Bound to You

by Bethany Kane

  “Why don’t you pull on your jeans and jacket while I build a fire and cook us up some supper?”

  She just sat there for a second as the meaning of his last few words soaked into her brain. “You know how to clean and cook a rabbit?” she asked as she fumbled for her jeans.

  “Sure. I spent every summer with my father. He taught me all sorts of things about hunting and the woods.”

  “What did your father do?”

  “Worked in the mines. My mother left him because she didn’t want to see the mines claim him, like they had her brother and father. One of them died in a mine collapse in Pennsylvania and the other from lung cancer. Dad refused to move to St. Louis with her, and she refused to stay here in the hills and watch him slowly fade away.”

  “How old were you when she left him?” she asked as she stuck a sock-covered foot into her jeans.

  “Three. My mom knew we had to move, anyway. There weren’t any schools for the blind around here.”

  “Were you mad at your dad? For refusing to leave and go with you to St. Louis?”

  “Not until I was a teenager, but teenagers always feel like they need a reason to be mad at something,” he said mildly. “I got over it quick enough. It never kept me from living with him every summer. It never kept me from loving every minute of being in this forest. I wouldn’t have missed coming to these hills for all the teenage angst in the world.”

  She smiled.

  There was a pause.

  “I’m going to start a fire now, honey.”

  “Okay,” she said, sounding a little breathless to her own ears. Something about the way he’d said the last alerted her to his underlying message—he was going to have to leave her in the dark for a bit. She did her best to ignore the building pressure in her chest and came up on her knees. The air in the cave felt cool on her naked skin. Her nipples tightened as she poked around for the armholes of her jacket.

  “Were you and your mother all alone when you went to St. Louis?” she asked, eager to hear his voice when he moved away from her.

  “We moved to my grandmother’s in St. Louis. That’s where I grew up. My mom went to school too. She got her nursing degree,” he said, the location of his voice informing her that he’d stood and moved several feet to the right of her. She heard the sound of his boots scraping in the soil. She heard a familiar metallic sound and went still when a tiny flame pierced the darkness, illuminating the cave to an amazing degree. John squatted next to the stacked wood he’d prepared earlier, his elbows resting on his spread knees.

  Jennifer paused, her opened jacket parenthesizing her bare breasts, and just stared at the unexpected vision of him in wonder.

  The flame caught on some of the dried leaves, amplifying the light. His features were cast in a golden glow. She knew he couldn’t see the flames, but she had the impression from the way he positioned his face that he waited for the heat to strike his skin. He’d pulled up his jeans but only partially buttoned his shirt. She could see his chest in the opening and the dusting of dark hair. Her gaze dropped to his crotch. The details of his powerful possession and their frantic mating swamped her consciousness in a rush.

  He looked up at her suddenly, and she would have sworn he saw her just as clearly as she saw him. Her fingers strayed to the soft skin of her breasts. Her fingertips traced the crown of her beading nipples. The wood snapped as the fire caught hold and flared. John wore an intent expression as he tilted his head.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Dressing,” she said in a tight voice. She pinched at her nipples lightly. His nostrils flared.

  “What are you doing?” he repeated as he stood slowly, his eyelids narrowed. It was like he knew she hadn’t answered him . . . not really.

  Excitement mounted in her as he took several steps toward her. The growing fire outlined his form from behind as he came to a halt. His shadow towered over her.

  “I’m touching my breasts while I look at you.”

  Her hoarse whisper seemed to echo around the cave, not diminishing. The sound of the trickling water throbbed in her ears. She saw the gleam in his eye.

  “And does it feel good?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “The nipples feel especially sensitive after the way you sucked on them.”

  “Are you touching them now?”

  “Yes. I’m pinching them, very lightly.”

  He grew so rigid, she paused in playing with her breasts. She couldn’t quite read his expression.

  “Have you been with a blind man before?” he asked.

  Her fingers paused. “No. Why did you ask that?”

  He turned and walked toward the fire again. Disappointment flooded her. Had she offended him in some way with her impulsive dirty talk? He bent and picked up the dead rabbit.

  “Because you’d be a smash hit at Porn for the Blind,” he muttered.

  “Is that a bad thing?” she asked him uncertainly.

  He paused and turned. “No, I’d say it’s a very, very good thing. I just want to get some food in you, and you were distracting me. But I guess you already knew that,” he said dryly.

  She swallowed and began to button up her jacket.

  “You’re not putting all your clothes on, are you?” he asked sharply.

  “No . . . just the bare essentials.”

  “Good. I’m going to be getting you out of them soon enough,” she thought she heard him mutter thickly under his breath. She smiled, warmed to know she hadn’t offended him.

  “Do me a favor and reach into the inner zippered pocket of my coat and give me that little box you find in there,” he said.

  Jennifer scrambled up from the ground, hopping when she stepped on a stick in her socked foot. She lifted his coat and shook off the soil.

  “You mean the first aid kit?” she asked a few seconds later, lifting a small plastic box free of the pocket. She was glad she hadn’t flattened it during their lovemaking.

  “Yeah. Just take out all the contents and zipper them back in the pocket. Be careful not to get things too dirty. Then bring me the plastic container.”

