20. Kinleigh
TWENTY
KINLEIGH
PRESENT.
Morning stings my senses as I trudge through the long grass toward the barn, eager to greet the horses. Seeing them has become a centering ritual of mine, one of the only ones I have.
For the fiftieth time, I drag the comb through Charlie’s mane, my fingers trailing. So soft; the tender, coarse hair has a soporific effect on my sensibilities. Leveling my hand down her strong back, I enjoy being with this part of her for another moment before quickly shoving the brush back into my apron, coming around to her face. Peppering her muzzle with affectionate kisses, I pull an apple from my apron and feed her. I don’t know if my father’s been out to the second horse barn since he made Colton his prisoner.
I think maybe he hasn’t.
My father isn’t above killing an innocent animal, and because Murphy is here and alive—thanks to my daily tending—I think he doesn’t realize the horse didn’t run home.
I suppose if the police ever came sniffing around, Murphy being here wouldn’t look so good. Then again, a lot of things in our house don’t look so good and a lot of law enforcement boots have traipsed through it, for fundraising barbecues and auctions on the ranch. And not a single one of them has ever taken note of any of it.
Why would an honest, aging rancher need a holding cell in his basement? Two full cabinets of weapons? A drawer full of encrypted drives, which I’ve come to assume must be past spec sheets of women and children that are… long gone by now. No one’s ever so much as raised an eyebrow to my father, so maybe the horse of a missing man being at our house would be meaningless.
Assuming that’s the truth, and the sheriff’s department isn’t ignorant but more so, crooked , I know I have to free Colton and get him to those girls before the law or my father gets a whiff of it.
It’s all on me.
And I know that.
I need a little more time.
I still haven’t found the coordinates.
As it turns out, the holding location changes from time to time, though I’ll admit, I don’t know how frequent that actually is. All that I know is the last time I found coordinates, I rode out there on Charlie, praying to God that I wasn’t too late, that I’d find all those black-and-white faces on those spec sheets, that my face would be what they see when they realize they’re free.
The shipping container had been excavated, and it was gone. There wasn’t even a scrap of clothing in sight. Just tracks from where the container had laid, and a lazy attempt to smooth it over with some sort of hoe or tractor system.
The location had been changed, and I knew then that either he knew I was onto him or he was smarter than I gave him credit for. And I didn’t know which was more terrifying.
Since then, I’ve been listening, watching, remembering…
He has taken everything from so many women and helpless, innocent girls. I am willing to give my life if it means he pays for what he’s done. Death is too good, too caring for his senses, too catering to his needs.
He must pay.
There’s no other way.
And now that he’s torturing Colton, he must cruelly suffer.
I give Murphy a kiss and turn, heading back to my own beautiful animal waiting just outside the barn. I didn’t tie her up, because she goes where I go.
My mind veers to the places I rarely visit. To the things that I don’t let myself remember because it makes me sad. To the many memories of Colton. Of what we had. Of what we were.
Before I ruined it.
Before Forrest ruined everything, including me.
“Hey,” my uncle Garrison’s gruff voice gallops over my shoulder, jolting me from my subtle awareness.
In this barn, tending to Colton’s mare, I swear my soul drifts into a twilight state, an existence that only harbors calm and love. Leaving his horse hurts. Turning to face Garrison only makes the wound that much worse.
I blink at him. I was heading back now, asshole minion.
“You need to head back.” He strokes his jaw, his hand covered in a worn leather glove, stains along the knuckles and wrist. His emerald eyes poke around the barn. He finally looks at me, and my jaw clenches. “Now.”
No shit, moron. I was already doing that.
He turns but stops himself, his gaze lost somewhere in the space between us. His voice is edged beneath a cloak of calm, like smoke running over river rock, rippling and luminous when he utters, “He just left for the afternoon. On horseback. For several hours.”
I study my uncle’s profile but he cranes his neck, finally bringing our gazes together. He’s telling me to have time with Colton, before my father returns. Hope splinters through me.
