That helped, after he repeated it several times. He watched her come back to him, her hazel eyes showing her struggle. “This is too much,” he told her. “You’ve already handled enough today. We can come back.”

  Her gaze was glassy. “But I really need what’s down there. I can’t explain why…”

  “You’re not going down there. We’ll call someone to go down there for you. Tell me what we’re looking for.”

  She shook her head. She was pulling herself together by millimeters, but since he could track the subtlest changes in her expression, he saw it. “I have to do it,” she said. “Please. Please help me do it.”

  He wanted to tell her hell no, but the request was so plaintive, so desperate, he couldn’t deny her. “Okay.” He gave it some thought. While he did, he shifted her so she was fully in his arms, on his lap. “Hold onto me a minute first.”

  She did, clinging to him like she was about to be torn away from him by that tornado. Fuck this. When it mattered, he tried never to overrule her, but she was asking too much of herself. Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  He shoved the Master to the side, every protective instinct that came from the man he was, who loved her so much he couldn’t tolerate anything that caused her distress. He re-channeled it in what he hoped was the right direction.

  “You can do anything,” he said roughly into her hair, stroking it. “You’re right. It’s just a goddamn cellar. I am right here. Say it.”

  “I can do anything. You’re right here. It’s just a goddamn cellar.”

  She rarely cursed, so the parroting gave him an unexpected smile. She saw it, and amusement flitted through her gaze. It was like a moth buffeted by a storm, but it was there.

  He tugged her hair. “You belong to me,” he reminded her. “Right?”

  That steadied her even more, which steadied them both. She lifted her chin. “I belong to you.”

  “Okay.” Since he didn’t see anything resembling a light below, he twisted around, fished in the pack hanging from his chair and pulled out his store keys. The ring had one of those keychain flashlights on it, which he detached and put in her hands. “Go get whatever it is and bring your ass back up here. Don’t overthink it. Just go. Now.”

  He propelled her off his lap and toward the ladder, a little push. Since that near-topple over the opening was way too fresh in his mind, he kept his hands on her until she descended. She seemed pretty steady now, though, moving quickly. He thought she was hurrying, trying to do what she needed to do before the visuals they’d planted in her head to handle this were overwhelmed by other things.

  As he moved closer, he could see the space where she was descending. At least for this moment, these purposes, he was relieved to see it wasn’t large, more like an underground walk-in closet. There was nowhere down there she’d be outside his view, which might partly explain why they’d never bothered to put in a light.

  She stopped in front of a set of empty shelves, and her gaze went down to her feet. He adjusted to see what she was looking at, and saw a space just big enough to shove a sack of flour, to keep it fresh and cool. As she dropped to her heels, she gripped the shelf above that alcove, and laid her palm on the ground beneath. Her shoulders rounded, her head bowed, and he saw her body jerk, as if caught by a sob.

  Damn it. He bit back an order for her to return now, and instead waited her out. He was here. Whatever she needed to do, she needed to do it.

  She went to her knees, putting both hands on the cold concrete floor. Anguish and fury struck him in the gut as he realized the spot was big enough for a child to hole herself up, try to shield herself against the dark and what she might imagine inhabited it.

  “Daralyn,” he said.

  She didn’t respond. She hadn’t heard him. He was trying to figure out the impossible, how to get himself down the ladder, when she shook herself out of it, lifted a hand toward him, an acknowledgement. Then she rose and came back up to him. She sank down on the floor, her feet on the top step of the ladder, her hand on his foot. Her face was ashen, her eyes bright with pain, a brittle coldness to her face. Her hands were empty.

  “Did you not find it?”

  Her gaze cleared, though she looked puzzled by his question. Then she understood. “It wasn’t an object. It was me. I needed to tell that version of myself that it was done. That she isn’t trapped down there anymore.”

  Her hazel gaze rose to his, and suddenly that lost look vanished, swallowed by something feral as a wolf, as focused as a dog on a scent.

