Chapter 54: Punishment for the Crime

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The shelf-like mountains of Coarsegold were just barely touched by a slow-rising dawn the next morning when Frank left his bedroom. At the same time, just down the hallway, he caught Fletcher slowly inching his way back out the door from Crystal's room, still in his pajamas.

When their eyes met across the hall, Fletcher tensed up as if he'd just been caught shoplifting. Frank made no remarks and instead brushed silently past the boy to descend the staircase. He could hear the hesitant footsteps of Fletcher following him downstairs, then once they were out of earshot of the upstairs hallway, the defense began.

"Nothing happened, Frank. All we did was kiss. I swear nothing else ha– "

"You don't have to explain anything, Fletcher," Frank said quietly, turning to face him when they reached the bottom of the stairs. "I suppose I set the precedent when I told you that you could share a room with her back at the Manor."

Fletcher awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck.

"Do you understand why I told you to do that?" Frank asked carefully.

"It was … circumstantial?" the boy guessed, eyes searching.

Frank nodded. "Yes. It was."

Fletcher looked down at the floor. "I just … don't want her to be alone on any night."

It was a feeling every man knew well, Frank supposed, and that was why he could not fault the boy for it. He looked warily around the dim, empty house for a moment before he shrugged his shoulder in the direction of the hall.

"Come with me."

Frank opened the door to his study, and Fletcher flinched as he was greeted by one very prominent piece of room decor.

"I feel like it's staring into my soul."

Frank threw a cursory glance up at the elk head over the fireplace. "Don't worry, he's been dead longer than you've been alive."

Fletcher laughed nervously.

There was a long pause where the previously discussed subject lingered between them, and Frank knew it was his place to be the first to speak.

"I assume your mother set expectations with you about how to treat women."

Fletcher shrugged. "She just told me I should be a gentleman."

"From what I've seen, you're living that out well, Fletcher."

"I guess I just don't know how to—well, when it comes to taking certain steps in a relationship—I mean, I'm kind of feeling…" He winced as he stumbled over his words. "…overwhelmed? Intimidated? I don't know."

Overwhelmed and intimidated were two things that Frank was beginning to feel himself in that moment.

Turning to the window, Fletcher lamented, "There's just a lot of things I can't talk about… with Mom."

Frank realized then just how much he'd taken having a father for granted all his life. Losing his mother had its impact on him, but being able to still rely on his father for years after her passing had been an undeserved blessing in so many ways. That was never more clear to him than it was right now, staring into the imploring eyes of this young man who had never known his father.

"Sit down," he instructed the boy, gesturing for the chairs by the window rather than the desk. "I think what you're facing right now regarding Crystal is more a question of timing than anything else. You're both quite young, and given the present circumstances, maybe feeling somewhat vulnerable, and—" Frank stopped himself, resisting the urge to preach. "You haven't known each other that long. I wouldn't want you to make any decisions that you might later regret."

He could see Fletcher's eyes darting across the window in thought.

"You and Mom didn't wait very long," Fletcher murmured, the slightest edge of accusation in his words.

"We didn't," Frank confirmed. "And that's something I regret."

"But you're together now."

"We probably would have ended up together much sooner if I'd made a different decision on that night."

Fletcher sat back in his chair and exhaled deeply.

"You can make your own decisions, Fletcher," Frank said gently, turning his attention back to the window. "I'm not the one who raised you; it really wouldn't be prudent for me to offer my advice."

The boy turned to him then, a contained plea in his dark eyes. "Well, pretend like you did raise me. What would you tell me then?"

"Protect her, Fletcher," he replied in a quiet voice. "Just protect her."

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Rachel narrowed her eyes as she watched Fletcher discreetly exit the door from Frank's study.

"Hey, Mom!" he greeted her warmly. "I was just about to go start breakfast. Any requests?"

"You know me, baby, I'll eat whatever you're makin'," Rachel said as she stomped determinedly past him to enter the study.

Frank looked up in surprise from where he stood behind his desk. Rachel shut the door behind her.

"I know you didn't just give my son the 'birds and the bees' talk."

Frank smirked. "He's nineteen years old, Rachel. If he needs that talk from me, then you really let the ball drop."

Feeling petulant, Rachel crossed her arms and sucked her teeth. "So what were you two talking about?"

"Nothing you need to know."