Garrison keeps his voice the same rocky timbre when he adds, “Forrest couldn’t think I went easy on him.”
I blink a few times, processing that last bit. Couldn’t think I went… oh my God . My hands fall to my stomach, where I clench at the stabbing pain suddenly there. Sweat pricks in a panic at the back of my neck, and I want to pellet him with urgent questions. What did you do to him? I want to scream at him and promise him that I’ll kill him if he hurts Colton. I will tear his throat out with my bare hands and then kill my father with his brother’s blood soaking my skin.
He leaves and I rush out around him, faster, more panicked than he has ever been. He’s alone. He has no loved one nearby, chained to a wall like a fucking wild animal, starved like a war criminal, and beaten like a monster.
Charlie’s keen energy senses my turbulent soul, rearing her head with grace as I approach. The panic in my chest as I climb on is stinging, piercing through the still life around us. My mouth trembles but stays shut as I crack the reins. I never break down. Never, ever. When Forrest Conway is your father, breaking down doesn’t work—he savors it.
I broke down once.
I was eighteen.
It was my birthday.
Colton was gone. Because I had broken up with him.
While my father brutally raped me, his hand gripped around my throat, he cursed me for not being “young” anymore, and that being with a girl my age was no longer “fun”. Yet, he’s never stopped.
My heart pounds loudly in my ears. I’ve been on a hunger strike since the last time he raped me. It’s been… three days I’ve gone without food. After it happened, there’s a part of me, ridiculous as I truly know it is, that believes maybe… I could have avoided it. Maybe I could have tried harder to make him not get so mad.
But the idea of my behavior somehow becoming better when I already tiptoe on eggshells, trying not to make a noise as I breathe? That makes me sick. Violently ill, immediately. I can’t fathom making myself any smaller. Any more humiliated.
I dream of running a blade along the flexing tendons in his throat, dancing in puddles of his blood as he howls for his life. I imagine how little strength I would need to kill him with that knife. A tiny little push. Like nudging back a can of beans on the shelf at the grocery store. Tap. He’d be done.
But that’s too easy.
He needs to sit in a cell and rot. He loves captivity so much, right? Imprisoning his daughter and the only man she’s ever loved. Oh, but separately, so torture is clearly something he’s into.
If he loves torture and captivity so much, he’ll love prison.
That’s where he belongs.
If I kill him, I gain vengeance, and hold a sliver of temporary happiness for retaliating. But all the women he’s hurt and wronged and ruined? They deserve a sliver, too. If I end him now, they don’t get that. And they’re owed the most they can get.
And so are the families of the victims.
I cry as I race toward the house, thinking of Colton being…I don’t know, I guess I think of him as dead. And I can’t stomach it for more than half of a second, or maybe less. My entire body goes into fight or flight, and here I am now. Shivering, shaking, crying, and riding Charlie as quickly as we can safely go, mapping out my words to him, fantasizing the things I want to say.
The things I can say.
When I’m sliding off the saddle and smearing my palms along my cheeks and beneath my nose, I hear him. I hear him inside the cellar tucked beneath the kitchen, his voice echoing ominously in the empty space. Thank God for that tiny little window. My lips curl as I break out into a sprint, racing toward the house, through the mudroom and into the kitchen, down to the cellar.
His face is sweaty as he scrambles to his feet, lines of tortured panic melting from the corners of his eyes, the pinch of emotional agony immediately draining from his features. My chest heaves as the room loses its impatient and terrifying charge.
“Kin…” he breathes out, gasping for air.
I collect some of the cruelly placed full bottles of water from the middle steps of the cellar, and twist the lid off one, crossing the room to get him.
I lift the respite to his lips, my eyes holding his as he gluggluglugs the water down, until the bottle is drained and crumpling in our hands. His nostrils flare and his chest heaves, his flannel darkened by his sweat.
“Another,” he breathes, his eyes still holding mine.
I bring another to his lips once I take it from the stairs, and he sucks it down.