  She bounded to her feet, squeezed past him and charged into the kitchen. When he backed out of the mud room, he saw she was yanking open the drawers, one after the other. She found what she was seeking under the kitchen sink.

  A hammer.

  She moved back into the mudroom, fell to her knees and attacked the hinges of the cellar trapdoor. She knocked the pins loose with impressively precise swings. But when the door came loose, that was where any control to her movements gave way to that wildness again. She yanked the door free with a strength fueled by something far beyond the physical, and hurled it down that narrow opening. It bounced off the ladder, landed against the empty shelves with a loud clatter and landed on the subterranean floor.

  “No door for the cellar. Never again,” she said.

  Then she collapsed to her knees, buried her face in her hands and started to rock, making a keening noise.

  “Ah, baby.” He locked the chair, lowered himself to the floor so he could collect her against him. She toppled over, a tight human coil in his lap. Curling over her, he wrapped his arms around her, holding her. She wasn’t crying. She was literally like a wounded animal, expressing pain with a quiet, heartrending noise.

  As he murmured to her, held her, he lifted his head and noted the rear door led to a back porch. Outside, the sun was hitting early afternoon. It was a memorable fall day. The trees in the backyard were an assortment of maples, red and yellow, their color shining in through the window.

  He was glad she at least had had something like that to look at during her bleak childhood. The woman he was holding loved the outdoors, all the different things nature could offer the senses. It would be the best thing to help balance what was in her head.

  “Come on,” he said, when she seemed to be easing up, seemingly more aware of her surroundings. She was also holding him as much as he was holding her, her arms clutching his back. “That’s enough for today. Let’s go to the back porch.”

  She straightened with an uncertain nod, her face flushed and strained, hazel eyes weary. He put himself back in the chair, clasped her hand to help her to her feet. She put her hand on the scratched knob and opened the back door.

  As he followed her out onto the porch, he saw, just like the front, the screens had been ripped out long ago. However, the view through the trees was good, showing an open meadow with autumn gold grass, and a small pond.

  Off to the right was a storage building, the door padlocked. He noted it was the only thing on the property that looked well-maintained.

  Daralyn followed his gaze. “When my uncle went to jail, your parents and some of the neighbors stored everything but a few pieces of furniture and tools in the storage building,” she said. “Your mother said it would be there if I wanted to go through it. At the time, I was afraid they’d keep asking me about it. It made me sick to my stomach, until I realized they were never going to bring it up again, unless I did. They were fine waiting forever for me to choose.”

  He pressed her hand in understanding. Without the screens, the air was fresh, the afternoon breeze touching their faces. It was a welcome change from the stale interior of the house. Daralyn sat down, her backside on the porch boards, her feet propped on the steps to the yard. Since he stayed at her side, she leaned against his leg. He put a hand on her hair, her shoulder, stroked.

  He waited her out, wanting her to decide if there was anything she needed or wanted to say. And he gave her the quiet if that was what she needed more.

  She gazed at the view for a long while, laid her head against his knee. Her breathing settled.

  “I don’t remember much about my mother,” she said at last. “She was a shadow. A touch. Not always gentle. Not unkind. More…shaky. She wasn't well.”

  He nodded, and she continued. “She left a stack of old magazines when she died. I couldn’t read them, but I liked looking at them. I wasn’t allowed to change the TV channel, but my father fell asleep with the TV on…always so loud, and never off, never quiet. But early in the mornings, Sesame Street was on the channel he fell asleep to. They’d do that part about the letters, how to sound them out, what they looked like. I didn’t learn to read well, but enough to recognize some words.”

  Her ability to acquire skills simply by listening and watching had always been exceptional. But hearing proof she’d strived for it, with no adult providing any type of encouragement, made it even more impressive to him. Dr. Taylor had mentioned it herself.

  A lack of early childhood development from a nurturing source creates myriad learning and interpersonal relationship problems. But Daralyn’s innate intelligence compensated in extraordinary ways.

