by Snow, Nicole
“What if I don’t want to?”
Milah blinks, lifting her head, looking up at me with confused, tear-streaked eyes. “Huh?”
“I mean, what if I don’t want to come home? What if I’m enjoying life without having everything handed to me?”
She looks puzzled, staring blankly. “Sooo, what? You mean you want to keep playing house with Senor Daddy Issues?”
“I feel safer with him than I would at home.”
I feel seen with Riker, too. I feel appreciated. I feel alive.
But I can’t say that to Milah.
She pouts. “Daddy’s really falling apart without you, Liv. You keep everything together in one piece.”
“So hire a secretary. Hell, hire ten.”
“He has a secretary. It’s not that. Logistics, I mean. It’s more –”
“I’m a piece of furniture to him,” I say. “A prop. I might be his favorite chair, but I’m still a chair, Mimi. I’m tired of being invisible, but essential. Sick of being kept.”
Milah flumps against me sullenly. “Look, at least you aren’t the one he parades around like a show poodle on a leash. You should consider yourself lucky. You get to be invisible.”
“I don’t want to be invisible!” I flare. “I don’t want to just stand around doing nothing. I want to do things. For myself, for other people. Daddy’s acting like a kid who lost his comfort blanket. When your role in someone’s life can be replicated by a fetish object, you’re not really part of their life at all.”
“Oh come on, Livvie, don’t be that way –”
“What way?”
I can’t be here. I feel for Milah, I do. She’s as dependent on Daddy as Daddy is on me, this weird triangle of emotional crutches.
And I know she’s shaky, but right now she’s in the safest place she can possibly be without being in police custody, and I’m ready to scream. I don’t know where this sudden rage and frustration and pain and tension are coming from. Maybe it's over twenty years of bottling up every emotion to be the passive, meek, perfectly invisible daughter.
But if I don’t get out of here, I’m going to say some things I’ll regret – and possibly hurt Milah beyond repair.
I peel away from her clinging embrace, shaking off her clutching hands and doing my best to ignore the instinct to cave to her wounded look. I rise, backing away a few steps, toward the glass door leading out onto the lawn.
“I’m not being any kind of way, Milah,” I say. “And I need you to understand that. I’m being me, and it scares me that I’m this old, and I don’t even know who that is. I want to find out. I want to find out what kind of spark is inside me and if it could ever burn as bright as a flame, before Daddy smothers it enough to snuff it out.”
I can tell by Milah’s stare that she doesn’t understand.
Of course she doesn’t. I don’t think she knows who she is, either, but she’s spent her whole life exploding everywhere trying to find out, while I’ve just curled smaller and smaller inside myself.
Before she says anything else, I turn and walk away.
My name floats after me, echoing off the glass walls of her glittering cage as I dash through the door and out into the night.
* * *
I make it to the tree line before a stitch in my side reminds me this is likely the worst in a long string of bad ideas.
I slow down, bending over and catching my breath. My sandals weren’t made for running, and it’s dark and I feel like the biggest idiot in the world.
My father likes to tease me about how I was such a quiet baby. I never cried, supposedly, never threw tantrums.
Now I feel like I’m making up for lost time, acting like a little girl who didn’t get her way.
No. No, I’m not.
I’m acting like someone who’s been locked away forever but couldn’t even see the gold bars of her prison – only to finally recognize them and start rattling and screaming to be let out.
I’m not going back, I realize.
Not to that life. I can’t stay with Riker and Em forever, sure, but I’m going to make a life of my own one way or another. Maybe I’ll do something with my books. Or maybe I’ll end up waitressing in a dirty dive and renting a single room in a shared apartment with four other strangers I’ll love one day and hate the next. It doesn’t matter.
All that matters is that I get to choose.
I straighten, staring into the darkness, the trees.
Milah’s property is massive enough to have its own forest even inside the electric fence, and I can just make out a dirt jogging trail slipping between the trees.
