Under His Wings(41)

Mortification choked her and Tamar ducked her head. But Nicolai wouldn’t allow her gesture of shame. He placed a bent knuckle under her chin and forced her head up. Amethyst fire burned in his eyes, searing her with its intensity. “You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he growled, the words almost unrecognizable over the loud rumble emerging from his throat and chest. “He is the one that doesn’t have any honor. To prey on the defenseless, especially women, makes him less than a man. And makes you a survivor. A warrior.” He bumped her chin higher. “Wings or not.” He crushed his mouth to hers in an abrupt, hard kiss that was over before she had time to register his lips had been there. “Now continue.”

She stared up at him, stunned. The kiss was their first sexual contact outside their dreams. With trembling fingers, Tamar brushed her fingertips over her mouth, still tingling with the bruising pressure of his lips.

Then his words penetrated her shock. A warrior? Her? A warm glow that had nothing to do with the blazing fire kindled and spread from her chest to each limb.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He nodded and removed his touch from her chin.

“After Kyle found me, he berated me, calling me a filthy invalid, worthless, stupid and pathetic. If I’d been whole, healthy, I like to think I wouldn’t have put up with his abuse, that I would’ve been too strong to ever accept his behavior. I tell myself that anyway. In hindsight, I wonder why I didn’t tell my doctor or therapist. Maybe they could have helped.” The question plagued her often. “But I was so ashamed, so humiliated and scared of Kyle. And what if they didn’t believe me? Kyle assured me time and again no one would. He had complete control of not just my home, my body and finances, but my mind too.” She shook her head. “The physical abuse was bad, but the verbal and emotional damage he inflicted… In a real sense they were tougher to suffer because, in my mind, there was some truth in his words. I think that’s why it took me so long to finally say no more.”

“What made you decide?”

Tamar relayed the story of how she had awakened to Kyle beating her. Another growl rolled out of Nico and his body trembled with fury. His rage on her behalf was another healing salve to the wounds of her past.

“The change in him was so insidious, I never saw it coming. Was this monster there all along and I just never noticed? I don’t know, never did figure it out, because I can honestly say there weren’t any signs that pointed toward the terrible rage he kept bottled up inside him. Once in the middle of a rant he told me he hadn’t signed on for marrying a cripple, that I had ruined his life. I think he felt betrayed and trapped and blamed me.”

“Then he could have walked away,” Nicolai said, murder in his voice. “He still would have been a dick, but not an abusive one.”

Tamar nodded. “I agree,” she said. “I’m not making excuses for him. But when things don’t make sense it’s human nature to try to find logic in the illogical. I guess it’s more bearable than believing I was almost stupid enough to marry a sadistic bastard who got off on power and making other people suffer.” She shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “It’s why I ran from you.” Her burst of laughter was brittle in her own ears. “Y’know, my so-called escape attempt. My choice was taken away and I panicked. I know what it’s like to be caged like an animal, dependent on my jailer. I want life on my terms, not someone else’s. For two years my every movement, thought and word was determined by someone else. And for those two years I craved my independence and the life I’d taken for granted. After a long, hard battle, I had it back, and then you showed up, telling me I had to chuck it all and depend on another person again. Trust”—she held her palms up, studied them as if she could find the elusive emotion there—“it’s…hard for me. Even knowing you want to protect me from an untimely, painful death…it’s hard.”

Nicolai turned his head away, muttering under his breath.

“What did you say?” she asked, narrowing her eyes on his harsh profile. When he remained silent, the reflexive tic in his jaw her only answer, Tamar pressed, “Because it sounded like, ‘that motherfucker better hope I don’t find him’.”

More silence.

“Nicolai?”

His head cranked back in her direction and his glare sucked the breath from her lungs. “I said,” he gritted through clenched teeth, “that motherfucker better hope I don’t find him because I intend to fucking gut him like a fucking fish.”