"I'm his m–"

"Yeah, I know. You're his mama, Rachel. You say that every damn day," Frank said with a boorish slap of his newspaper on the surface of the desk. "You know, sometimes he might need to talk to a man."

"Well, I'm not the reason he didn't have a man around all these years. I did the best I could–"

"You did wonderfully."

Rachel steadied herself, bewildered by his compliment.

"You know I think the world of Fletcher," Frank stated. "If he comes to me for advice, I'll give it to him."

Rachel pursed her lips to the side as she inspected his face, softening reluctantly in the wake of her own curiosity.

"Look at you, being all fatherly."

"Lord knows, I have to start practicing at some point," he sighed as he sat down at the desk.

They exchanged a smile.

Rachel changed the subject. "Are you gonna drive up to Tahoe while we're here?"

"I thought about it, but I don't think it's wise."

"How come? Scott's here."

"Yeah, but that leaves him with the three of you, and I couldn't do that," Frank said softly as he sifted through a pile of unread mail. "Besides, Beverly's a better babysitter than I am."

Rachel smirked as she came up behind his chair and laced her arms around his neck. "You'd better get used to babysittin', Farmer."

He placed one hand over hers. "Let's just enjoy these last few months we have, hm?"

"I tried to do that last night but you fell asleep," she murmured against his ear.

"You slept for five hours in the car yesterday. I'd been awake for forty hours at that point."

"Well, maybe you should nap today so you have enough energy for tonight," she said suggestively, unbuttoning the top button of his shirt collar.

His fingers wrapped around hers and gently pulled her hand away. "Stop it," he whispered, sounding anything but sincere.

"That was an accident," Rachel murmured, her voice absent of any remorse.

He clicked his tongue in disapproval, glancing down at his open collar. "I'm finally free of Oxana, and you go and do that."

"You're lucky Oxana dressed you all those months. If it was up to me, you wouldn't even be wearin' a shirt." She nibbled the back of his neck, lingering just enough until she heard the hitch in his breathing. Satisfied, she straightened up. "I'll let you get back to work."

She could feel his eyes on her until she shut the door behind her.

Grinning to herself, Rachel sauntered into the kitchen and stole a scone off the tray in Fletcher's hands.

"Careful! Those are still–"

"Ow!"

"-hot," Fletcher finished uselessly as his mother spat the cookie back out into her hand.

Crystal rescued Rachel with a hastily poured glass of milk.

"We haven't even been here for a day yet and I think I've already put on about five pounds," Scott said from the breakfast table.

"Same," Rachel deadpanned, tapping her belly. "Well, I think I'll head outside and sit on the porch for a bit. I have a phone call to make."

Crystal perked up, "Anything business related I need to be a part of?"

"Oh, no," Rachel said cheerfully, "just some personal stuff."

Closing the French doors to the kitchen behind her, Rachel shuffled outside and settled into the porch swing, admiring the golden hillside in the morning sun. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed a number by memory.

"I bet every time I call now you're gonna think I have more questions about that stupid ransacking in New York," Rachel said before Tina could greet her on the other line.

"Oh, don't be silly, Rach!" Tina laughed. "I'm just sorry I couldn't be of more help to you."

"Never mind all that stuff," Rachel said. "I'm calling to invite you out to see my new house."

Tina sounded shocked. "Really? You're moved in already?"

"We had a change of plans. Just moved in yesterday."

"Oh, Rachel, I couldn't impose…"

"You wouldn't be imposing!" Rachel insisted. "Besides, I can't make your bachelorette weekend because I have the Christmas concert, so I wanna make it up to you."

It sounded like Tina was almost in tears. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. I haven't had a friend around in a really long time and it's starting to wear on me," Rachel laughed. "So when can you get your butt out here?"

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Rachel wasn't stupid. She knew very well that Frank would not be happy about her taking such liberties. But it was the best move to break him in. After all, he ought to know she wasn't about to adopt his modern-day-hermit lifestyle just because they lived in the middle of nowhere now.

"You invited Tina?" he flared, slamming their bedroom door shut behind him.

Rachel looked innocently over at him from her spot by the closet. "It's my house, I can invite my friends over, can't I?"

"Rachel…" Frank kneaded his fingers into his forehead, barely having the energy to look exasperated anymore. "We're kind of still in hiding out here."

