Total pages in book: 8
Estimated words: 6777 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 34(@200wpm)___ 27(@250wpm)___ 23(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 6777 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 34(@200wpm)___ 27(@250wpm)___ 23(@300wpm)
Working side by side with Malachi felt both comforting and electrifying. He was stricter than I remembered, barking orders with that authoritative tone that brooked no argument.
“Polly, tighten that wire properly, or it’ll snap come winter.”
But there were moments that set my pulse racing, like when his hand brushed mine as we passed tools, or the way he’d catch me staring at his broad back, muscles rippling under his shirt as he hefted heavy equipment.
Nights were the hardest, when everything quieted down and it was just the two of us in the old farmhouse. The kitchen, with its worn wooden table, held the remembrance of my mother’s apple pies lingering. I swore I could smell them in the air.
We’d share dinners of food we’d harvested from the farm, and then afterward enjoy a beer on the deck as we overlooked the land.
Tonight felt different, though. I cleared the table, my cutoff shorts riding up just enough to draw his attention to the curve of my thighs.
“You’re all grown up now,” he said one evening, his voice low and gravelly, swirling the glass in his hand. “Makes a man think about things he shouldn’t.”
I froze at those words, watching silently as he tipped back his glass of whiskey, downing it.
I laughed it off, a nervous trill that didn’t quite mask the heat rising in my chest, but inside, desire coiled tight like a spring.
It was wrong. Taboo, forbidden. He was my father by blood, the man who had bandaged my scraped knees after falls from the hayloft, who had driven me to school dances and warned me about boys with wandering hands.
Society’s judgment loomed large in my mind, but the farm’s seclusion made it feel like our own private world, where rules bent under the weight of longing.
The farmhands were a rotating crew of seasonal workers with sun-weathered faces and easy banter. They came and went, eyeing me with appreciative glances but knowing better than to approach under my father’s watchful eye.
He was possessive, always had been, growling at any guy who lingered too long near the barn when I was around.
But now, that possessiveness bordered on something darker, more primal, and it ignited fantasies I dared not voice.
And as days passed after his after-dinner comment, things went back to normal.
Until they weren’t.
One afternoon, as we stacked hay in the barn, the air thick with dust motes dancing in the sunlight, my father turned to me suddenly, his blue eyes piercing.
“Are you dating anyone back at school? Some city boy with soft hands?”
The question caught me off guard, his tone casual but his jaw tightened, a muscle ticking there. “No one serious,” I replied, my heart racing as I met his gaze. “Why do you ask?”
He shrugged, turning back to the bales, but not before I saw the flicker of relief, or was it something else?
“Just looking out for you. Like always. Don’t want you getting hurt.”
And for the rest of the workday, it went back to normal.
But that night, lying in my childhood bed with its faded quilt and posters of celebrity crushes still tacked to the walls, I closed my eyes and listened to the creaks of the old house echoing through the thin walls.
I heard him pacing in his room down the hall; the floorboards groaning under his weight. The walls were thin enough that I could almost feel his presence, and I wondered if he was thinking of me the way I thought of him.
Like how it would feel to have his rough hands exploring my body, or to hear his commanding voice whispering forbidden words.
The taboo nature only fueled the fire, making every glance, every accidental touch, crackle with electricity.
I knew we were teetering on the edge of something irreversible, and I realized I was ready to fall.
2
The storm rolled in like a harbinger of change, with dark clouds gathering swiftly on what had started as a clear late afternoon.
Thunder grumbled in the distance, a low warning that had the animals stirring restlessly in their stalls.
Malachi and I were in the barn, securing everything against the impending fury by tying down tarps over equipment, herding the last of the chickens into their coop, and double-checking the latches on the horse stalls.
The air grew heavy with the scent of upcoming rain only a second before it came down in heavy sheets, pattering on the tin roof. It built to a relentless drumbeat that isolated us from the outside world.
The farmhands had been sent home early at Daddy’s insistence that they head home before the weather turned. Their trucks disappeared down the drive just as the first drops fell.
The isolation amplified the tension that had been simmering between us for weeks with stolen glances across the dinner table, brushes of skin that lingered too long during chores, and the way his eyes darkened when he caught me bending over to pick up a tool.