As she comes down, I kiss her softly and my lips linger over hers as I gently pull my hand from between her legs and press my hard cock against her, feeling the warm wetness of her through my shorts.

I pull her up into my arms and carry her into the living room, settling down on the couch with her straddling me. She smells of syrup and lust, and I want to devour her like my last meal.

“I love you,” she murmurs dreamily against my lips. “The way you make me feel…I don’t even know what to say.”

“You said everything I need to hear.”

She sits up on me, her long hair flowing down over her breasts. My hands grip her waist tighter, not wanting her to move. Every inch of my body is screaming for a part of her, even an innocent wiggle on my lap.

She fingers a lock of my hair absently and peeks at me shyly from beneath her bangs.

“I know what to do.” She says softly. “For you…”

My eyes narrow at her in confusion as she stands, giving me a gorgeous view of her naked body, and she kneels on the floor between my feet. I instantly snap out of my haze when she reaches for my waistband, and I grab her hands in mine.

“Holly…” My voices catches in my throat.

“I want to.” Her gray eyes lock onto mine as she pulls my shorts down, and I’m powerless under her sweet, sultry gaze and the sudden warmth of her mouth descending on my rock-hard cock.

All the way down.

My eyes literally roll back in my head as she expertly deep throats me, her lips touching my balls as she takes the full length of my shaft.

Oh, fuck. Nothing has ever felt so fucking amazing.

Her tongue swirls around my tip, sucking hard, so perfectly…my cock and brain battle over the euphoria, and then the rage…women aren’t born knowing how to suck dick this way. This was taught. Practiced. Perfected.

I grab her head in my hands and gently pull her off me. “Baby, you don’t have to do this.”

Her eyes shimmer, her lips still puckered and damp. “You don’t want me?”

“I do, but…” Not if she’s forcing herself out of some trained habit.

“Please let me be normal,” she pleads with her hands gripping my thighs, on the verge of tears. “Let me forget. Let us both forget and just be us. I want you…only you…in every way. You are my choice. Let me show you. Please…”

Her wet lips sliding down my dick rob me of any defense, and I succumb to her, because I need her, and I love her, and I want all of her and everything she makes me feel, no matter how hard it might be sometimes.

And I guess we’re perfect together because her demons are strong enough to wrangle with mine.

29

Holly

Two months later

Time, something that once stood still for me, is now looming all around me. Choices need to be made, and no amount of talking to Feather and Dr. Reynolds has made it easier for me. Because I never had choices before.

Zac and Anna are moving soon, and their invitation to accompany them to New York is still a very intriguing option for me. A new start, away from this town, its memories, and its people, who know every single thing that happened to me, feels like a good choice. I’ve wondered if that means I’m running away…but I don’t think it does. I just want to be Holly, not the Girl in the Hole, but if I stay in this tiny town, that’s who I’m always going to be. There has only been one time in the past year that I have gone out to the store, or to the café, or to the ice cream shop, where someone hasn’t stared at me, whispered about me, or approached me. One time.

And soon I’m going to have a niece. A tiny little person who will only know me as Aunt Holly. I can watch her grow up, experience new things with her, and celebrate all the milestones that I missed in my own life and in my siblings’ lives. She’ll never have to know that once I was stolen. She’ll never look at me with odd, fearful fascination like Lizzie does, still wondering how her dead sister is walking around. I blame my parents for that, and I’ve slowly accepted the growing distance between us. As Ty said, maybe in time that will get better but, for now, I have to make me better.

But going to New York means leaving Tyler. Not breaking up, but leaving our routine, and trying to build a new one. He says he’ll visit, but I know he won’t. He’s not ready to take that step yet. It’s that time thing again—he needs it to gain his confidence back. I’m not sure how happy we’ll be only seeing each other once or twice a month after we’ve been spending almost every day together. We both love our walks, our snuggles on his couch, our hanging out in his workshop, our long talks on his garden bench while Poppy and Boomer play around us. I’m afraid I’ll miss him so much I might be miserable living so far away. Zac suggested that Tyler move to New York too so we can both have a new start, together. But Tyler loves the woods too much. He would go insane in the city, with no forest to walk in and no mountains to explore on his motorcycle. He would be like a caged animal. He can’t live in a place where he will be so totally out of his comfort zone, and I would never want him to. And he could never bring a fox to live in the city. Rehoming Boomer is not an option.