Twist My Heart

by Brooke Taylor

  “You don’t look good. I seriously think you shou—” He clamped his lips into a firm, disappointed line when I didn’t wait for his permission. His fingers unfurled and reached for my elbow, helping me to stand. “Okay…but go slow.”

  Careful not to grasp my rib cage, Nik brought his hands up under my arms and steadily lifted me. Strobing red and blue lights struggled to cut the dirt-dense air. I muttered an expletive and ducked my head, trying to stay shadowed. Nik heard. Hell, the emerging police officer probably heard.

  “We don’t need help,” I spit out, even as my traitorous knees buckled. Digging my fingers into Nik’s flesh, I fought to stay upright.

  He flexed, stiffening his arm to stabilize me. Then he motioned his free hand toward a crushed car. “There is a DOA under the white truck over there.”

  The officer dipped his head, giving it a solemn shake. He thanked Nik and disappeared at a run.

  I started to do the same when my vision swirled. The strength in my legs evaporated. Nik hooked an arm behind my knees and scooped me against his chest. “Told you it wasn’t a good idea to get up so quick,” he grumbled as he carried me to his car with Titan following behind.

  Chapter Four

  The sound of each and every piece of clothing I shakily worked to remove echoed over the sleek hotel bathroom tiles. The ringing in my ears had quelled, but now the stillness and silence became painfully deafening. My body greeted me dirty and stained with dried blood. My body… I didn’t even remember my own body. Unsteady, I looked down at the scrapes and cuts on my arms. I’d worked to remove the layers of dirt and blood, only to find bruises changing colors as quickly as the angry night sky I’d awoken to.

  My heart thumped hard and sure, despite my trembling fingers dropping the bloody washcloth. My breathing fell somewhere in between—focused but ragged. Under the bright lights of the hotel bathroom, I couldn’t help but notice I had pale pink toenails. Bad people didn’t paint their toes pink, did they?

  Over an hour had passed since the tornado. I didn’t remember being in it…just like my life. All of my memories, much like the western edge of Colby, Kansas, had been swept not-so-cleanly from the earth. Maybe the people and places dearest to me had been too.

  Had I told anyone I loved them? Was there even anyone to tell? I had no clue.

  All I knew was Titan was mine and I was his. The only other instinct burning inside of me beyond my present survival was the need to run—but from who? I had no factual basis for it, but I feared I’d been involved in something horrible and the tornado was the least of it. My mind kept circling back to being trapped in the field and the events of the past hour or so, desperate to figure out what had happened to land me there.

  What if Nik was the very person I feared? The person I was running from? Had it been stupid of me to send the policeman away? And why the hell hadn’t he said anything to the cop? He knew I wasn’t fine. Why hadn’t he forced me to seek the help he insisted I needed so badly? His chance had been right there and instead he’d hustled me into his Jeep.

  ‘Stay with me’—the first words he’d said when I’d opened my eyes replayed in my mind. He hadn’t meant it literally, but latching onto him mentally made it difficult to physically detach. He seemed a little confused and somewhat amused by it, but he’d agreed to let Titan and me tag along to a hotel to get cleaned up. He didn’t know what else to do with us and I hadn’t allowed any other options. Without any memories, the only thing I could count on was my gut, and my gut was telling me I desperately needed to stay with this man.

  He wasn’t from around here, only passing through on his way from California. He’d offered to get me my own room, but the jitters from the aftermath of the tornado and my lack of any memories before made me scared to be alone, even believing Titan would protect me. More than that, I couldn’t risk Nik bailing on me. If trusting him had been the wrong choice, it looked like I was going to have to find out the hard way.

  Keeping the bathroom door ajar, I was certain he could hear my undressing as well as I could hear his subtle movements from the other side of the thin wall. My brain buzzed with so much uncertainty and Nik’s presence around the corner steadied me. I was glad Titan stayed curled up but alert outside the threshold, because I sensed something else from Nik which wasn’t so calming. Something I couldn’t quite identify—anticipation? curiosity? impatience? Whatever it was, I oddly felt pulled toward it. He’d tell me it was the shock talking.