"I don't remember discussing that," Rachel said, her anger rising as she twisted the sash of her silk robe between frustrated hands. "Isn't this the home where we planned to live indefinitely?"

"Yeah, but–"

"So when are you gonna clear me to have company, Mr. Farmer?"

He ignored her, taking his cell phone out of his pocket. "Speaking of clearances, I'll just have Scott run a background check on your friend Tina while I'm at it."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Frank, if you adopted a fucking puppy you'd probably wanna run a background check on it."

"It's my job to ensure your safety, Rachel."

"No it's not. Not anymore," she said resolutely. "I'm firing you."

He stopped typing on his phone and gave her a blank stare. "What?"

"I'm firing you," she repeated calmly. "In this house, you're no longer my employee."

He scoffed and threw his cell phone down on the bed, swiftly moving to her side. "What about your concert in December?"

"I want you there, watching in the audience, like you were supposed to do in New York."

"What about routing your phone calls? Your next public outing? Your–"

"I told you, I don't want your services anymore…" she said firmly, closing the distance until she was pressed against him. "...unless it's in the bedroom."

He hadn't been aroused during their interaction moments prior. He couldn't have been. But Rachel couldn't justify it any other way when her hand slipped forwardly between his thighs and found him hard as stone.

A sudden, rather forceful moan escaped her lips when she felt him, but he was unmoved. Breathing deeply, he reached behind her to turn off the lamp and deposited her onto the bed.

"Are you gonna punish me now?" she whispered hopefully.

Ignoring her question, he gathered the end of her sash with an unrelenting grip and wrapped it twice around his strong hand. In one ruthless tug, it came undone and the sides of her robe slipped off her like the limp petals of a flower, unveiling her bare breasts.

"Why do you insist on wearing these things?" he asked in a tortured kind of whisper, tearing away the flimsy silk robe and discarding it on the floor.

"I'm pregnant. They're comfortable," she said innocently.

His growl of half-hearted censure rumbled through her as he pressed his body into hers, planting kisses all along her bare torso. She made no effort to evade his attack, lying submissively beneath him even as he backed up to undress. Desire pooled steadily in her belly as she watched him unlatch his belt buckle, tugging his belt free then whipping it onto the floor along with her robe. It was almost amusing, how angry he looked as he divested himself of each article of clothing. When he was finally naked, he pushed her legs apart and hovered over her on the edge of the bed, his breathing shaky.

Refusing to offer remedy for that wretched ache, his palms circled the planes of her thighs, warmly, lazily. He poured his desire into her from his eyes alone, unmoving save for the tender ministrations of his hands. She writhed beneath his hands, already soaking the bed sheets, and in a demanding whisper, she begged him to fuck her.

"I need to punish you first," he whispered back. He raised one hand to mockingly caress the side of her cheek with the back of his finger.

She bucked her hips in protest, which he aborted with both hands bracing her pelvis against the bed. But he was never violent, even when he claimed to 'punish' her. Even when he used force. Violence by the grace of his hand held a different meaning altogether. In some strange 'fuck you' to her abusive history, Rachel had always craved violence in the bedroom – she had forced other partners to use violence on her in various unsavory ways – but with Frank it had always gone awry.

She thought back to the time she'd asked him to bring an unloaded pistol into bed back in Tahoe. How his capable hands had suddenly become all clumsy and nervous. How the crystal pale focus in his eyes had become so cloudy, and how awkward the pace of his breathing had become. He was undoubtedly the man most capable of violence she'd ever met in her life, but he was the one man who never got comfortable with executing it in bed.

And it still bothered her.

For some damn reason, it still bothered her that all he wanted to do was torture her by denial, or touching, or staring, or a rough whisper, an unexpected caress of his fingertips with those rare fingerprints he had, the bastard.

It didn't stop her from trying almost every time.

She thought maybe if she could be violent with him, it would make him more comfortable returning the favor. But Frank Farmer had been designed for evading assailants, no matter what form they came in. Every tactic, every twist, every motion was just a bit of muscle memory for him – an involuntary maneuver of self-defense. He bested her every damn time, no matter what angle she chose for her attack, no matter what part of his body she tried to ensnare.

At a certain point she had him pinned beneath her – only because he allowed it – and she figured he could tell what she was doing. He looked a bit breathless and confused as to why his lover was trying to either compromise or injure him. She'd done those sorts of things before, but she'd never been this relentless or determined.