  Extraordinary was the right word for her. He didn’t need anyone to tell him that.

  “They were always watching me,” she said, staring at the pond. “Even when I didn’t think they were. They figured out I was watching Sesame Street, was spending…too much time with the magazines. Daddy started turning it to a different channel before he fell asleep, one that had a hunting show first thing in the morning. My uncle collected all the magazines in a trash bin and burned them.”

  Her fingers brushed the scar on the inside of her forearm. “It was one of the few times I fought. I screamed, put my hand in the bin, grabbed one out, held it to me, even though it was on fire. He took it away, tossed it back into the trash bin. Dragged me to the cellar. That was the first time he left me there a full twenty-four hours.”

  “Fucking hell.” He lifted her forearm, pressed his mouth to that burn scar. Her hand trembled. “You’ve never acted like you’re afraid of going into the cellar at my mom’s house. Or Thomas and Marcus’s.”

  “They’re different spaces. A whole different feeling. And they have lights.”

  Another silence ensued before she spoke again.

  “I didn’t know giving up was an option.”

  He saw her gaze was fully caught in memories, not her surroundings, though her fingers curled over his hold, a lifeline to the present.

  “I wasn’t that…self-aware, and maybe that was good. But I do remember something broke inside me that day. Something that really, truly hurt. I couldn’t…I didn’t get out of bed for days, it seemed. Except to do the chores and whatever they told me to. I didn’t take the shower I was allowed every two days.”

  A faint, grim smile touched her lips. “I guess it worried them. Uncle Burton brought me home one new magazine and a Hershey bar. For a whole week, they didn’t make me take care of their…physical needs. He said if I’d start behaving again, he’d take me to a movie. The first I’d ever been to. It was too big and loud, the kind they liked, with explosions. My uncle got angry because the sound frightened me.”

  She shifted. “I tried to focus on other things, like the people in the theater. There had been this lady at the popcorn stand who was kind, who had a quiet voice. It was a world different from mine, and I think some way down deep part of my soul took it as a sign of hope. Hope that my life could be something different. It was enough to snap me out of it.”

  Her gaze turned to him. “At least, that’s what I think now. At the time, I didn’t really know why going to that movie helped bring me back to myself. Your mother told me that God shines a light in the darkest corners. Even if we’ve never seen that light before, the soul inside us, that was made by His hands, recognizes it.”

  He smiled a smile that hurt him all the way to the core of that soul, and gripped her hand. “It’s funny,” he said thickly. “I don’t believe as she believes, but her belief is so strong, I think it gives me my faith, by proxy.”

  “You experience it vicariously,” she said, pronouncing the word carefully.

  He loved her so much. “Good word.”

  She rose, her hand slipping from his as she went down the back steps. She stood there another couple minutes, staring out at the meadow. Her shoulders twitched and then she turned toward him. The pain was so stark in her face, so raw, it startled him.

  "I want," she said in a strangled voice.

  “What, baby? What do you want?” He wanted her back on the porch, within touching distance.

  A smile, brilliantly painful, lit her face, made her eyes flash like lightning. “You.”

  Then her gaze shifted so she stared past him, at the house. "I want my life to be full of the choices I make. Me.”

  She jerked into motion, coming up the stairs to sink down at his feet, her hands gripping his knees. She stared up at him with such a hunger he thought it could consume every bit of his heart and soul.

  "I want you," she said again. Now her voice was trembling, and her eyes filled with tears. "Please. Right now. And forever after that."

  "Okay," he said. "Come up here."

  She did, and he pulled her forward, helping her straddle him. The way she kissed him was savage, so uncontrolled, it ignited the Master in him. He wrapped his hand in her hair, held her tight. She could be as out of control as she wished; he held the control for them both.

  She drew back. His beautiful girl, his submissive, his heart, the center of his soul, wasn’t done detailing her wants. He was happy to let her roll them out, and hoped she had a list longer than anything ever sent to St. Nick.