I need air. I need to clear my head, because I know I’m thinking crazy. I’m stressed, scared, running on fumes and adrenaline, not even close to processing the shock and trauma of getting shot at.
So while I might be firm in my resolve...I think I need a walk to calm down before I go back to that house and have a real talk with my sister.
My heart trembles just a little as I head down the trail, but honestly, I’m too tired to be afraid.
Riker’s out checking the perimeter. There’s only so much that can happen in one night. I can’t help but feel the dark closing in on me as I make my way over loose gravel and silty dirt, but I don’t think anything out there can scare me more than the thoughts inside my own head.
I’m so wrapped up in my brain that I only halfway notice the trail starting to slope down through narrow, swaying pines that spear up against a clear night sky. I subconsciously adjust my stride, reaching out for an overhanging tree limb to brace myself as the path takes a sharp turn.
Then a large, loose rock slips under my heel, and suddenly the world goes tumbling away.
I let out a sharp scream as I hit the ground with a whoosh, the night tilting by and my breath punching out of my lungs. Mother Nature’s not done with me yet.
This slope is steeper than I thought. Suddenly, the gravel’s a conveyer belt, speeding me down the hill.
I shriek, pulse slamming, everything flashing by as I grab on desperately for anything I can, but it all slips through my fingers: twigs, brush, fallen branches, dead leaves, grass.
They're scraping my palms raw in a hot burn of pain but nothing else.
My life flashes before my eyes in all its wondrous, dull monotony. I realize I’m about to die with my greatest accomplishment in life being learning how to smile pretty and stand just far enough behind Daddy, when the ground drops out under me and gravity yanks my stomach down with my body not far behind.
I’m going to die at the bottom of a cliff, and it’ll be weeks before anyone finds my body.
Another shriek rips out of me as the fall drags me down, and I’m already bracing for long seconds of terror – only to slam up hard after barely half a second, landing on soft earth.
“Soft” doesn’t stop it from jarring up through me hard enough to make my teeth snap together and my skull jolt, whipping back on my neck. I lie there groaning, pain throbbing through me like a heartbeat, a full-body bruise. A sharp twinge in my leg tells me I’ve probably sprained it.
Ugh. Carefully, I push myself onto my back so I can look up.
I’m at the bottom of a shallow pit. I can hear water nearby, a big stream, probably something dug by fishermen or loggers long ago. It’s not too deep, but I don’t think I can get out of it on my own with my ankle like this. The sky is a circle of blue overhead – blue and little twinkling lights, like a bowl full of stars. I count them as I catch my breath, waiting for my head to stop spinning.
Welp.
At least I didn’t die.
Riker’s going to be so mad at me.
“—iv? Liv!”
I smile because I must’ve hit my head harder than I thought.
That’s Riker’s voice, calling my name with a stark desperation, ragged with emotion I’d never thought I’d hear from anyone. Not for me.
“Liv, fuck! Hold on. I'm coming.”
It's really him. Not a hallucination.
My heart leaps – with relief, I tell myself, only relief and nothing else – as I strain up on my elbows.
“Riker.” Too soft. I choke and spit out dirt, taking in a deep breath and swallowing before trying again. “Riker!”
“Liv!”
“I’m over here. I’m over here!”
I hear something crashing through the brush like a bear.
Holy hell. Please, please don't let it be an actual bear. That’s more than I can take right now. But I can hear Riker mutter to himself, cursing with those crashes, and I realize what's happening too little, too late.
“Riker, don’t, there’s a pit!”
He's undaunted. I get one glimpse of his tall, thickly powerful body silhouetted against the night before it comes hurtling down right on top of me.
I’d never realized the weight of a man could be so heavy – this thing of stone crushing me, only stone isn’t this warm and sinewy and doesn’t smell like Riker, that deep smoky scent that wraps me up as much as his heat, mixing with the sharp, crisp stinging scent of crushed pine needles.
