Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 103537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
The hold on my wrists released and I punched as hard as I could, hitting something solid but unmoving. “Get off me. Get off.”
It was Gerard on top of me and I was suffocating. His zipper, his hands between my legs and then the pain. Oh, God, the tearing pain as he entered me. The tearing pain of giving birth.
“Open your eyes. Damn it! Open your eyes.”
Hands cupped my head and his breath swept across my face. I sucked in gulps of air.
“It’s me, Haven. Please, I need you to look at me.”
My fists stopped punching as Crisis’ voice slipped between the cracks of my breaking mind and found me.
“That’s it. Deep breaths. Now open your eyes.”
I was afraid. I was terrified that it wasn’t Crisis’ voice I heard and one of the men from the club was on top of me. I couldn’t go through that again. I squeezed my eyes closed tighter and screamed, the sound matching the ones so long ago when they carried my dead child away. “No. No.”
“You’re safe, Haven.”
No, I wasn’t. I’d never be safe again.
“WHAT THE FUCK do I do?” I asked Kite.
She wouldn’t stop fighting me and refused to open her eyes. Her body trembled violently underneath me while her head rocked back and forth on the pillow as she repeated, ‘No,’ over and over again.
Kite stood beside the bed. “Maybe if you let her go, she’ll calm down.”
“Yeah. Fuck, yeah, okay.” I had no clue what set her off or what the hell was happening. But it was scaring the crap out of me. I’d never seen anyone break like this and I knew it had to do with whatever horror she’d lived through, but this was more than Kite and I knew how to handle.
I slowly released her arms and lifted off the bed. I took a deep breath as she lay completely still and silent for a second.
Her eyes flashed open and she scrambled off the bed on the opposite side of Kite and me. She fell to her knees, but was up and running for the door faster than I could jump across the bed, and my hand just missed her arm.
Kite went to intercept her at the door and caught her around the waist. He lifted her off her feet as she kicked and yelled, tears streaming down her cheeks. Fuck, I’d never seen her cry. Even when she broke before, she hadn’t cried.
“We need to call someone. She needs a sedative or something,” Kite said.
Haven went wild. Her fists pounded his arm which was locked around her waist as she screamed. Kite didn’t even seem fazed as he calmly carried her back to the bed.
From the glassy look in her grey eyes, she wasn’t really seeing what was right in front of her. It was like she wasn’t here; she was somewhere else, locked in a nightmare.
Kite gently laid her down, but the second his hands let her go, she tried to get up and go for the door again. This time I was ready and pulled her body up against mine as we went down on the bed together.
“Call Ream.” I pulled us up to the headboard and leaned against it, Haven secured in my arms. My hand soothingly stroked her hair and I had no idea how I could do anything calmly when inside I was freaking out. But she needed me calm, despite the blood rushing through my veins like a river with a broken dam; I had to give that to her.
Her chest rose and fell in deep breaths, but she stopped screaming and mumbling, ‘No,’ over and over again. “Kite—call Ream.”
Kite took out his cell. “It’ll take him a half-hour to get here.”
Her chest was up against my side and she clawed at my shirt, the material ripping under her distress. I kissed the top of her head. “Shh, baby. You’re going to be okay.”
My heart thudded violently and I felt as if I was shaking just as hard as she was. Fuck, she was cold, but I was afraid to move her under the blankets and have her freak out again.
“Maybe we should call an ambulance?” Kite suggested. “Shit, we might have the cops here if anyone in the building heard her screaming before you got her in here.”
He was right. And then this would look really bad, me holding down a chick in a sound-proof room with . . . I looked at the rope on the bed posts . . . yeah, it wouldn’t look good.
“Please, bring him back.” She clawed at my neck, her fingernails digging deep enough to have blood rise to the surface of my skin.
“Ream,” Kite said into his phone. “Yeah, man, you need to get here. Now.”
I tried to keep her quiet by using my chest to muffle her moans, not wanting Ream to completely freak out hearing his sister.
“She’s in a bad way. I think a hospital . . . yeah, okay. We won’t. You have any sedatives or anything? . . . Okay.” Kite hung up and looked at me. “He’s coming, but no hospital. She’ll freak.”
Fuck, right. It was the last place Ream had seen her when she was taken away by the fuckers who’d had her prisoner since she was sixteen.
The frantic beat of her heart slowed and her grip on me weakened. I kept rhythmically stroking her hair and rocking back and forth with her curled up against me. She was calming, but I was sure it was more from exhaustion than anything.
“I’m sorry. So sorry.” Her voice crackled.
My chest hurt and it wasn’t from the torn skin, it was seeing her like this. Haven, the strong fierce chick who met me head-on. “It’s bad,” I said more to myself than to Kite.
“Yeah.” The floor creaked as Kite walked to the door. “I need to make sure lobby security isn’t buzzing or anything.”
The door clicked closed behind him and it was then I let the tear that was teetering on the edge, slip from its confines. “Ah, fuck, baby. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make it better.”