Page 24 of Held By a Monster

Her hands fisted in the fur at my back and she pressed her nose to my chest, inhaling. My cock threatened behind my seam, but I managed to keep it contained. “Shh, you’re safe. I’ve got you.”

She nodded, but didn’t let go or ease her grip.

“What happened?”

She shook her head so I lifted her and crossed to the couch. I settled her on my lap, guiding her legs to the sides of my hips. She pressed closer, as if she needed to crawl beneath my fur.

We sat like that for a long time until finally, her fingers eased and she sat back to look up at me.

“I went back to work today.”

My arms squeezed her in encouragement.

“I thought I would be fine. I felt strong, confident. Then my coworkers kept asking how I was, what happened. Every time they asked a question, images flashed through my mind. The other women, the sound of the men shouting, the dogs barking.”

I rested my lower jaw against her back and hugged her to me.

She shivered. “I started thinking things… paranoid things. They were just curious, maybe even a little concerned for me, but it was like being on high alert all day. It was exhausting. All I could think about was coming back here, switching the lamp on, and hoping against hope you’d see the light and hold me.”

“I’m never far. You can always come to me.”

“I know, but …” she turned her face away, her eyes at the floor. She whispered, “I’m afraid to go into the woods.”

I tucked my claw into my palm and lifted her chin with the flat of my finger. “It’s a reasonable fear.”

“You have your own issues to deal with, you and your brothers. I hate to ask anything more of you.”

“Ask for the world, Kendal, and I will give it to you.” My heart cracked when she looked at me. Her eyes swam with tears and she blinked rapidly before they spilled down her cheek.

“Will you come every night? Maybe one day I will be brave enough to leave the light off, but until then, can you come?”

I ran my fingers through the silken strands of her hair, watching the light play in the dark strands. I wanted to tell her I couldn’t stay away. I wanted to tell her I loved her, but I knew it was too soon. I needed to wait for her. To move at her pace. “Yes. I will come every night.”

She sighed and relaxed into my arms, and it felt like heaven.

seventeen

After several minutes ofbeing held, I worked up the courage to ask him, “How do you not have nightmares?”

“Who said I don’t?”

“Then how do you cope with them? The only time I feel safe is when I’m in your arms. I couldn’t focus at all today at work. I kept looking around, waiting for someone to snatch me from my cubicle. To tell me my escape was just a dream and that I was still trapped in that basement.”

His arms tightened around me and I burrowed deeper into his chest.

“We might have had an easier time because until very recently we didn’t know there was any other way to exist. Ourwhole lives were spent in captivity, our every move dictated by the whims of scientists and militants.

“It’s only since escaping that we’ve experienced kindness and comfort.”

I sat up and speared my fingers into his ruff, then smoothed my palms over his ears. “When I think of what you must have gone through, my own experience pales in comparison.”

He shook his head. “No. Your trauma is no less traumatic.”

He buried his nose in my hair and we sat in the quiet for several minutes.

“Would it help to tell me what happened?”

I snorted. “My therapist wants me to open up about it. She says that talking about it out loud will make it more concrete, and less like a bogeyman. That it will help me move on.”

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