Dances with Monsters(174)

"So then this fucker takes my business from me. My business—the one I built from the ground up. Because he got me banned, and I won't be able to pay any of my bills. For a day I lost two-thirds of my clientele when they found out I fired him. Then they all came back when he stole my business. Do you know how much money that comes to?" His hand was still gripping her face hard and pressing the side of her forehead into the brick hard, and it hurt so much, but Drew refused to cry out. She only shook and stared back into his eyes.

"What hasn't he taken from me?" Carter went on rhetorically. He tightened his grip somehow, and Drew tasted copper on her tongue again as the tender insides of her cheeks scraped tightly against her teeth. He pushed on her, and she felt a wet trickle slide down her temple as her skin gave as it raked over the brick wall. She moaned involuntarily, squeezing her eyes shut at the pain. Carter was using the elbow of the hand gripping her mouth to pin one of her arms to the wall. His other hand pinned her free arm to the wall down by her side. His body was pressed against hers, and his legs somehow maneuvered against hers to wedge in between them and around them. Drew didn't know quite how he was holding her; all she knew was that she couldn't move. Any slight tension on her part resulted in pain from the force he was exacting on her.

"The only way I see it," Carter went on, his voice dropping to a sharp hiss, "is for your fucking mick boyfriend to understand what he's done is to take everything from him." He leaned his forehead against the back of Drew's neck and then nipped at her flesh there. She cringed, trying to lean away, only to feel a fresh burst of pain throughout her body. "I do believe that's where you come in, pretty girl. I think you're everything to him. So I'm gonna take you."

She began to pant at his words, feeling throbs of pain with every flex of her lungs. It hurt so much to even draw breath, since he was pressed against her so tightly, but it was involuntary as her body fell into full panic mode. She felt she couldn't catch her breath; she was terrified of what was going to happen next.

"The way I see it, things started going to shit with me and Heath as soon as he started fucking you," Carter growled in her ear. He rolled his hips against her rear end and she moaned again in disgust. "So if I fuck you, then things will go to shit for him. It's the only way. Don't you see, Drew-Drew? You're going to help me fuck your boyfriend." He giggled maniacally in her ear. "In more ways than one. So let's get down to business, shall we?" His hand dropped down to her waist, then lower, fumbling at the button on her jeans.

Drew's eyes glazed over as her body froze up. Her thoughts receded, almost as though her brain were signaling to her body to give up the fight, to let things happen. Vague, distorted images of her previous attack hazed in and out of her mind, her own screams echoing through her brain intermittently. Perhaps it was best to not fight this time; it would hurt less, she reasoned dully. Carter didn't have a knife, not that she could tell. If she would only just lie still, it would be over with, all over with, before she knew it. Just give up, a voice in her brain whispered. You can't fight it. Just let it happen.

Then she thought about her poor, innocent cat lying in the grass a few feet away, hurt because this bully had some mad revenge to exact, and welcomed the sudden warm rush of hot, delicious anger as it flooded through her veins like it was on an IV drip in her arm. A sudden memory flashed through her brain, seemingly forever ago—one dark night, late, at the gym when Heath had been trying to show her some self-defense moves for the class he wanted to hold. It hadn't worked when he'd been the assailant—she'd panicked. But what about when she had been the assailant? She recalled his heavy leg swinging around behind hers, his arms maneuvering fast, and before she'd known it, she'd been on her ass.

Despite having never repeated the move since that night, it seemed to all come back to her in a rush.

She jerked hard, blindly, feeling pain shooting through her, but got her left leg free. She used her hips and butt to thrust back hard on Carter, putting him slightly off balance, before she swung her left leg in a giant step backward, positioning it right behind the back of his right thigh. Her arms were still trapped, but she thrust her hip hard again, throwing him even more off balance. As a result, he let go of one of her arms as it flailed in the air, trying to regain his balance, and she slammed her elbow back into the center of his face as hard as she could, feeling the flesh and bone give way with an incredibly satisfying crunch. She felt wetness on her elbow and realized it was from the blood that began to spurt from his nose.

He bellowed in pain, his hands going to his face as he stumbled back blindly, and Drew used the opportunity to ram her knee into his groin as hard as she could, making him choke out a moan and a gag before doubling over, his hands now moving into his crotch as he gasped for breath. She threw an uppercut into his face before using her other fist to slam down on the back of his neck, laying him out flat on his stomach. She kicked him hard in the ribs for good measure before turning fast on the ball of her foot toward where her cat was still lying. She scooped him up as gently as she could, cringing at the tiny mewls of pain he whimpered out, and cradled him as she hurried around the corner of the building, just as the front door flew open and Heath stepped out, his eyes searching from side to side. He immediately caught sight of her and ran down the sidewalk. He noticed the blood on her face and arm, and Rocky, and his eyes went wide.