Under His Wings(28)

A shiver danced down her spine.

And not from fear. Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl. The man had just hawked her down, transformed from a beast to a man in front of her eyes and did she tremble with well-earned horror? Nope. That tingly curl tightening the small of her back was lust. Unbridled oh-look-at-all-those-muscles lust.

She twisted the doorknob and the front door swung open as she’d neglected to lock the house during her escape attempt. A dark, ominous growl caused goose bumps to prickle her skin.

Oh God. That couldn’t be good.

“I took you for an intelligent woman,” he said as soon as they entered the living room. She wheeled around at the quiet thunder in his voice, unwilling to have this powerful creature at her back. She shuffled backward. He stalked forward.

They swapped step for step in a ludicrous tango until her calves hit the edge of the couch. Leaving her with no place to go.

Her heart plummeted toward her stomach before it rocketed back up in her throat. It lodged there, cutting off her air. Blood pounded in her eardrums and perspiration prickled her skin.

Don’t black out. Don’t you dare black out and leave yourself wide-open and undefended.

“Obviously I was wrong,” he continued, oblivious to the anxiety attack that dragged at her consciousness. Nicolai closed in on her, his chest almost bumping hers. Down at his sides, his large fists flexed as if he were restraining himself from snatching her up and shaking the living daylights out of her. Black and gold dots danced at the edges of her vision. “What the fuck were you thinking? Do you have any fucking idea what could have happened to you?” he roared.

She recoiled from the blast, one arm rising to cover her face and the other over her chest. As she fell back on the couch, her knee came up, history teaching her to block any possible blows to her kidneys and stomach.

Whenever Kyle had become this enraged, violence followed.

He’d started with the belittling—she was worthless, a burden, a cripple. Then it was the isolation. Outside of her doctors and therapist, he wouldn’t allow any of her friends into the house to visit, claiming Tamar wasn’t in her right mind after the crash. Next he confiscated her checkbook and her accounts, making her totally dependent on him for every bite of food, every purchase of medication. And finally, the physical abuse.

First it was a shove off her walker. And when she tumbled to the floor, Kyle had refused to help her up, leaving her there, helpless and humiliated for hours. He graduated to pinches on her thighs or slaps across her back or chest when she asked for assistance with cooking or cleaning the house. Then he escalated to raining blows, beating the shit out of her for no reason at all.

Once she woke to a fist to the back of her head followed by a punch to her injured shoulder. She’d rolled over and had ended up on the floor, her left leg crumpled beneath her. While she’d slept, Kyle had moved her cane from beside the bed where she’d left it the night before. So Tamar had lain there, defenseless and vulnerable. And Kyle had continued the attack while she held up her good arm in the only semblance of protection she could manage.

That had been the last time he’d touched her.

Afterward, when she’d crawled over the bedroom floor, dragging her injured arm and leg, and hefted her body into a chair, she’d vowed it would never happen again.

Maybe Kyle had taken a look at her battered and scratched body or her swollen and bloody face and realized he’d lost it, had crossed a line. Or maybe he’d realized unlike the previous assaults, these bruises couldn’t be hidden. Nevertheless, when she’d threatened to call the police and have him arrested for domestic violence, he’d agreed to leave and never return. He’d kept his promise.

Kyle hadn’t come back and she had sworn her sentence as a punching bag for that bitter, resentful and angry piece-of-shit had ended. She would never be a victim again. Ever.

And yet here she sat, cowering on the couch, praying Nicolai would back off, that he wouldn’t hurt her. The rational part of her mind noted the shock then appall that slackened his features. Underneath his anger, she detected concern. Concern for her safety, concern for her.

But old habits died hard. The instinctive need to protect herself from harm overrode logic.

Nicolai shifted a step away from her, granting Tamar more room and space. “Who hurt you?” he asked, the whisper soft, deadly.

She shook her head, but abruptly cut off the gesture when Nicolai closed his eyes and uttered a blistering curse under his breath. When he lifted his lashes again, purple fire lit his gaze.

“Don’t tell me no one,” he snapped. “Who was it? The person you lied to the police about?”