He didn't reprimand her though, which she found even more perplexing. He didn't ask her what the hell she was doing, or tell her to calm the fuck down. He treated it like a disciplinary exercise, a casual test of his reflexes. She was so enraged by his behavior that it started to arouse her. She fought against it, feeling oddly majestic as she hovered over him, pinning his wrists down into the pillow. He gave her that look – the 'you really think you can outsmart me?' look he'd given her so many times before, especially when he'd first been hired. And that turned her on even more. She uttered some sort of soft guttural sound, and she was turned on by the sound she had made, and the chain of events had gotten so out of hand that she was possessed to let go of his wrists and wrap her hands around his neck instead.

His neck felt stronger than it looked. She could feel the tiny muscles rippling beneath her hands as she choked him. He closed his eyes, grabbed her wrists. She expected him to pull her hands away. But he didn't. She was almost mad that he wasn't affected by it, until she was pressed flush against his body and she felt him throbbing against her thigh. He was affected by it.

He liked it.

Experimentally, she tightened her fingers around his throat and he twitched against her again. She exhaled victoriously, eyes wide and mad like she'd just accidentally discovered heaps of gold in a shipwreck. For Christ's sake, of all things, that was his kink?

If they were going to keep playing like this, they might need a safeword after all.

Or maybe not.

His skill level was sickening. With barely a flinch he somehow slipped his fingers beneath her grasp and tore her hands away, flipping her underneath him.

Her heart began to pound when she realized he was going to return the favor.

He started slowly, calculating the pressure between every one of his fingers and her throat. He was not as reckless as she had been – perhaps because he was a man, and thus stronger than her, or perhaps because he was so highly trained that he actually understood the fine line of causing injury when one wasn't too careful. She trembled in anticipation until he finally applied the pressure she'd been craving, his blue eyes flickering with an elegant sort of insanity.

Was this the last sight his victims saw before they died? Rachel didn't even know if Frank had choked anyone to death before. There were a lot of things she still didn't know about him, she thought with a thrill as he continued to pulse his fingers unpredictably around her throat. He blocked her attempt to cry out with his mouth, kissing her roughly while he maintained steady pressure around her neck.

There was something fundamentally satisfying about reclaiming the forces that had once been inflicted on her. Because in this bed, she was not a victim. She was willingly submitting herself to a man whom she could order to stop at any time. Maybe therapy would have her believe this was unhealthy, but she didn't want to give it up. She just knew herself better than any therapist ever could, and she knew there was no other way to heal herself.

She looked up into her lover's eyes, into the boundless sea of intensity she could not fathom. With the lightest twitch of his fingers as forewarning, he tightened to the fullest extent of his strength and then immediately released.

He knew exactly when to stop. It was almost suspicious. Almost like he'd done this before.

But she was certain he hadn't. She could tell from the restrained excitement in his eyes – she was quite fluent in the subtleties of his expressions by now.

He was just that in tune with her.

"I feel like you've punished me enough," Rachel rasped, her quivering hands splayed adoringly along his sides.

Without a word, he thrashed the sheets aside with one arm and shoved a pillow beneath her bottom to elevate her hips. He let out an agonized groan of pleasure as he pushed into her, his hands digging into her thighs with a white-knuckled grip. It was those little adjustments he made with his hips that undid her — in his effort to find just the right angle, he repeatedly prodded that mysterious weak spot deep within her — the first time it took her breath away, the second time it made her body go limp, and the third time she went careening into incoherent bliss.

She hadn't realized it when it happened, but apparently she'd taken him with her.

He never spoke. Especially when he came. So the ragged string of poorly pronounced curse words that met her ears was like the finest music, beautifully jarring to hear.

Her entire body prickled with goosebumps, her lungs heaving as she tried to catch her breath. She opened her eyes so she could watch him attempt to recover. How was it possible he looked more beautiful today than he had the day he started working for her?

He collapsed in exhaustion beside her, unperturbed by the gush of wet warmth that surged between their bodies as he slipped out of her. His arms enveloped her fiercely, pressing her cheek against the base of his throat where she could still hear those strangled little sounds of lingering pleasure thrumming through him.

She savored the closeness, trapped in that lovely spot between complete comfort and suffocation, wishing she never had to leave it. In her delirium, she thought she heard him utter in the softest words, "You've destroyed me," just before she drifted into sleep.