Ravished

2. Bunnie

2

BUNNIE

It was unreal to sit next to him in the red velvet chair—a real, live mountain man. My one-time high-school pal now filled the small theater seat so fully that one arm, covered in a flannel sleeve rolled up to the elbow, spilled over into my space. That arm heated me up as if I were standing too close to a wood fire. Flannel was so much sexier than the most expensive cloth on any business shirt I'd ever seen.

The sheer sight of the hair covering his muscled forearm made my lady bits do an erotic dance. Before I’d gone to university, my grandmother had warned me about the drugs in the street but never the ones with flannel-covered gladiator arms and a heartbeat.

Zeke had always been larger than life, and right now, he radiated beefy brawn from the chair next to me. It was just like old times. He had my hoo hah throbbing on the edge of her seat.

In high school, it had been mortifying to hang out with my extreme crush, looking the way I did. I hated my size and tried to avoid people whenever possible. Even so, I counted down the hours to every Wednesday when we’d met for our tutoring session.

Back then, Zeke spent most of his time sucking face with Bobbie Jo Clark, so it wasn't like he noticed me much. But when he was with me, he’d been kind. He’d listened.

I’d noticed him. Plenty. I’d agreed to save his football-loving a*s from getting benched for shitty grades in science. Stuck with him once a week, my teenage p***y pounding, I’d tried to keep my hands off him and focus on the equation in front of us. It had been the most delicious t*****e and unrequited hell I'd ever known. And Zeke was bringing it all back just by sitting down next to me.

Snap out of it, Bunnie.

No matter how absurd the local yokels were tonight during public comment, I needed to maintain my homeostasis.

"Homeo-what?" His rough voice, speaking from the chair next to me, jolted me out of my reverie.

Crap, I hadn’t realized I had spoken that word out loud. "Homeostasis. Self-regulating, stable..."

"Is that so?" His eyes squinted, twinkling mischief.

"What?" I tugged the cuffs of my sleeves down beneath my cloak. "Do I amuse you somehow?"

The square jaw and high cheekbones were criminal acts in and of themselves, committed against any female susceptible to a shining example of manliness.

The fact that they resided above shoulders I could have stood on even at my former weight, from which hung arms chiseled by chain-sawing and tree climbing until the single word they brought to mind was "conquer," hit below the belt. Precisely beneath the belt, where my coochie flailed her arms and screamed for attention.

Zeke might live in a backwater town, but if ever the world needed a hero, he would be built like him.

His words vibrated through me. "I'm not laughing at you, Spitfire. I'm just remembering your incredibly volatile self and wonder if your little mantra can possibly change that."

Zeke was never stupid. Books and studying just weren't ever his top priorities when I knew him back in the day. So it was a little surprising to hear him toss out choice words like "volatile." The heady combination of his muscle-bulging flannel and sexy smarts put my p***y in a precarious position.

On that day fifteen years ago, when Zeke stopped me in the hall and asked if I'd be willing to help him out with biology in exchange for keeping Trina and her pack of nasty girls off my back, I’d dropped my textbooks on the floor like the typical high school nerd on film.

First off, Zeke acknowledging my existence threw me for a loop. Freshman year had taught me to keep my head down and stay as invisible as possible, which wasn’t easy weighing in at over three hundred pounds. Instead, I smacked the famous linebacker—at least famous at Briarville high, which was as famous as it got around here—right on the head when bending down to pick up my books. Real smooth. Back then, I didn't expect anyone to talk to me unless they were calling me "Tonka," and I wondered every day if f**k you was an emotion, because that was the feeling I felt in my soul.

Fact was, I still wrestled with my anger. To the extent that I had to ask myself fifteen years later, "Did you come back to work on this watershed analysis project because it's a good job, or because vengeance is sweet?" Truth be told, the answer might be a tossup.