  “I want this house,” she said. “I want to make it ours. I don’t know how, but I want to do that. I want to change it, so all the bad memories are driven out and every memory we make here crowds out all the bad ones. I’ll pull up the carpet, paint it, inside and out. I’m going to put chimes in the cellar, a bunch of them, and a fan that will run, make them sing all the time, until every bad thing is gone from that space. Then it will be a food pantry, a proper one. With finished walls and it will be a bright color. I’ll start an account at the store, and pay it back. Oh…”

  She bounced off his lap, bolted down the stairs and disappeared around the corner of the house.

  “What the hell—”

  “I’ll be right back,” she called over her shoulder. She sounded excited.

  He blinked, his lips curled ruefully. Then he pivoted, regarded the house. It was the last place he figured she’d ever want to live again, but she’d sounded determined, so he gave it a more critical look. Yeah, a lot of work, but the bones were good. And through her eyes, he imagined it transformed.

  She was back. He vaguely remembered she’d had a folded blanket in her bike basket. It was the lap quilt that his mother had made for Daralyn, a housewarming gift when she moved into Marcus and Thomas’s guest house. She kept it folded at the foot of her bed.

  She clutched it as she came back up the stairs. “When I said I want you…”

  The words stopped, and she stared at him. When her eyes lowered, he realized what had happened. Her wants were starting to move into a realm she felt crossed the line into telling him what to do. She wouldn’t make decisions her natural submission wanted to give to him.

  He’d learned how to respond to that. No, not learned. He’d always known, and she opened it up wide in him, an ocean of possibilities and need.

  “Tell me what you want, Daralyn. I’ll tell you if you can have it.” Like he’d ever deny her any fucking thing she wanted.

  “I want…you to be with me on my bed. Here.”

  The idea of doing anything so intimate and sacred in a place where she’d been treated so abominably initially repelled him. But he had to look at things like this through her eyes, not his own.

  Which made him understand. This was the beginning, the way they would make the house theirs.

  He brought her to him, put his hands on her hips, caressing. “Go spread the quilt out on the bed. Make it ready for us. I’ll join you shortly. You wait for me.”

  She met his gaze, nodded. Biting her lip, she reached out, touched the front of his shirt. “Can I have this?”

  He pulled it over his head, handed it to her. She held the balled-up fabric against her chest, eyes closed, nose buried in the shirt. Reaching out blind, she trailed her fingers against his flesh, and he covered her hand with his, let her palm rest against his heart, where she seemed to want it. Then she lifted her head, met his gaze and nodded, before hurrying inside to do as he’d ordered.

  He found the bathroom functioning and clean, if dusty, and thanked whoever his mother was paying to maintain the house for keeping the basics running. He imagined what Daralyn would do with it, how she’d transform it. He’d help her. Two bedrooms and a bath were plenty of room for one couple, bigger than her guest house, and they could build an addition when and if it was needed. Or strip it down, keep the bones, and build a whole new floor plan.

  He’d made the transition from being a man defined by his wheelchair to a man who used a wheelchair. Today he thought she’d hit that fork in the road for herself and made a definite decision of which way to go. She’d discarded the label of victim, tossed it into the wind by confronting her uncle, and by the fierce declaration she’d just made in the backyard.

  I want.

  She was a woman whose childhood had included horrific abuse, but her life, who she was, was so much more than that, too.

  He went to her room. The quilt was on the bed and she was on it. Kneeling, her bare legs folded up beneath her, because all she wore was his shirt, the neckline exposing the delicate line of her collarbone. Her hair was loose.

  Would she ever understand what it did to him, looking at her like that, waiting for him, wanting his care, attention and love?

  He could show her. It was time to do what he’d wanted to do with her for so long. In the weeks since his hospital stay, he’d built up his strength again, and he was glad he hadn’t shirked on that, so he could act on it now, at this very important moment.