Help, help, help.

The words repeat over and over, screaming inside my head.

Help, help, help.

I don’t want to die.

Not now, not now. Not when I haven’t really lived.

I haven’t really lived.

I haven’t really lived.

Help, help, help.

My arms are numb, my legs too, everything. I’m not sure how much longer I can stay up here, holding onto the tree trunk. Or maybe I’m forever molded to it, like moss. Maybe I’ll never come back down.

My mind shifts back in time.

Me lying on my back amongst the hay.

Shane devouring me.

Against my better judgement, I opened my legs and let him in.

I let myself be vulnerable again, only for him.

And it was at that moment I realized I was alive.

He was trying to bring me back to life.

And it scared the shit out of me.

To open that door and stick my neck out and hope for the fucking best.

But I was alive.

And now I’m in a fucking pine tree, my limbs scraped and bleeding from the hasty climb and I’m wondering why I was so afraid to be alive when the alternative is so much worse.

“Rachel!” Shane’s voice cuts through my head.

It’s real, I have to tell myself. He’s real. The bear has to be gone by now.

When I went into the forest to do my business, a bear was the last thing I expected to see. To be honest, I just wanted time away from Shane. To prepare for the night ahead, to grapple with the things I’d said earlier. The mean way they left my lips. I hurt him. It hurt me.

But there it was.

The grizzly.

It hadn’t seen me yet.

I didn’t know what to do. I thought that unlike black bears, grizzlies can’t climb trees and I knew that if I ran for Shane or called for Shane, I would be fucking dead.

So I went for the nearest tree and climbed and didn’t look back.

Except when I did, the fucking bear was trying to climb too.

So much for that myth.

And then Fletcher came bounding toward the bear and I closed my eyes, not wanting to watch. The poor dog bought me time and I climbed up a few more branches until I saw him grab Fletcher by the neck and throw him where I couldn’t see. The sound of the dog’s yelp burrowing into my brain. Then the bear ran off.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t cry.

I could do nothing but do what I’m doing right now.

Hold on tight and pray.

Help, help, help.

“Rachel,” I hear Shane’s voice again and I know I have to move, to say something, but I’m so fucking scared.

I manage to move my head and look down through the branches, the bottom ones broken off by the grizzly. It’s left deep grooves in the bark from its claws.

Shane and Fletcher stare up at me.

“Rachel,” he says again, his voice lower. “Are you okay?”

I can’t speak.

“Please, come down. It’s not safe to stay up there. We need to keep moving.” His voice is pleading yet so calm, like he’s got control of the entire situation. “Please. Nothing is going to happen to you. I’ve got you.”

And that’s all it takes. His words sink in. He means them. He always has been my protector. I’ve never not been safe in his arms.

“Okay,” I whisper and after a long moment I slowly start making my way down the tree, my muscles cramping as I go.

I have to jump the last bit and he catches me, arms strong and warm, immovable.

“Shane,” I cry out, holding onto him, so fucking terrified. “Oh god.”

“It’s okay,” he says, his hand cupping the back of my head as my legs wrap around his waist. “I’ve got you. I’m not letting you go. Not again.”

I don’t know how I manage to keep it together. I just want to cry and scream at everything, the fear of death still lingering. I want to unravel, completely, and I know if I do, he’s going to have a hell of a time putting me back together.

So I hold on and then I let go.

I’m lowered to the ground and he takes my hand and with his shotgun in the other, that shotgun that changed everything, he leads me out of the forest and back to the horses.

Of course, Sybil is long gone but somehow Polly is still around, standing nearby, ears flicking back and forth. She snorts softly when she sees Shane, relaxing visibly when she realizes she’s safe. He has the same power over her as he does over me.

We’re too close to the bear’s territory, so he puts me up in the saddle and then leads us away, Fletcher limping at his side but otherwise alert.

We walk into the setting sun and it might be the most brilliant sunset I’ve ever seen. Each wash of gold, purple, pink, orange looks like strokes of watercolor paint, constantly changing, thickening, fading. Everything looks more alive.

You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive, I tell myself. And then I don’t have to tell myself because I feel it.

When dusk settles in, purple-grey, we stop. A small creek runs past and Polly and Fletcher have a long drink. I stay up on Polly’s back, watching in silence as Shane takes off the saddle bag and starts to set up camp beside a stand of four ponderosa pines. Beyond it, the mountains rise up higher and higher. I have no idea where I am but I don’t think it matters.

Shane works quickly and with ease. Every movement is natural to him. He’s part of this earth, breathing in the same heartbeat. There’s something almost magical about him, otherworldly. I think about what he did for me, even though it broke me, he did it for me. He wanted nothing more than to protect me because he loved me so much.