Somehow, his arms are around me, as if by lifting me into his bulk he could minimize the bruising force slamming into me. Somehow, he’s buried his face in my throat, his beard teasing against my skin and tracing the sensitive hollow where my collarbones meet.
It hurts. It hurts where his weight digs in, but I don’t care, because nothing could possibly hurt more than the raw, desperate burst of longing for the man tumbled on top of me right now.
Pure stillness, save for the rasp of our breathing, the chirp of crickets, and the whisper of my beating heart, slowed down to a soft and almost frightened thing. I am afraid, right now. Afraid of what I’m feeling. Afraid of getting my heart broken.
Afraid of the heat surging through me in wild, sweet flares, leaping through my veins, as Riker pushes himself up on his elbows, and the shift in position molds his entire body intimately close to mine.
The tip of his nose brushes mine as he looks down. His chest heaves with shallow, swift breaths, pushing out to crush against my breasts, dragging my dress and my bra against my flesh and suddenly making me aware of my body in a way I’ve never known before.
As I look up into darkened green eyes, I feel like a woman. Not just a thing of limbs and bone that happens to breathe on this earth.
I feel how soft I am compared to his masculine hardness, how small I am compared to his bulk.
I feel every nerve in my body tingling, radiating waves pouring out to the very tips of my fingers.
I know the weight and fullness of my breasts and how they seem to ache for his touch, and I know the swell and softness of my stomach, leading down to a tightness between my legs and a tension in my thighs.
I know a gnawing, hard pull inside that whispers how it might feel to just spread my legs to either side of Riker’s hips, and to discover just how hot and delicious it'd be if he moved against me just right.
And I know him as a man, too, when he shifts on top of me and I feel something hard, something thick, something hotter than even the fire building between us rubbing against my hips and stomach.
I breathe in sharply, air licking over my tingling, sensitive lips.
Riker still hasn’t said anything, his body tenses, bulk hardened into steel, and I struggle to find something, anything to break the stillness between us before it shatters into a scream.
“Are you all right?” My voice is raw inside me, breaking, throaty, coming from somewhere deep that seems to give away secrets I’m afraid to tell.
Riker’s gaze drops, watching my lips as they move on the words, and the warmth inside me spreads further, deeper, in a liquid flush.
“Don’t think I broke anything,” he whispers, a low growl under the words, all fire and wild. “You?”
“My ankle,” I breathe. “I don’t think it’s broken, but probably sprained.”
“Which ankle?”
“Left.”
I expect him to lift off me, to check my foot, but he doesn’t move.
He’s so close I can make out the faint flecks of gold against the green of his eyes, glimmering like fireflies in the dark.
So close his every breath lets me taste the hint of coffee he drank on the flight here, mingling with his natural cologne of everything intensely masculine.
So close his body heat melts through me like he’s a hearth on a cold winter night.
And then that melting turns into something like napalm pooling between my thighs until my panties cling to my skin and I catch a scent that I think is me, creamy and soft and sweet and with just enough sultry-hot musk to whisper the forbidden.
I want this man so much it hurts.
Riker's nostrils flare. He senses it too, this mating call turning animal between us, pure primal call and response, and a low growl begins to rumble in his chest and roll through us both.
His head dips toward me, closing that last distance, and my lips part in yearning, in need, in hunger, and in every question and answer that’s ever waited inside me to be found.
“Riker?” James’ cool voice calls over the woods. “I heard shouting, a crash...you need backup?”
Riker and I both freeze.
I expect him to close behind that familiar mask, but instead he lets out a low, self-mocking laugh that’s half groan and all thrill when it feels like he’s letting me in on the joke between us.
His head drops between his shoulders, resting on my collarbone for just a moment, his lips and beard moving so close to my chest that my entire body tightens.
It’s an oddly intimate moment, sweet, and I want so much to wrap my arms around him. Want it so bad, but I restrain myself.