  She did as he asked, then located her hiking boots, sliding them on without lacing them. She handed him the plastic box a few seconds later.

  “Do you want some help?” she asked, looking doubtfully at the limp body of the rabbit dangling next to his knee.

  “Do you really want to?”

  “Well . . .”

  “I didn’t think so,” he said, his mouth tilted into a smile. He disappeared into the shadows. She knelt by the fire.

  “I’m not that prissy, you know. I grew up in the hills, too.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, his deep voice resounding from the distance. “Kentucky, right? If I hadn’t already read it somewhere, I would have known it from the accent that creeps into your voice once in a while. They always made out that you were a rags-to-riches story. Do you really know anything about hunting or preparing game in the wild?”

  “Well, no. I actually lived in a subdivision and my father was an accountant. But the hills and woods were just a stone’s throw away,” she added quickly. “I ran around in the woods with my friends every day, and I knew plenty of people who did eat things like rabbits for dinner.”

  “Yeah, you can get a real mix of people in northern Kentucky,” he said, surprising her by not laughing at the truth behind the sensational allegations that she’d gone from hillbilly to Hollywood princess overnight. Jennifer had corrected the press ad nauseam. The public seemed to adore that particular trope, however, and the media had perpetuated it.

  She sat for several minutes in silence. Despite her assurances that she wasn’t unused to the ways of the woods, nausea swelled in her belly when she considered what John was doing at the periphery of the cave. A vision of shockingly scarlet, spattered blood flashed into her mind’s eye.

  “Couldn’t we just eat the protein bars?” she called across the expanse.

  “We should save them. Who knows
how long we’ll be down here? Enzo might not be so lucky hunting tomorrow. The meat won’t keep forever.”

  Jennifer frowned as she stared at the flickering little fire, realizing he was right. After several moments of silence, she couldn’t refrain from asking, “Is there really such a thing as Porn for the Blind?”

  “Yeah,” he said, grunting slightly as though he’d answered in the midst of doing something effortful. She heard water splashing from the darkness. “Does that surprise you?”

  “No,” she admitted slowly. “I was just trying to picture it.” She looked up at the sound of his low laughter emanating from the shadows. He had a nice laugh. She understood his amusement. Picturing porn for the blind?

  “I just meant I was trying to understand what it would be like,” she said.

  “It’s all audial.”

  “You mean you listen to people having sex?”

  “No . . . well, not primarily. You listen to someone describing people having sex. The voice is like a camera.”

  “Oh . . .” she mumbled, thinking. “Do you like it?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. She heard more vigorous splashing. A moment later he emerged from the shadows. She was relieved to see that his hands and clothes were completely free of blood. In fact, she saw no signs of the rabbit at all until she looked inside the plastic box he carried. There was the rabbit meat, cleaned and cut into chunks.

  “I was born blind,” he said as he crouched across from the fire from her. He picked up a twig and skewered it with two cubes of meat. He held the stick over the fire. “When I was thirteen, I used to masturbate repeatedly over the memory of my seventh grade English teacher saying, ‘It’s so hot my clothes are getting wet. My skirt is sticking to my legs.’ She had a fantastic voice—deep and throaty. Just that brief, off-the-cuff comment that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with a scalding-hot September day and no air-conditioning was prime fuel for my adolescent fantasies for I don’t know how long.” He seemed to consider and then gave a little shrug. “It still sounds pretty hot in my memory, to be honest. So, yeah, to answer your question. Porn for the Blind is bookmarked on my computer.”

  She broke out in laughter. She loved his frankness. “I get that. It’s no different than a thirteen-year-old sighted kid getting all hot and bothered catching a glimpse of his cute teacher’s little panties when the sunlight strikes her skirt and makes the fabric see-through.”

  He smiled. “You really are a natural,” he murmured.

  She smiled back at him, feeling no break in their strong connection because he couldn’t see her. A drop of fat from the meat fell into the flames, making them hiss. He turned the stick. The delicious aroma of the cooking meat entered her nose, making her stomach rumble in hunger.

  “So what kinds of illicit things get an adolescent girl all hot and bothered?”

  “We’re not as . . . prolific in our adolescent sexual fantasies as males.”

  “Strike what I asked. I don’t give a crap about what Psychology Today says typical female adolescent fantasies are. I want to know yours.”

  She gave a disbelieving sound. “When I was thirteen years old? Are you kidding? You want to hear about my Leonardo DiCaprio obsession? Or maybe you’d find my Backstreet Boys fantasies a little more entertaining?”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Definitely, if the fantasies included all of them.”

  She snorted and they shared a laugh.

  “I’ve never entirely bought the common logic that girls aren’t avid sexual fantasizers,” he murmured after a bit. “You never were titillated by anything remotely dirty back when you were in school? Nothing still lingers in the adult Jennifer?”

  She brushed her fingers across her neck and felt the throb of her own pulse. “Well . . .”

  “Yes?” he prompted.

  She swallowed thickly. “I lived in sort of a backward area. They still gave corporal punishments back then. I might have been a little . . . overly focused on the idea of paddlings,” she said breathlessly.

