Earning Her Keep (Price of Love)

He almost glares at me now. “You’re a runaway?”

The anger in his eyes makes me breathless. But I’ve gotten this far and I can’t turn back now. “Yes. Kind of.”

I’ve seen him look mad before. But now he looks downright dangerous. Or hurt. “If you’re about to fucking tell me you’re underage…”

“No!” I say, grabbing his thick forearm. “No. I’m eighteen. I promise. That day I met you was my birthday. And that was why I had to run.”

His eyes soften now. Maybe. A tiny bit. “Run from what?”

How to say it? How to say what I can’t even bear to imagine? How to confront what made me run in the first place?

I search for the words in my mind. But they are as jumbled and as confused as written words on a page now. And I feel so lost. And so alone. And so scared.

There’s no way with this man who lives in this mansion, whose life is about control and possession, there is just no way he will forgive me for all of this. For lying. For hiding. For pretending.

My cover is blown and I know it.

Both in my mind and in my body, I’m transported to that day I ran away. So much about this day is like that day—the icy rain, the sound of Judith’s heels, the feeling of being all alone in the world. Nowhere to go.

This day. That day. This day. That day. The trauma and fear just…

It’s too much.

As if I am living that day all over again, I turn toward the open garage door, toward the icy drizzle and the unknown…

And run.

In my fight-or-flight panic, I take a right, then a left, then scurry down a gravelly path and take another right, into the area that Dane has designated for the new kitchen garden. The gardeners came this morning to clear the area, so it’s almost totally empty now. I take off, running in a diagonal across it, sprinting with all the speed my legs can muster. Glutes burning, chest aching with every gasp of cold air.

His heavy footfalls smack down, close behind me. Whomp. Whomp. He sounds close. Really close. I take one second to look back over my shoulder.

Big mistake.

As I turn my head, I lose my footing and go skidding spectacularly into the mud, face down. I land hard, winding myself, and I grimace as my face hits the dirt.

Smack. Thud. Slurp.

I spin as I fall, giving me a perfect view of all 250-lbs of Dane careening towards me. Suddenly, I’m on the field in a Bears game. And I’m about to get clobbered.

He’s quicker than he looks, though. He dodges me in the nick of time.

Almost. The problem is, the ground is so slick and mucky, so awful and messy, that he can’t stop either, and he careens headfirst into a deep puddle, four inches thick and black as coffee grounds.

“Motherfucker,” he growls, though a messy, muddy somersault.

He lands flat on his back, a panting heap of anger and muscle. I seize my opportunity to try to get away, but he’s bigger and faster, and he grabs my ankle, dragging me back and pinning me down in the mud with his body weight.

“Stop running,” he snarls, slamming my hands down into the mud with a splat.

Oh my goodness, the mud. Everything is mud. In my hair, in my eyes. Gritty little bits of dirt crunch between my teeth. I spit a mouthful of it out. The glop of mud hits him in the face, a direct hit. For one long second, we both just freeze, dripping and filthy.

Slowly, he wipes the mud off his face. A big muscular hand over a chiseled jaw.

Even that, somehow, is lighting up my ovaries like the Northern Lights.

But this time, I’m not going to be distracted by all his sexiness. Oh, no, sir. Not this time.

I struggle beneath him, wiggling my hips and making an extremely lewd squelching. “You, with your face. And your body. And your money,” I sputter.

“Oh yeah? You got a fucking problem with this face, this body, this money?”

He pins me down into the mud, one big forearm across my boobs. With the other hand, he pinches my cheeks. A droplet of water trickles down from his thick hair and plops onto my eyebrow. “Talk. Say your piece. Right fucking now. Tell me why you were running, baby. Who was after you?”

I desperately do not want to talk about this.

The whole idea makes me feel so dirty, and not in a muddy garden way. It all seems so far away, too; like another lifetime. Because now it’s just him and me, alone in the world. Or I wish it was, at least.

But looking up into his eyes, feeling his power above me, feeling his strength and protection, something starts to break loose in my heart. Just a little.