Barely.
He lifts his head, looking up toward the edge of the pit, and calls, “Could use a hand, James, but nothing to worry about.”
James’ voice sounds closer. “What the hell happened?”
“Was doing a perimeter walk and heard Liv scream. Looks like she slipped on the path and fell in a gravel pit.” He glances at me with a questioning lift of his brows. I nod before he smirks and continues, “Dumbass that I am, I fell in after her.”
James’ exasperated sigh carries over the night, before his head appears over the side of the pit, looking down at us with flat disgust. “What am I going to do with you?”
Riker rocks back, pushing himself up onto his knees, practically straddling me – then shifts to roll off me, before those strong, thick arms I love so much slide underneath me and lift me up against his chest.
“Just take Liv,” he says, lifting me higher. “Mind her left ankle. I’ll get myself out.”
There’s a flash of vertigo as I’m lifted over Riker’s head.
I feel like I’m going to fall again, but then James slips his arms under me, pulling me against his chest. It doesn’t feel the same as Riker – colder, sharper, James’ suit scratching at me – but I don’t have to stay with him for long.
In a powerful heave of muscle, Riker hauls himself out of the pit. Even in the darkness of night, he’s beautifully dirty, his shirt streaked with earth and the top button popped off to expose a tuft of chest hair, a scratch bleeding down his cheek and mud smudged along his sweat-glistening throat and jaw.
He takes a minute to shake his body out, not even looking fazed by the fall, before he’s there, taking me from James with a look that howls possession.
I have to be imagining that.
I hit myself too hard.
Right?
But I’m not imagining how close and tight Riker holds on as he cradles me against him and flicks James a look. “Go on ahead and ask the house staff for a first aid kit. I’ll be right behind. Don’t want to jostle Liv too much.”
James responds with one of those heavily skeptical looks, then just snorts and turns away. Like a shadow, he melts into the woods, leaving us alone.
Riker looks down at me for the better part of a minute, something like a promise glimmering in his eyes, before he curls his
arms tighter and sets off toward the trail.
“It’ll be all right,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you.”
I tuck my head under his chin – and he lets me.
I can feel his heart against my shoulder, and it’s beating so wild, as manic as mine. I hurt all over, but I hardly feel it when this warmth is stronger, brighter, louder.
“I know,” I whisper. Then I close my eyes and sink into him.
His hands are strong, seeming to promise they’ll hold me together.
No matter what comes next.
* * *
I don’t remember falling asleep. But I must have, lulled by the gentle rhythm of Riker’s strides, because the next thing I know, I’m waking up in the dark with the softness of a bed under my sore, aching body.
I can feel something tight and grainy on my ankle. Probably a bandage or a wrap, but the compression feels good against the dull, steady pain.
I crack one eye open. I’m in a large, lush guest bed in a darkened room that's not mine.
My shoes are gone. I’m nestled under the covers, still in my dress. I’m clean, too, the feeling of grit and dirt wiped away. My scratches sting, but not as much as they could.
And I’m not alone.
A mountain breathes next to me, quiet and slow. Riker.
He’s sprawled out shirtless, thick corded muscle rising and falling in weathered, tanned swells, his normally-combed hair a tangled mess against the pillow, his lips parted on quietly grumbling, drowsy breaths.
His chest is a swarthy plain of hard chisels dusted with deep-brown, curling hair and fatal tattoos, and I think if not for the heavy, burly arm pinning me in place and making it hard to move, I wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to run my hands through that pelt and tangle my fingers in it.
Oh my God.
I’m tucked up against Riker.
He’s holding me.
And my entire body feels so hot, so electric. If I move, I'm sure I’ll shower sparks.
If I don’t pull away from him right now, I’m going to do something rash and reckless.
I feel like being wild, like letting my hair down for the first time in my life, but throwing myself at Riker isn’t the best way to do it.