  Maybe all of my fear and paranoia was from the shock too. It was Nik’s answer for everything.

  I freed my hair from the ponytail holder. Dirty, bloody strips of blonde fell against my cheeks as the bulk of it stroked my shoulder blades. My hoodie and jeans had protected most of my skin from deeper wounds, but there were a few superficial lacerations in my hairline that had bled profusely. It looked worse than it was, Nik had assured when he’d cleaned and tended them at his car. He’d had a pretty extensive medical kit, but said he wasn’t a doctor. Whatever he was, he knew what he was doing.

  I held tightly to the towel bar, not trusting my shaky legs. Nik waited around the corner, listening to me step into the shower. Hearing me fumble as I adjusted the warmth of the water like he’d shown me how to do. I was certain he’d come running if he heard me crash. I breathed a little easier trusting in this.

  The wet cascade of heat down my naked skin took away everything before, revealing new surfaces—cleaner, softer ones. I hesitated to touch myself, my hand trembling and lurching as I tried to smooth soap over this body. Someone else should do it, but I knew enough to know I shouldn’t be asking Nik such things. While his touch felt safe, it also vibrated with an energy that left me a little more breathless than I already was.

  Moving my hands briskly and quickly, I tried not to think about the woman these body parts belonged to. I didn’t like thinking about her. I much preferred thinking of Nik and who he was. What his skin would feel like to touch. Those were much easier things to think about.

  The first moment my eyes had focused on him, I’d been drawn to stay with him just as he’d told me to. As I dried off, I wondered again if I knew him. Sometimes when he spoke, his word choices implied familiarity. Yet, his presence seemed such a sharp contrast to how we met, new and fresh, much like the soft, white cotton T-shirt he’d given me to put on after I showered. I eased it over my head and let it fall until it tickled against the middle of my sore thighs. The smell of it reminded me of when he’d drawn me tightly to him as he carried me to his car. Missing were the darkly intoxicating scents of his skin and his sweat. Still, the smell was pleasant enough for me to risk the pain of a deep breath to take it in.

  The corners of my lips pulled up, the first hint of a smile I could ever remember having.

  When I’d entered the bathroom, I’d encountered a dark shadow…a stranger. A threat. After my initial jumping recoil and Nik’s assurance it was my reflection, I’d avoided the mirror. I figured after being buried in a tornado, I’d look like hell anyway. With the layers of muck and pain rinsed away, I wondered what Nik would see when he looked at me.

  I braved a glance that turned into a horrified glare. Despite the loose fit of his T-shirt, my breasts stood out round. Nude skin showed through the white cotton where the water from my hair had dampened the shirt, darker in the center where erect nipples strained the fabric.

  Tugging and shaking the fabric, I tried to flag it dry as my cheeks heated. The warmth drew my eyes to the face in the mirror. The stranger wearily eyed me back, her swollen lips slashed by a small cut. I remembered Nik yanking up the hem of his black T-shirt to press it against it. The arm I had protectively curled around my rib cage had brushed along the soft line of hair low on his tight, flexing stomach and the rough edge of his denim jeans.

  I kept replaying the scene over and over again. My absolute only memories were of him. Had I never touched anyone else? Had no one else ever touched me? It couldn’t possibly be true, yet I couldn’t pull up any other memories.
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  “Who are you?” I muttered.

  My eyes connected with their reflection in the mirror. Were they the eyes of someone loved or hated? Smart? Or stupid?

  “Good? Or wicked?”

  God, I hoped I was a good person. I hoped the reason I so feared the policeman wasn’t because I’d done something horrible, but it very well could be the case. And what was Nik? Was he good or bad?

  He’d been as evasive with the cop as I had. “Why?”

  Possibilities flooded me—was he running from them? Had he done something bad? What if he was…was a…?

  I must be a stupid, stupid person! I glared at my reflection. “You’re alone, more than half-naked in a hotel room, with a stranger. He might be a rapist for all you know, or a serial killer.”

  Startled by a deep, rumbling laugh like thunder breaking through the heavy, silent air, I realized I must’ve been speaking out loud. I spun away from the girl in the mirror whose tan freckles were all but disappearing in a blaze of red. Oh she was most certainly a stupid idiot!

