“Who doesn’t?”
“Nice,” he drawled. He had quite the southern accent going. Every time he talked, I felt a little giddy and I hung on every word he said. I was waiting for him to drop his first “y’all.”
“All right,” he said, gesturing to my shirt. “Lift it up. Let’s see it.”
“You suck at foreplay.”
He caught my wrist in his oversized palm and towed me a little closer. His face came close to mine, so close that I was able to see that he had blue eyes and a scar across one of his cheeks. “That, sweetheart, was not foreplay. When we get to that, you’ll damn well know it.”
Well, alrighty then.
Shamelessly, I wondered when we might get to the foreplay.
He released my wrist and tugged at the hem of my shirt and jacket. He wasn’t going to relent, that much was clear. I sighed and slapped away his hand. Then I opened up the jacket. Before I could get the zipper down, he was sliding up my jacket and shirt, bunching it up beneath my breasts, and then the tiny light clicked back on.
When the beam met with my torso, breath hissed out between his teeth. “What the fuck did he do to you?”
I glanced down long enough to see purple and black splotches all over my creamy skin. The area was puffy and grotesque looking, and I turned away. I didn’t want to see it. Feeling it was bad enough.
“He kicked me.”
A low growl ripped from his throat.
I glanced at him, expecting to see rage taking over his face, but instead he wore a frown. Ever so lightly, he brushed the tips of his fingers over the area and I winced. Even his soft caress hurt.
And then he did something I didn’t see coming.
The flashlight fell from his fingertips and rolled into the crack of the seat, plunging the backseat back into darkness. Nathan’s newly free hand wrapped around my lower back, his palm spanning my waist as he ducked his head and pressed his lips to the injured area.
He trailed barely there kisses across the extremely tender flesh.
Who the hell needed a Band-Aid when he was around?
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, looking up. “I’m not the one who did this and I can’t take away the pain, but if I could…”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but the unspoken dangled there between us and made me forget every ache that coursed through my body.
In that moment, I fell just a little bit in love with him.
16
Nathan
Her injuries pissed me off.
And what pissed me off more was the fact that she didn’t whine or complain about them. No, I didn’t want to hear some whiny female sniveling all over the place, but fuck. She earned it. I can’t even imagine the crap she’d been through in the last fifteen hours.
She was going to end up like me.
Messed up.
She deserved better than that.
I didn’t know her, but I knew enough to realize that kind of life wasn’t what I wanted for her. Hell, I wouldn’t wish this shit on my worst enemy.
Okay. Maybe I would.
But not her.
Never Honor.
God. Just her name in my thoughts was enough to stir up things in me that had laid dormant to the point I thought they went extinct. It was a freaking dandy time for them to show up out of the blue.
Especially in this situation.
Especially given what I had to do.
I fished the flashlight out of the crack between the seat and straightened. “We need to go.”
“Go?” she said. Her eyes widened and looked like two large white marbles.
“We can’t stay here. We’re sitting ducks.”
“It’s raining.”
Yeah, it was. “Exactly.”
“You need to explain,” Honor said, pushing herself up a little higher in the seat. She tried to hide the grimace of pain that crossed her face. I saw it. It pissed me off further.
“Lex slashed my tires. He wants us stranded. He wants us vulnerable. He’s out there. He’s going to be looking for us. He doesn’t want us to get out of these woods alive.”
“He’s going to kill us?” The veiled fear in her words caused my gut to tighten.
“We’re not safe yet. You might be out of that hole, but he still wants us dead. Now more than ever. If we get out of here, there’s going to be a manhunt for that bastard, and I’ll lead the team.”
“I already called the cops.”
“That’s good. I’ll call them too, have them send someone out here.” I probably should have called them when I got here, but I hadn’t wanted to call if she wasn’t here. I wanted to find her first. Of course, once I found her, I was too busy to call anyone.
“We know who he is. What he’s done.” Honor seemed to be reasoning it out for herself so I didn’t bother to reply. I watched as she reached under my jacket and pulled out the necklace I saw in the photo. “He’s done this before,” she said, her voice wavering. “We have to stop him.”