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"Last night. You stopped."

He turns around. "I did."

"I told you not to."

"You told me afterward." He looks straight at me. "I watched your eyes in the window glass. When they went empty, you weren't there to tell me anything. If it happens again, it doesn't matter who asked for what. I stop. Every time."

He steps through, drops the latch, and walks off toward the house without looking back.

My face is burning. Each time he told me no this morning, in that low, even voice he never once raised, I felt it between my thighs, and I hate how fast it came.

Sadie bumps the empty bucket with her nose, wanting more. I keep one hand on her neck while the memory comes up whether I want it or not.

I'm nineteen, with my shoes in one hand and my bedroom window open behind me. The parsonage is dark, and Daddy is snoring through the wall. I let my car roll down the drive in neutral so he won't hear the engine start.

I'd spent my whole life being told what a good girl ought to do. Sit straight. Keep quiet. Obey your father. I'd hated every bit of it.

Then I saw Knox Hollister take charge of a barn full of men who could have broken most people in half, and I discovered there was one man I wanted giving me orders.

Not because I had to obey him. Because the thought of doing exactly what he told me made my knees weak. I wanted to find out what he'd demand of me when nobody else was watching, and how far I'd be willing to go just to hear him say I'd pleased him.

I want him to use that voice on me. I want him to tell me where to sit and what to do with my hands, and I want to do it because he said so, and only because it's him.

Daddy preaches against whiskey and dancing and girls who sneak out to honky-tonks. He has never once preached against this, because he can't imagine his daughter wanting it.

That want was mine. I had it on a hay bale in a sundress, years before any man put a zip tie on me. Then the masked men in the cigar room barked their orders at me, 'Kneel up. Hands still. Eyes down,' and my body responded to those orders while I hated every man giving them.

Since the cellar, every order a man gives me sounds like theirs. This morning, Knox's didn't, and I don't trust that either. Last night he told me, 'Once we start, I lead,' and I wanted it, right up until I froze.

What I don't know is whether I can have it now without seeing those men and hearing their orders every time a man takes control.

In the afternoon Knox comes back with a drill and a heavy steel bolt off the shop shelf. His hair is flattened on one side, so he must have finally slept a few hours. "Ozzie's put word out," he says. "Anybody in town sees your daddy heading this way, Ozzie hears about it. If his truck turns in at my gate, Hector calls me before it's halfway up the drive."

Then he screws the bolt to the inside of the tack room door and sets a handheld radio on the shelf beside the saddle soap. He doesn't talk while he works, and neither do I. When he's done, he slides the bolt shut and open twice to show me it runs clean. He keys the radio once, and the one on his belt crackles. Then he leaves me to it.

I keep the cubes soaking all afternoon. By evening Sadie has cleaned out everything I've set in front of her, and no fresh wads lie under her rack.

Supper is on the guest house step at dusk, chicken and rice and a square of cornbread. I flip on the porch light so he can see the door from his kitchen window, and I eat every bite out there where he can watch me do it.

Then I go in and take two of Nell's pills from the bottle by my bed. I put Royce's boots back in the bottom drawer, lay the knife and the keys on the table, and turn the bolt.

Long after midnight I'm awake in the dark, listening. No engines on the county road. From my pillow I can see a strip of the main house where the curtain doesn't quite close, and Knox's kitchen light is still on.

I get up to check the deadbolt, the way I did when I first lay down. I turn it back and lock it again to be sure.

The bolt clacks into place the same way the bolt at the top of the cellar stairs did. Dutch would climb out and slam it home, and then I'd be alone in the dark.

My chest clamps tight. I try to pull in air, and it stops at the top of my throat. The walls feel close enough to touch on every side.

I have to get out. If I stand on the guest house porch, I'm lit up under that porch light, facing the same drive anybody coming for me would use. From his back steps, I'd see past the little limestone house to the pasture running open all the way to the cedar line. It's the closest place I can stand with no walls around me and nothing but open ground ahead.

My fingers are shaking so hard it takes two tries to turn the bolt back. I leave the door hanging open and the knife on the table.

The grass is cold and soaked under my bare feet, and pain stabs through my ribs with every step.

The keypad by his back door glows green. I get up his back steps, turn to face the pasture, and grab the porch rail with both hands. My split knuckles sting under the vet wrap, and the wood creaks in my grip.

I open my mouth to breathe, and nothing goes in.