  At the sudden appearance of Nik in the doorway, I sucked in a breath and bit down on my lower lip. His tall, muscular frame lounged against the jamb as if he’d been there all along. Dark, spikey hair glistened, still wet from a mixture of sweat and rain. Mud clumped to his boots and torn jeans. His ripped, damp, black T-shirt clung to his broad, taut body, outlining the muscles of his chest and abdomen. The skin on his forearms and knuckles looked shredded. And despite having scrubbed his hands with cleanser before caring for my wounds at his car, his fingernails were still embedded with bloody dirt. More of the same smeared into the stubble on the hard edges of his jawline and high on his cheekbones—all reminders he’d come to my rescue and saved my ass barely an hour before.

  “You’re bleeding again,” he stated as he approached.

  “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to call you a serial…” I swallowed the word ‘killer’ along with my breath as Nik leaned in close.

  The pad of his thumb stroked my lip. I trained my eyes on his as if I could see his next move coming in their colorful green depths.

  He drew his brows tight as his forefinger joined his thumb in plucking my lower lip from my teeth. “It won’t heal if you keep biting it.”

  “I should’ve bitten my tongue.” Again, I’d meant to stay silent. I really needed to get my thoughts under control, at the very least my mouth. But control was the last thing I felt being so close to this rough-hewn man.

  Leaning in, Nik reached behind me for the last of the clean washcloths. His chest raked across mine, sending my pulse pounding in places too far from my chest to be my heart. Places I shouldn’t dare be thinking about on this foreign body.

  His smile curled in amusement. His rich green eyes sparked with gold before the dark centers expanded. My heartbeat slipped, slamming to a stop as another grin skipped across his lips, this one flashing the white of his teeth. His Adam’s apple thrust on a hard swallow and the spark dissipated along with his smile.

  As he pulled away, I was left with the punching beat of my heart. No doubt he saw its heavy protest pulsing through the T-shirt. Then I realized what else he could see, and had felt. My mouth went dry as my cheeks flamed hot again. I gripped the hem of the T-shirt, but forgot why when he dabbed the towel to my wounded lip.

  “I assure you, I’m not a rapist or a serial killer. If I’d wanted to kill you, I could’ve done it already and made it look like the tornado had.”

  The last bit he said with humor, but also with a little too much thought. Maybe he wanted to toy with me first. The realization remained a silent one, thankfully. No sense giving him any ideas.

  He must’ve read the fear on my face anyway and pulled the washcloth away. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the police?”

  His words should’ve comforted me—a serial killer wouldn’t offer to take their victim to the police, would he? Instead panic rose up my throat. I shoved my hand against the solid wall of his chest to push him away. “No!”

  An amused grin played across his mouth as he placed the washcloth into my palm. With a deliberate step back, he let me know the retreat was entirely by choice. He didn’t look mad as he leaned against the doorjamb again. He seemed more…disappointed. But why?

  Steam from my shower still warmed the air between us, but the rasp of his rough voice sent a chill up my spine. “Someone is looking for you.”

  “No one’s looking for me!” I took a breath and tried for something less guilty-sounding. “I mean, why would you assume anyone’s trying to find me?”

  As Nik crossed his muscled arms over his broad chest, I glimpsed tattoo ink peeking out from the edge of his shirtsleeve. His gaze captured mine for a tender, comforting moment then he pressed his lips together and swallowed. “Because someone is surely missing you.”

  I caught the wistful tone of his voice and the hard flex of his square jaw as he kept his eyes from daring to drop below my chin, but I growled in annoyance anyway.

  Titan sprang to his feet. Instinctively, I held my hand up to let him know I was fine. His sloping hips dropped to sit, but his round, brown eyes and large, perked ears stayed trained on me.

  “I know it must sound crazy.” As I lowered my voice, Titan edged himself back down. “I know all of this is crazy. I’m sorry I don’t have the memories to explain why I feel this way. But I can’t go to the police or a hospital. I won’t.”

  “Look, we can give the shock more time to wear off.”

  “It’s not shock, and I don’t need more time.”

  “You hit your head. You were knocked out. You can’t remember your name…anything about yourself. You need to see a doctor.”

