Blackfoot Forest every year is getting shorter

His words hit her like a slap in the face, and it stung worse for the tenderness they carried.  Her expression shifted, her face an open book to the swirling terror and shame that rose within her.  

She swallowed past everything she wanted to say and let her eyes flicker to the opening, and then without another word she padded past the brute and out into the wild, casting more than one look over her shoulder at the man she'd seduced to get free.