  He went still.

  “And did you ever get one?”

  “No,” she said quietly. She smiled. “I was a good girl.”

  “A good girl wishing she could be bad once in a while.”

  She laughed. “Trust me, I would have been terrified if I’d ever been called down to the principal’s office when I was a girl.”

  “And now?”

  She hesitated. Why was she so inclined to behave so raunchily with John? Even with Everett Hughes, who she considered to be one of her most serious boyfriends, she’d never felt so uninhibited as she did with John.

  “Well, I’ve grown up, haven’t I?” she replied.

  She couldn’t read his expression as he removed the stick from the fire. “Come here,” he said, holding out his arm. The aroma from the cooked rabbit now permeated the air. She walked next to him and came down on her knees.

  “Maybe we can use a couple of the tissues you mentioned having. I’ll put the meat on them and you can start eating while I cook the rest.”

  “I’ll wait for you,” she assured him, removing a plastic package of tissues from her pocket. She also took out her hand sanitizer. After she’d spread some on her hands, she lined one with several tissues. “I’m ready.”

  She helped him remove the steaming rabbit from the stick. He immediately skewered more chunks and started to cook them. The odor wafting up to her nose made her mouth water.

  “Go ahead. Eat,” he prompted. “I know you want to.”

  She laughed softly. He must have heard her stomach growl. She picked up one of the steaming pieces and took a delicate bite. The outside was crispy, the juices surprisingly flavorful, tasting gamey and rich. She made an appreciative sound as she chewed.

  “What do you think? Would it go over in a Hollywood restaurant?”

  “It would. It’s delicious,” she said sincerely. “Here. Try it,” she coaxed, holding the remaining portion of meat to his mouth. She didn’t touch him, but he must have sensed the heat from the meat. He opened his lips and caught the rabbit with straight, white teeth, the image striking her as singularly erotic.

  She blinked and went back to her kneeling position. “You’re really amazing,” she murmured, picking up the other piece of meat.

  “How’s that?” he wondered as he chewed.

  “This is nice—actually nice. We’re down here trapped in a hole and we don’t know when, or if, we’re going to be saved, and yet . . . I’m having a nice time.” Her cheeks heated when she recalled the way he’d made love to her earlier. “Better than nice.”

  They sat in silence for a few seconds as she stared at his small smile.

  “I’ve never told anyone that before,” she said quietly.

  He paused in the action of turning the meat and glanced in her direction.

  “What? That you were having a nice time?”

  “No. That thing about the paddlings. Even in my most serious former relationships. I had a very special former lover who would have wanted me to be more . . . free with my admissions, my sexuality in general, but I just couldn’t.” He turned toward her. She again had the impression he could see her with those startlingly blue eyes. More than see her. She bit her lip anxiously.

  “There must have been some reason why you confessed it to me,” he said. Her heart hitched in her breast. “If I can help you forget in any way, I will. I know why the dark makes you so afraid, honey.”

  She just stared at him, her pulse throbbing harder at her throat.

  He resumed cooking, and she eating, but it was like something had changed . . . altered. A message had been exchanged between them. She felt stronger, her senses more acute. Jennifer couldn’t figure out why that was, until she realized how connected she felt to a stranger in that moment. Her world had just grown sharper because John had given her some of his strength . . . some of himself.

  And when it came to John Corcoran, she realized, that was no small thing.

  Cha
pter Five

  Their dinner finished, John and Jennifer cleaned up using the spring water and the hand sanitizer. She checked her cell phone for coverage while John filled her thermos and then spread his coat by the fire.

  “Oh,” Jennifer called out in excitement, but then immediately moaned in disappointment.

  “What?” John asked.

  “I thought I had a bit of a signal on my cell phone for a moment, but now . . . nothing.” She turned off the phone and put it away. So much for the advances of modern technology. She glanced at the tiny flames.

  “Maybe we better put out the fire,” she said in a threadbare voice.

  John straightened from his task of arranging their meager belongings in a small pile—the cleaned plastic first aid box, the hand sanitizer, her folded scarf, panties, shirt and bra, the thermos of water, his cane and the cooking stick. She understood that he was so orderly and neat because of his blindness, but she found his methodical manner reassuring, solid . . . secure.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  She hesitated. “No. But I know we should. There isn’t much wood to burn. We shouldn’t waste it.”

  He looked sober as he gathered some soil. She watched him smother the flames, preserving whatever burnable wood was left. Slowly, the smoking fire dimmed. John began to recede into the shadows and, finally, the pitch blackness.

  She listened hungrily to his every move in the darkness.

  “Come here,” he said after several seconds.

  Jennifer sprung up from her kneeling position and went toward him, her hands outstretched. Her fingertips encountered his waist. He covered her hand with his own, guiding her down to the ground with him. They sat on his coat, Jennifer in front of him between his sprawled legs and encircling arms, his hands on her hips.

  “Close your eyes,” he murmured near her ear.

  She complied, leaning back and sighing at the feeling of his solid warmth. He moved his right hand along her hip. Her heart leapt in excitement until she realized his movements weren’t really caresses.