The air is calming, allowing my focus to find his discolored face, in swollen and tender knots. Beaten. Despite his battered state, he stares at my mouth, making my pussy swell with unending heat and passionate need, alerting me immediately that no matter his condition, I need him. My heart thunders, too, setting my mind into a dizzied state. I need to eat.
Right now, my focus lies on his gaze as it leisurely swims over my lips, making long, luxurious laps, taking in every delicate detail. Moisture between my thighs intensifies, and I shift, seeking relief but finding none.
Colton nods toward the steps, where there is also a cruelly placed first aid kit. One which he needs badly. One I didn’t even see when I raced down here.
His face is all I saw.
“Clean me up?” he asks, cutting through the silence that follows me, like my shadow, like a dark cloud of trauma, pregnant with unhappiness and pain. “Please.”
He didn’t have to say please, but I’m so busy falling in love all over again that I can’t think straight. I blink up at him, nodding frantically yes a few times, earning me a beautiful, albeit beaten, smile.
I spread the kit on the bed and dig around until I have the right supplies. While using antiseptic on his face, our mouths close. Our eyes are locked. His breath is hot and my pussy throbs at our nearness and at the known privacy. My dad won’t be back for at least two hours, and I’d say that’s generous.
“I knew you weren’t involved,” he says, cutting through the wanton haze.
My spine straightens as I smooth a damp, cool cotton ball along the gash in his cheek.
He winces just a little. “What is he doing to you?”
My movement falters, and my heart does too for an instant. After a moment, I catch my breath, my eyes rising to his, begging him not to ask. Not because I can’t say or don’t speak but because this is our moment. He needs me. He needs to know how much I love him and regret every word my father made me speak.
I reach for the tube of neomycin ointment and squeeze it onto the end of a cotton swab.
He takes my wrist before I can apply it. “Does he just hit you?” He adjusts his arrangement of words as soon as they leave his mouth, though I wasn’t offended. It’s a tough question to frame, let alone ask. “I mean, does he do more than hit you?”
I swallow and shake out of his gentle grasp, smearing the ointment over the gash. When I’m done, I apply the butterfly bandages.
“I’m so sorry.” His voice wavers in a way that brings tears burning behind my eyes, making my stomach free fall as energy soars through my veins.
I love you. I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you.
I stare into his eyes. He can’t hear me, and he needs to. He’s in a raw state, one that requires rebuilding and affection. The same state I’m in, in some ways. The more I stare, the less I feel he understands. I crush my lips to his, growing heady as relief slides down my back. I missed kissing him.
I’ve missed us.
Aching need courses through my thighs, swirling in my groin, causing my swollen pussy to weep, growing desperate for a deep, thorough fuck.
By him.
He’s the only one I want in that way and the only time I can ever make myself aroused is when I think of him. All other times, my body is closed off, a vessel being used against my will.
He takes my face in his hands, sending heat down my neck and into my spine. My knees wobble. Using his thumbs, he tugs down on my bottom lip before he softly kisses me.
“Where is your voice?”
My eyes burn, but I press on, needing him to feel my love if he can’t hear it. I reach between us to the hem of his sweats.
We need this .
Once our bodies connect, the strength of our unity will course through us. We thought we’d run out of energy and hope, but being together will bring that back. Give us both a reason to keep going. And I know I need strength for what I have planned. I need the strength to believe in hope again. To be foolish enough to plan again. To dream again.
Feeling him pulse and pump inside me will undoubtedly give me strength, and also power. Being with a man like Colton Beckett… I can only imagine.
We only made love once,but it was the only time I ever made love.
I think about it every day.
“Let me free and come with me,” he whispers, as he dusts kisses along my throat then collarbone, intermittently speaking to me. “Run out of here with me, Kinney,” he rasps, the warm tip of his tongue carving out the curve of my earlobe.
Shivers rack my nervous system, and my pussy clenches in anticipation. His chains clink as he reaches out, stroking hair off my shoulder as his palm skates my bare arm.
His hand on my arm has me soaking. My poor cotton panties.