And I was so lucky to have his love. No one else did. It was mine to hold, to nurture, to take care of. He trusted me with his heart and I trusted him with mine.

In the end, he never broke that trust. Not really. Just on the surface. But underneath, where the truth lies, that trust never wavered.

His love never wavered.

“Shane,” I whisper to him.

He looks up at me. Even in the hazy twilight, I can see him perfectly. The way his sweat makes his olive shirt cling to his muscles, the tawny gold of his skin, the longing in his eyes as they fix on me.

And yet he knows what I want.

What I need.

He’s all I need.

He puts down the sleeping bag and walks over to me. Grabs me by the waist and lifts me off the horse until my feet are firmly on the ground. Doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t need to.

He bends down and kisses me. One hand at the back of my neck, sweetly possessive, telling me I’m his. That I need to be his.

His lips move against mine, soft and tender, building slowly until my mouth matches his. I feel the kiss all the way in my toes, the way he holds me, the way his tongue slides against mine, stoking a fire. My nerves fizzle and snap and with each second we become more in-sync with each other. It feels right. So right.

"Shane," I whisper against his mouth and he takes my lower lip in his teeth, tugs, then runs his tongue inside the rim. Shivers explode along my spine like a row of roman candles.

"Shhhh," he says to me, his hands, large, wonderful hands, hands that love, hands that protect, they glide down over my body like he's sculpting me, relishing the curves, the way I flow. One hand goes under my top, sliding up against my skin and I'm melting all over again. It's like last night but I'm not going to stop it this time, not going to pull away. His touch, his kiss, he's bringing me back from the past and becoming my future.

I let out a small moan as his rough palm goes over my breast, pulling down the edge of my lacy bra until he brushes against my nipple. More fireworks radiate outward, a small but powerful heat that I know is taking over me, second by second.

He tugs at the edge of my shirt and pulls it up over my head, throwing it on the ground beside us. His eyes meet mine and I only see a fevered, burning want in them, like he’s lost to his own desire. He gazes down at my breasts, taking a moment to hold them with his eyes, then swiftly undoes my bra until it drops at my feet. My nipples harden in the air.

"You're so fucking gorgeous," he says, sounding awestruck, as if he's witnessing something transcendent. It makes me feel like a fucking queen on a throne, a ruler with only one subject. He runs his hands up and down over my sides, trying to memorize me, skin remembering skin.

And I remember him. His touch that could always set me free. It hasn't changed. We both have in small ways but the way our bodies respond to each other hasn't.

Then he dips his head, gripping my breasts, eyes on me as he licks and sucks, tongue flat and teasing. I keep his carnal gaze until my eyes pinch shut with pleasure and I cry out, my fingers threading through his silky hair. “Don’t stop,” I manage to say, my words floating on the air.

But he does stop.

He pulls back and stares at me, raw determination on his brow, his eyes stealing my breath away.

Look at how he looks at me. The way he sees me. No one else ever saw me like this.

“Rachel,” he says, voice low, rich, deep, a whisky-voice that intoxicates my blood. “If you don’t want me to stop…I won’t stop. I promise you I won’t stop until I’ve given all I have to you.” I watch his Adam’s apple as he swallows, my eyes drinking in the thickness of his neck, his broad shoulders, the veins and muscles on his biceps, forearms, hands that give and give.

He is so beautiful.

And he’s mine.

It’s time to let go of the past. It’s time to move forward. Just for these minutes. If not just for tonight.

I’m Rachel and he’s Shane and we go together, fit together, because we always have. We worked then and we work in the here and now.

This needs to happen.

It needs to happen like we both need the air we breathe.

It’s been building, twisting, turning to this moment for far too fucking long.

I stare at him and without breaking our gaze, I take off my boots, socks, jeans, underwear, until I’m standing naked in front of him. It doesn’t matter that my bare feet are in dirt, that there’s a horse behind us, that we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Nothing matters but us.

I have been so damn starved for him.

Six fucking years.

“Don’t ever stop,” I tell him.

I’m ready.

His nostrils flare and then he’s at me, capturing my mouth in a brutal, commanding kiss.

I gasp, overtaken by his strength, the elegant violence of his lips as his tongue fucks my mouth.

This is wild, so wild. I’m shaking as he works me, our kiss is messy and hard and full of anger and loss and hate and love and so much history and so much time. So, so much time.

I’m making whimpering sounds against his mouth and then I’m breathless as he grabs me by the waist and spins me around until I’m up against the tree. My back is pressed against the rough bark and his shirt is coming over his head, the rest of his clothes – jeans, briefs, boots – are cast aside.

