Chapter Forty-One
Ryker
He bounced back from being out in the cold so long fairly quickly with a little more sleep than usual and some hot soup Hudson wouldn’t stop forcing on him. Fine, he’d down it just to make Hudson happy. How one person could fuss so much he didn’t know but he guessed someone had to make sure they all stayed alive and relatively well.
They wouldn’t be able to get down from the mountain for a couple of days probably, and there wasn’t a way for emergency services to get up the mountain any more than there was a way for them to get down. Luckily, while Cosima was in rough shape she wasn’t in such dire straits that she needed to be be medivacced out.
Unlike last time when Damon had nearly beaten her to death, this time he’d beat her, yeah, but not terribly. The real cruelty had been restraining her and leaving her to die.
She slept a lot and with Eric basically on call at all hours, they maintained a strict regimen of bottle feeding, enemas, baths, and being surrounded with their body heat to help her warm up inside and out.
Hudson and Ian had been feeding her but it was time for Cosima to take another bottle, and the guys were about to start digging the Range Rover out of the snow—which he’d been forbidden from helping with because Hudson was a worry wart fussbudget who refused to believe that he was perfectly capable of operating a fucking shovel.
Before they went out, Hudson put a sleepy, bundled up Cosima in his lap while he sat on the couch, and Ian brought him a heated bottle, testing the formula on his wrist before handing it over.
“Open up, Coco,” Ian urged. “Let Sir feed you. When you’re done, he’s going to change you and bundle you back up with some hot water bottles.”
Cosima obediently opened her mouth for him to press the rubber nipple between her lips, and her lashes fluttered over her cheeks as she closed her eyes when she started to suckle. It was…painfully intimate to have her in his arms like this—so trusting and sweet and compliant.
“She’s been falling asleep a lot during her bottle feedings. When you hear her make the cutest snuffly noise in the world, you’ll need to move the nipple around in her mouth. That’ll wake her enough that she’ll latch back on and start suckling again.”
He nodded, trying not to feel overwhelmed by the weight of responsibility of caring for this unbearably fragile creature. Yes, he had spanked her, flogged her, caned her, and had kept an eye on her to make sure she could bear his harsh ministrations but this was different.
“You might need to help her potty,” Ian volunteered, watching them carefully like he wasn’t sure if Ryker could be trusted to be alone with their precious little bundle. Which he fucking well could be. He’d take on a mountain lion for this little girl if he had to. Actually, doing that would be easier than playing doting nursemaid but he wasn’t incompetent. It just made him…uncomfortable.
This was a hell of a lot of intimacy and affection and that wasn’t his default. He could learn, though, if this was what she needed.
“Okay.”
“She’s not stubborn, just a little embarrassed. All you have to do is press on her belly and she—”
“I got it. You and Hudson have given me instructions like three times and my brain didn’t freeze out there, just my limbs.”
“There’s the snuffle!” Ian exclaimed, jabbing a finger toward the little bundle in his arms, and it was true. Cosima had made the sweetest little noise that was halfway between a soft snore and a sigh. Stabbed him right in the chest with how fucking adorable it was.
He did as he’d been told and shifted the nipple in her mouth until she stirred enough to start nursing again and then sucked rhythmically at the bottle.
“I guess I should go.”
“Yes, you should.”
“Do you have any questions? Anything I can—”
“Get out of here, Galbraith,” he growled, and then felt bad. Ian was just trying to help, and it wasn’t like it was irrational to think Ryker would be nervous about this. He fucking was. So he softened his tone. “I can handle it, promise. And if either of us need anything, I’ll use the walkie. Promise.”
* * *
Cosima
She’d been drifting in and out of sleep while Ryker gave her the bottle, and only roused slightly more when he picked her up and carried her to the bed they’d all been sharing. But when he unwrapped her from the swaddle Hudson had bundled her up in, she was definitely more awake because it was cold and she started to shiver.
“Okay, little one, you’re okay,” he soothed, which was unfamiliar but nice.
She knew Sir cared about her, but she didn’t expect him to express it in tender gestures and reassuring words. Wasn’t it enough that he’d braved a snowstorm and the possibility of an armed madman to rescue her? She thought so.
She couldn’t be entirely certain that it hadn’t been wishful thinking or whatever the opposite of a fever dream was, but she could've sworn he'd said he loved her when he was carrying her back to this rustic but incredibly comfortable cabin. Did it really matter? His actions clearly said he did love her and she loved him enough not to insist that he say these things out loud if in fact she could feel them. She could now.
In the way he sheltered her body in the big bed they shared here, in the way he read to her while Daddy gave her baths, in the way that he’d murmur in her ear when she startled awake at night, and the way he’d hold her chilled hands in his and warm them with his very breath. Yeah, he loved her. Quietly and maybe reluctantly, but truly and deeply.