Big Daddy Wants Me

3: Dolores.

“Out,” Fred says as he opens my door. As I stand, I glance over his shoulder at the trees. He notices. “You can run, but you won’t get far. And even if you do, the wolves will get you before you make it back home.”

“Wolves!?” I exclaim. But Fred just turns his back on me and walks toward the cabin, giving me no other choice but to follow.

He moves with an almost robotic precision, his hulking, muscled shoulders moving up and down slowly as if in time with his breath. I can see the bulging definition of his thick, frightening physique through the fabric of his shirt, and as strange as it is, I feel myself being pulled to him like a magnet to a piece of metal. He may have just kidnapped me, but for some bizarre reason, I feel safe with him.

I follow him up the stairs and into the cabin. The smell of dust fills my nose, and the old wood creaks beneath my feet. Fred steps into the impossible blackness, there’s a click, and a small lamp in the corner switches on, bathing the living room in a soft yellow glow.

“This is your home now,” he says, turning his icy eyes to me.

“A bit of a downgrade,” I quip back.

“A bit more honest.”

Fred steps past me to a sink and sets his gun down on the counter. For a half of a second, I think about grabbing it.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I ask.

He shakes his head as he begins to wash his hands – they’re so thick and strong they’re more like bear claws than hands.

“Politics. It’s a dirty game filled with liars and crooks.”

“Says the hitman,” I laugh.

“I’m not a hitman,” he replies. “And that doesn’t make what I said any less true.”

When he turns back to me, I finally appreciate his size. He may say he is not a monster, but he’s right on the border between that and a man.

No magazine would ever put his face on their cover, but I can’t take my eyes off him. A raw, unadulterated masculinity simply oozes off of him and makes me feel…fuzzy inside. I’m suddenly aware of the fact that I’m a female and am so much smaller and weaker than him that any attempt to fight him off would be like Baby Yoda trying to beat up Thor – without using the Force.

This man may have claimed he isn’t going to rape me, but he could if he wanted to. I doubt he’d even break a sweat.

Again, I glance at the gun on the counter beside him. It doesn’t scare me; I’ve seen my father’s bodyguards carrying them since I was barely a teenager. Fred scares me more, but at the same time, he does something else to me…

…something uncomfortable that I don’t want to acknowledge.

No, that would be sick, Dolores.

“There are two bedrooms,” he says, causing my voice to sink. I don’t know what I was expecting. “You will remain in yours, and you will stay in this cabin even when I am gone. Do you understand?”

“And what’s to keep me from just leaving when you’re not here?” I ask.

“If the wolves don’t get you, I will find you again. And this time, I’ll make sure I do the job right.”

As he passes me, I take a deep breath and smell his scent. For some reason, it comforts me, and I close my eyes and feel my whole body beginning to relax. I didn’t even realize how tense I was.

I watch him walk to the first door and open it. He stops for a moment, as though he’s going to turn back to me. I wait, hoping he does, but after a few seconds, he steps forward and closes the door behind him.

As I make my way to my room, I realize my fingers are tingling and my face is hot. I must be blushing, and realizing that Fred just saw me blushing, I blush more.

“s**t,” I mutter as I close the door and sit down on the bed. My eyes move to the wall, wishing I had x-ray vision so I could see what he was doing in there.

For a man so unflappable, he’s probably already asleep without a care in the world. But I end up lying in bed for hours, thinking about the countless ways this could end up playing out.

Either he ends up killing me, or…

“No.” I shake my head. “Don’t even go there, Dolores, you stupid f*****g girl.”

As the morning light begins to rise over the horizon and I finally feel myself falling asleep, I smile, because I know that no matter what he says, Fred isn’t going to kill me.

No. He might do something else to me, but he won’t do that.