He stares at my body for just a moment, but in that moment, he sets me on fire and everything is urgent now, so urgent, and I’m burning for him.

He drops to his knees and lifts one of my legs over his shoulder, shoving his face between my thighs for the second time today. Unlike earlier where he was tentative and unsure, now he’s a feral creature devouring his prey, rough and raw. His mouth presses into me, moaning, grunting against my skin. Just his breath, his heat, the slide of his tongue against my clit pushes me already so close to the edge, every muscle in my body winding and winding and winding up.

He groans again, the vibrations rolling through me.

“Shane,” I whisper, breathless, going fucking crazy as his tongue lashes at me relentlessly until I’m so spread, so swollen, I start writhing with pleasure, my body famished. I hold his head in place, not even minding the way the bark scrapes at my spine. Even the pain feels amazing.

“I’m going…” I start to say but my words trail off and I can’t focus on anything anymore, too many sensations are coming at me from all directions. The slick fuck of his tongue, the suck, suck, suck of his lips, his fingers pressing so hard into my thighs I know they’ll leave bruises, the raw skin of my spine.

A sweat breaks out at my temples.

My fingers yank at his hair, trying to hold on before I’m gone but…

I’m gone.

So gone.

I cry out, loud, shrill, his name is offered up over and over again and I’m not even myself, not even here. I’m in his mouth and everywhere. I’ve melted and been put back together.

And I don’t even have room to think.

“I’ve been craving the taste of you for years,” he says, voice breaking as he gets to his feet. “Now that I’ve had you again, I don’t think this will ever be enough.”

He takes my hands together until it looks like I’m praying and then turns me around, placing them on the tree. “Hold on, raven girl. There’s only one ride and it’s wild.”

I weave a bit on my feet and grip the tree as he spreads my legs with his hands, one hand coming forward underneath me and gripping me, fingers splayed so I can feel how large his hands are. He holds me tight, possessive – mine, this says, all mine – applying pressure until I’m less sensitive, then let’s go and positions himself behind me.

“I’ve waited for you,” he murmurs to me, running his wet fingers down my spine and I shiver, my body beyond my control. “God, I’ve waited for you, wished for you, Rachel. Just like this, just for me. Just us.” His voice is rough with emotion. “I’ve missed you so much.”

My heart trips at his words.

But before I can say anything to that, he grips my hips and pushes in, a sharp hiss escaping his lips as he goes.

I cry out, my nails digging into the bark, holding on tight as he slowly eases in, spreading me wider and wider from the inside out. It takes forever to feel the full length of him slide into me and then he’s in so deep, in so right, I swear I feel him pulsing, his heat coming through.

I’ve never felt so full of him before, I’m both starving for him and satisfied, filled and indescribably desperate.

“You like that?” he asks in a quiet rasp as he leans over to kiss my neck, my shoulders. The skin of his chest brushing over my sensitive back. “Did you miss that?”

“Yes,” I hiss, closing my eyes, my back arching as he eases out and deliberately pushes in again, inch by inch.

“Tell me you want this.”

“I… I want this,” I whisper, my words catching as my breath does. I can’t seem to convey what I’m feeling, just how he’s rendering me, shaking and a little wild. “Fuck, I want this Shane. I want you. Give me all of you.”

“Rachel,” he murmurs and then slams into me until I’m pressed against the tree.

I cry out, not from pain but from everything. It’s everything, I’m feeling everything and he’s relentless. He starts to rut into me, his hips slapping against my ass in a slowly building rhythm. Inside I’m glowing, everything getting hotter, tighter, my noises louder and louder.

Shane’s inside me.

So deep inside me.

He fits with me like no one else ever could.

My brain wants to focus on the future, on tomorrow, my plans and the what-ifs but I pull it back. I force it to be here with him. I force it to feel the things it doesn’t want to feel, the scary things, the things that mean the world.

The fact that I love him so much.

Too much.

Can you love someone, want someone too much? Can you go crazy from it?

I’m afraid if I let go, I just might.

“Stay with me,” Shane says, breathless as he thrusts into me. “Be here with me, now.”

He starts pumping hard and fast, fucking me so roughly that it’s digging splinters into my hands, his sweat is dripping onto my back. Each thrust renders me thoughtless, until I’m just a body and a soul and I’m needing, needing, needing more.

More.

God.

“Shane,” I cry out.

I am so impossibly full which makes me realize how hollow I was before. Empty, carved out, not sure what I was always yearning for when the truth is I always knew his name.

