, if they hurt her, if they know she is gone.
I carry her to the foundation wall, the poured concrete that forms the backbone of our house, and I press her against it.
The concrete is cold and rough against her back.
Her torn dress rides up her thighs. Her legs wrap around my waist, her heels digging into my lower back, and she is already wet, already ready, already mine before I have even freed myself.
I unzip my jeans, shove them down, and I am inside her in one brutal thrust. No warning. No preparation. No gentle stretching with fingers and praise. Just my cock, ten inches thick and curved and pulsing, burying itself to the hilt in her tight heat, splitting her open, filling her completely.
She screams. Not in pain. In release. In relief. In the desperate joy of being whole again.
"You came back," I growl against her throat, my hand fisting in her hair, pulling her head back, exposing her neck to my teeth. "You always come back."
"I love you," she screams, the words tearing from her chest like they have been trapped there for three days, for three weeks, for forever. "I love you, Daddy, I love you, I can't?—"
I kiss her. Hard. Brutal. I swallow her words, her declarations, her breath, and I fuck her against the concrete with a desperation that borders on violence.
My hips snap forward, driving deep, dragging through her swollen walls, the ridge of my crown catching on every sensitive place.
She is tight, impossibly tight, her body clamping around me like a fist, her nails drawing blood from my shoulders, her teeth breaking the skin of my lower lip.
"Silas," she sobs into my mouth, her voice muffled, broken. "Silas, please, I need you, I need?—"
I do not let her finish. I fuck her harder, faster, my balls slapping against her ass, the concrete grinding into her back, her legs trembling around my waist. She is filthy and bleeding and perfect, and I am inside her, finally inside her, and nothing else exists.
Just her heat and her grip and the way she moans my name like it is the only word she knows.
"Look at me," I command, my voice gravel and fury and the love I cannot put into words. "Look at what you do to me."
She does. Her eyes are glassy, swollen, and beautiful. Tears stream down her cheeks, cutting paths through the dirt. Her lips are parted, her breath coming in ragged gasps, and she looks at me like I am the only thing in the universe that matters.
I feel the pressure building at the base of my spine, the familiar tightening, the draw of my balls up tight against my body. She feels it too, her walls fluttering, clenching, milking me with a rhythm that matches her sobs.
"Come for me," I growl, my thumb finding her clit, swollen and slick, pressing hard circles. "Let me feel you. Let me feel what three days without me does to you."
She shatters. The orgasm rips through her like a current, her back arching off the concrete, her head falling back, her scream echoing off the exposed studs and unfinished beams. Her body convulses around my cock, clamping down so hard I see stars, and I follow her over the edge, pouring into her, hot and thick and endless, marking her from the inside out, filling her until I feel it spilling around my shaft and running down her thighs to mix with the dirt and blood on the concrete below.
I keep thrusting through it, milking every drop, my forehead pressed to hers, our breath mingling, our bodies locked together. She is still crying, still laughing, still trembling, and I do not pull out. I stay inside her, softening but still huge, still stretching her, still claiming every inch.
"Never again," I whisper against her mouth, my voice raw, broken, the voice of a man who has been to hell and back in three days. "I am never letting you go again. Not for three days. Not for three hours. Not for three minutes. You are mine. You have always been mine. You will always be mine."
She nods, her face pressed to my neck, her tears hot against my skin. "Yours," she breathes. "Forever, Daddy. Yours."
I carry her to the truck. She is limp in my arms, her body spent, her feet leaving bloody smears on my jeans.
I settle her in the passenger seat, recline it as far as it will go, and I fetch the first aid kit from behind the seat.
Warm water from the thermos I filled this morning, knowing, hoping, praying she would come.
Bandages. Antiseptic. I kneel in the dirt beside the open door and I lift her feet into my lap.
They are ruined. Shredded by gravel and pine needles and the three miles she ran for me.
I pour warm water over them, washing away the dirt and blood, and she hisses, her hand finding my hair, her fingers tangling in the strands.
I press my mouth to each cut, each bruise, each scrape, kissing the pain away, tasting copper and salt and her.
"I am sorry," I whisper against her instep, my lips brushing the arch of her foot, my tongue tracing the curve of her ankle. "I am sorry you had to run. I am sorry I could not come for you. I am sorry I let them take you."
"You didn't let them," she says, her voice soft, exhausted, full of a certainty that humbles me. "You were keeping me safe. I know. I always know."
I bandage her feet with trembling hands.
The gauze is white and clean against her torn skin.
I wrap each toe, each arch, each heel, and when I am done I kiss her knees, her thighs, the bruises on her hips that are only now beginning to purple.
I push her torn dress higher, expose her stomach, and I press my mouth to the place where my child might one day grow.
She watches me, her eyes heavy, her breathing slow. The afternoon sun slants through the truck windows, turning her skin gold, illuminating the dirt and the blood and the beauty beneath. She looks like a saint who has been martyred for love. She looks like my entire world.
"Marry me," I say. It is not a question. It is a command, a statement of fact, a declaration of war against anyone who would try to separate us again.
Her breath catches. Her eyes widen, the exhaustion falling away, replaced by something bright and fragile and fierce.
"When?" she breathes.