It was my turn to present, and once at the podium, I looked out into the audience of three hundred or so. Conferences were a regular deal for grad students of civil engineering and hydrology. I'd presented plenty a white paper to audiences way bigger than this. But those didn't include Trisha the Tampon, my name for my arch nemesis who’d set her sights on making my every high school day a living hell—a goal she’d pulled off until Zeke came to my rescue sophomore year.

Hell, she probably didn't even recognize me.

It was also hard to tell who she was at first, since it was as if my extra pounds had flown back to Briarville and settled on her once trim and athletic figure. Her pinched features, from which tiny eyes glared at me, were red, and the color spilled all the way down her neck. Her mouth curled up with dislike.

So she did recognize me. Of course, my last name was listed in the program—Petite. Sounds like "Pet-tea." She must have put two and two together, and now, in that old, familiar way, her disdain was directed at me.

Don't look at her. You're not the meek and mild, helpless little wallflower you once were. You've seen the world. All she knows is this place. She's pitiful, not dangerous. Feel sorry for her, not scared.

It went as expected. The good people of Briarville weren't ready to listen to science. Tonight's town hall was to encourage folks to change their behavior for the betterment of their watershed.

Fat chance. As per usual, everybody had an agenda, and it didn't include meeting environmental goals set for the county's rivers, streams, and lakes.

Once again, I wasn't making any friends in this town. Spouting scientific facts never made anyone popular, particularly in a place where people's livelihoods went bye-bye with the logging biz. I couldn't blame them for being skeptical when one more regulatory agency was putting restrictions on land use.

Just as soon as professionally possible, I dashed out of the building. My shoulders were in knots from listening to people voice their opinions, worthy or inane, on a topic they knew little about.

Once outside in the warm summer air, I heard Zeke's panty-melting voice calling after me. "Hey, wait up! Let me walk you to your car."

"Not necessary. I don't need a bodyguard anymore. I can take care of myself." I hugged my purse in front of me like a shield and marched uphill toward my Tesla.

"Completely understand." The brute actually held an elbow out for me, as if I couldn't manage walking on my own. "Just seems like that back there might have been a little rough on you. Thought you might need someone to talk to." He ran his huge hand through his hair, and it did swoopy things to my stomach. "You sure as hell know how to throw a homecoming for yourself."

"Of course you would see it like that. You're completely on their side." I sighed heavily.

"This isn't about sides, Bunnie. It's about listening to people."

"Easy for you to say. They listen to you. You're one of them."

"I'm not saying that persuading them is going to be easy, but if you want to make change, you have to hear what their concerns are. Understand where they're coming from."

My cheeks sucked in like a caught steelhead gasping for oxygen, and I shook my head. "Just doing my job, Zeke. Nothing personal. Can't help it if people don't wanna admit what I have to say is right."

Zeke halted suddenly. "Huh. Nothing personal?" His ginormous hands rested on his hips, and he leaned down to peer at me intensely. My chest fluttered.

A scowl spread across my face. "What?"

His probing gaze made me fidget. "Seems to me you have more than enough reason to make this personal...or at least Blanca does."

I tossed my hair over my shoulder and pulled my cloak tightly around me. "Oh, please. Some of us actually left this place and got over it. There's more to life than what happened in high school, you know," I spat. "Believe it or not, it's possible to let bygones be bygones."

It was not possible to keep from salivating over the contours of his chest, arms, and shoulders bulging out against his flannel shirt. He could easily start his own modern-day Paul Bunyan feed on Insta.

He shocked me by cupping my face in his hands. For a moment, I couldn't breathe. "Well see now, I was hoping you wouldn't feel that way, because I could totally go for some of you right now. I, for one, am glad you're back in town." He lowered his teasing mouth to mine, begging to be kissed.

Rather than staying rooted to the spot and indulging in the unthinkable, I turned on my suddenly tight leg muscles and listened to my body's urge to run.

As the saying went, "There's no place like home." And that was exactly why I had left this spot in the middle of nowhere in the first place. There was no other place that drove me as crazy as one full of lowbrow rednecks and one hard-muscled, chainsaw-wielding tree feller in particular.