His hand reaches around, sliding over my clit, still slick, and I whimper because it’s too much and he’s too much and this is too much.

Don’t ever stop. Don’t ever stop.

Please, you have to stop.

Keep it coming.

I’m almost there.

I don’t want it to be over.

Don’t let this be over.

Fuck me forever.

My beautiful cowboy.

“Can you come?” he whispers to me.

I try to nod but I’m gasping, feeling the cool sweat run down my breasts, my neck. I’m on a tightrope ready to snap. My pulse skips when he groans, tells me he wants to hear me come.

“Rachel,” he rasps, voice straining.

His fingers slide.

I go off like a buckshot and I’m soaring, speeding through time and space and then expanding until I’m confetti, slowly drifting down to earth on shaking legs, barely standing up and holding on.

Shane’s hands become steel around me as he starts pumping harder, the sweat flying, grunts and groans rolling out of him as he comes.

He calls out my name and I don’t think I’ve ever heard it sound so revered, his voice almost pained.

Then his hips slow against me.

He loses a bit of control, shaking now, and leans over me, reaching for the tree to take the pressure off of me, his hot, slick chest pressed against my back.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck. Rachel, that was…”

There are no words.

My mind takes its time coming back into the present, to the now, to the fact that I was just thoroughly fucked from behind by Shane Nelson. Not for the first time, not by a longshot, but fucking hell.

What could ever top this?

Who can ever top him?

And it hurts and pinches and stings that I know the answer to that one very well.

Shane pulls out and his cum drips down my legs and he’s trying to catch his breath.

Suddenly I can’t breathe either.

Before it was just want and need and a desire that never wavered.

Now there’s just my pulse pounding in my head, my legs throbbing, my hands cramped and raw, and that pure, sharp twist of fear deep inside.

“Rachel,” he says to me as I straighten up, trying to find my balance as I push off from the tree. I turn around and he’s stepping into me, his hand at my jaw, the other holding my arm. “Please tell me that…that…” He swallows, the sweat glistening above his lip as he gazes at me. “Please tell me that meant to you what it meant to me.”

There’s a strange fluttering in my chest.

Fear. Hope. Love. Loss.

“What did it mean to you?” I whisper.

“The world,” he says before he kisses me, quick and light and laced with tenderness. “It meant the whole entire world.”

Everything inside me brightens, warm and delirious. Because that meant the world to me too.

But when someone hands you the world, don’t tell me it doesn’t scare you.

“Hold on,” he whispers to me and walks over to the saddle bags he strung up on the neighboring tree. Even though the light is dim, painting him in lavender and grey, I can’t help but stare at his gorgeously bare ass. No wonder he was able to fuck me so hard, that ass is made out of steel.

He comes back with a handful of tissues and slowly glides it up my leg, cleaning me off. He then kisses me on the forehead, discarding the tissues and getting back in his boxer briefs.

“I know it’s early but…I’m fucking spent,” he says with a wry grin, spreading out the sleeping bag on top of the mat he rolled out earlier. Then he tosses me my underwear and t-shirt, and lifts the edge of the bag. “After you.”

I put my underwear and shirt back on, quickly go pee behind the trees, not dawdling this time because, you know, bears, and then get inside the sleeping bag.

When he gets in beside me, his body spooning mine, holding me flush to him, it’s only then that I realize Polly and Fletcher had seen us having sex. Thankfully they don’t seem all that fazed, though poor Fletcher won’t meet my eyes.

“Is he going to be okay?” I nod at the dog who is curled up at the foot of the sleeping bag. “Not because he saw us fucking, I mean, from what the bear did.”

Shane pulls back and I look over my shoulder at him as he gives me a funny look. “You were worried about the dog watching us have sex?”

“No. I mean, for a second. The horse too. But I mean, will he be okay?”

Shane nods and kisses the back of my head. “He’ll be fine. Bright and early we’ll head back to the ranch. My dad and I can go back out later to get the cows. Right now, we just need to get everyone home and Fletcher to the vet. It’s all going to fine.”

I exhale, feeling more relieved. “What about Sybil?”

“Well I briefly saw her just as we came into this site. She was trailing behind us. My guess is we’ll see her tomorrow. Don’t you worry about a thing, you’re safe tonight.”

I close my eyes, sinking into the feeling of his arms around me, a feeling as strong and old as time.

Safe.

I’d spent years in therapy learning how to function after what my father did.

I’d worked through it all until I could learn to love myself, learn to feel safe.

I don’t live in that fear anymore, except for the fear of losing myself to Shane all over again.

But being in his arms makes me realize how safe I really am. With him, without him.

I am safe.