“We have to help those girls, Kin.”
I slide back onto the cot and lean forward, not caring a single bit how sweaty he is, or how filthy his clothes are.
I’ve been a prisoner for so long.
He is my freedom.
The single place I belong.
I tug his sweats down and pull out his thick, soft cock and heavy, warm balls. My stomach tightens and my pussy clenches at the feel of him, so masculine even when not aroused.
If I don’t get him inside me, I may actually lose my mind.
I push him back onto the cot and lift the hem of my sundress, keeping it bunched with my forearms, stacked beneath my breasts. His dark eyes roam my panties, hovering on the crotch, where I know my swollen pussy lips are making quite the impression. He groans a little, and I gush a little more.
With Colton still cuffed, I reach out and bring one of his hands from behind his head, where he’d tucked it, and bring it to my panties. His fingers hang lazily from the band, and I watch as he drinks in the moment, his lips parting on a hot breath of disbelief.
I feel the same.
I can’t believe we’re… back together again.
Are we?
I don’t know. But I find his hardening cock, and begin pumping him.
It only takes a few moments before he’s rock hard in my hand and throbbing against my palm. It’s so incredibly hot to be wanted so much by a man like Colton Beckett. An honorable, good man.
“Oh fuck,” Colton groans, attempting to push up beneath me, resting his upper half on his elbows. “Kinney, if this is going where I think it is, we need a condom.”
My stomach tightens at that word.
Silence fills the sliver of space between us, and when his eyes come to mine, I can see his thoughts, I swear.
You don’t need one , I wordlessly say with a shake of my head, letting him believe that I'm on the pill or have an IUD.
This moment is for us, and there’s no room for my infertility right now.
Thankfully, we’re both so close to combusting, that the idea dies off as breathy moans fill the air.
A moment later, our eyes lock and I sink down on him, internally moaning at every delicious, veiny inch. He’s wide all around, much wider and thicker than I remember. And God is he long. I press a hand to my belly as he reaches out, his chains clinking against the bedframe when he takes the hem of my dress and lifts it over my head.
I swivel my hips and ride his thick, long cock, reaching behind me for a handful of swollen, heated balls. The soft groan that erupts from him as I roll him in my hand has me nearly losing my mind. His soft whimpers in my ear when we made love as teens… that was hot.
Grown Colton? With muscles and a massive cock and a tender heart?
I come without warning after just a few minutes, my fingernails leaving memories in his chest. He groans beneath me, still, his girth flexing as heat spears through my insides, coating me in rippling pulses. His orgasm feels so good, and I feel so good for taking it all. It’s so warm.
His cum inside me, his cock deep in my pussy, his strong body beneath me, our eternal bond and connection, I don’t know. I truly can’t say what thing or combination of things it is.
My lips part, and as his eyes flutter closed, the post-coital fatigue crashing into him, I ready my voice. “Colton.”
It’s been so long since I’ve used my voice. It’s been… years, actually.
It comes back, mostly. It’s raspy. Kinda rocky.
It doesn’t sound the way I remember.
Warm cum oozes from our joined bodies, and I dip into it with my fingers, bringing it to my mouth, tasting. Colton jerks, eyes wide as he takes me in, tasting the cum that was inside me.
I don’t say his name again but he kisses me. “I heard you,” he says, as if he knows it won’t happen again.
I feel a bit childish to be rewarded for a singular word, but it’s a victory for our current fucked-up state, and I’m willing to be an optimist.
The cellar door slams to the wall.
“Kinleigh, get up here.” Garrison.
The only reason I think he’d interrupt is if my father had changed his plans. I press my lips to Colton’s, and lift my hips, his cock sliding out of me, a warm stream of cum dripping onto his softening dick.
“That’s gonna be something I never forget,” he says, blinking at his dick.
I smile, letting my dress fall around my hips, and readjust my panties. After righting things, I give him one last smile.
As I walk up the stairs, he calls, “I’ll miss you,” and I don’t say anything back.
I’ll die without you , is what I would say if I could.