  “I won’t.”

  It was probably the fifth or sixth time we’d been through this. A couple of times among the twisted trees and tornado debris. A few more in the back of his Jeep when he’d treated my cuts…again in the hotel parking lot…and now here.

  Nik wasn’t about to let this go. And he had zero intentions of letting me stay. He wasn’t going to help me past making sure I survived. His good deed done. His civic duty completed. Now came the time to dump me at the Emergency Room doors and wipe his hands clean of me, the sooner the better.

  “We should find your family.”

  I drew in a breath so sharp the pain had me nearly doubling over. I had no one. Nowhere to go. Inexplicable fear balled up inside of me. My throat constricted against the words, but they escaped in a desperate, panicked rush. “What family? They’d be strangers to me. Don’t you understand? There is no family. If you want me to leave, I will. But I’m not going to the police and I’m not going to a hospital.”

  He tilted his head. His critical eyes sized me up as they scanned the full length of my body. “Well, girlie, good luck getting very far dressed like that.”

  My whole body rang as if filled with a stinging sensation. I wheeled to grab up my torn and bloody clothes. I couldn’t go back to the tornado site. But it was clear I couldn’t stay here.

  Nik clamped his hand round my wrist and spun me to face him. His full body pressed mine against the bathroom vanity in one heart-stopping motion. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Chapter Five

  Nik caged my body between his strong arms. His every muscle flexed rigid as he trapped me against the bathroom vanity as certainly as I had been by the tornado.

  Like hell I’d let Nik’s physical force intimidate me. Instead, the power radiating off him in heavy waves fed my own surging energy. His blazing eyes countered the anger I radiated from my own. Neither one of us broke from the stare, even as Titan leaped up in a barking fit.

  I snapped out, “Down!” This wasn’t my dog’s battle. It was mine.

  The order hadn’t been intended for Nik, but his muscles relaxed almost imperceptibly.

  Titan’s compliance came slowly and with a huff.

  Nik didn’t have to say the words or physically back away to signal the surrender his body was giving me, but tempered
to almost a whisper, he repeated tightly, “You’re not going anywhere…you don’t want to go.”

  Under his heavy breath, his words became as penetrating as his eyes. “You don’t want to go, do you?”

  It wasn’t really a question. More an observation. His stare dug into mine—seeking, searching, ransacking my brain for proof. Or maybe it was a plea. Either way, he wanted me to stay.

  I released my breath in a rush, my buzzing fury melting in a flash of heat. The hard energy roiling off him dropped so swiftly I had to grab hold of his shirt to keep my balance. He wedged his thigh thickly between mine, bracing me as his body shifted, blending into mine.

  I identified the earlier, not-so-calming feeling drawing me toward Nik had been this, now a thousand times stronger and more urgent. Anticipation—yes, curiosity—yes, impatience—God, yes. All of it rolled up into a desperate need to get even closer to him, to wrap myself around him and hold on for dear life.

  ’Just the shock talking…’

  The flames in his eyes lowered to a heated sway. He rolled his lower lip into his mouth and returned glistening. For a split second I envisioned him leaning down, his mouth crushing over mine, our tongues tangling hard. When he didn’t, I went up on my toes, the entire front of my body rubbing up his in my eagerness.

  It was his turn to growl, his lips curling over his teeth. A wildness sprang to his eyes, but he dropped his brows low, hooding it. The rise and fall of his chest rasped into mine with each pulled breath. My lips hovered in front of his, our burning gazes meeting.

  Without warning, he pressed his mouth into a hard line and ducked his head over my shoulder. His unshaven cheek scraped hot and rough against my smooth one. The bulging flex of his jawline countered my own.

  He drove his fists into the vanity countertop, his knuckles taking the weight of his formidable body as it angled over mine, covering me completely. Every inch of him hardened. At some point my hands had found his hips, my fingers clawing to grip his jeans. A futile attempt at getting his lower body flush with mine. He didn’t budge. His body and resolve were more solid than anything else in this room. We stayed locked in place—cheek to cheek, each charged breath raking his chest against mine—as if afraid moving apart might break us both.