My Tye

by Kristin Daniels

  The two men glanced at each other before coming back to Tye. Their questioning expressions left her feeling more than a little uncomfortable.

  “I’m getting her the hell out of here,” he explained. “You’ll understand once you see what’s inside.”

  Laine didn’t like the sound of that, not at all. The chill she couldn’t shake was now joined by a fresh bout of queasiness. “Tye?”

  He didn’t answer her, and she had a feeling she knew why. Men like Tye Carter didn’t like to be kept in the dark.

  “Please, Tye. What did you see in there?”

  Tye continued to ignore her as he slammed the truck door closed, started the truck and began backing out. When he finally spoke, his tone of voice had her trembling for an entirely different reason.

  “There’s more to your story, Laine. If I’m going to help, I need to know it all.”

  He looked toward her then, like he was waiting for her to blurt everything out.

  “I know.” Not that knowing she had to went very far in her wanting to.

  She sat so close to him that the heat radiating off his body seeped into her skin. But his warmth wasn’t enough. She was still shaking, and her head and eye joined in the fray by pounding in time with every beat of her heart.

  She was exhausted. Exhausted and terrified and in a hell of a lot of pain. A horrible combination if there ever was one.

  “When we get to the ranch,” was all he said. He let out an irritated sigh and turned his attention back to the road.

  Perfect. She had twenty minutes max to figure out how to tell him what happened. And where.

  On the seat next to her, she found one of Tye’s sweatshirts. She pulled it up and covered her arms, twisting the fabric in her hands underneath and lifting it to her face. She inhaled deeply and was met by a scent she intrinsically knew to be his. Sure, she’d caught drifts of his cologne before, in passing, but this came across as more. This was sweat mixed with his Armani mixed with something she couldn’t quite put a name to. It was a heady aroma that shouted pure man, and she loved it breathing it in.

  She let her eyes drift closed to try to ease her aches, but her subconscious had other ideas. More images from last night bombarded her thoughts, one grisly scene after the other. Dressed all in black, her attacker wore a ski cap and had a scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth to conceal his identity. He was big, strong, and carried an odor about him, too. Unlike Tye’s strong and manly scent, this one had attacked her nose with an acrid, repugnant stench. The first time he backhanded her, she got a clear and strong whiff of it.

  The punches landed hard, and with each and every one she tried to fight back—to kick, hit, claw at anything and everything she possibly could. Nothing worked. Her wrists and elbows were bound. Her ankles too. And with every move, the rope around her neck, the one holding her upright against the van wall, tightened like the choke collar restraining some out-of-control pit bull.

  When shouting around the gag didn’t work, she took to screaming, which only incited the creep further. She screamed until she thought her throat would bleed, praying for someone to hear, for someone to find her.

  But they didn’t. He kept coming at her and coming at her…

  A hand grabbed her knee. Her entire body flinched. Despite the daggers in her throat, she screamed again, covering her face with her arms and drawing her knees up against her chest. She kicked out, fighting tooth and nail. No way would she let him get the better of her. No way, no how.

  “Whoa, whoa! Hold up there. Laine…”

  No. No, he wasn’t going to win this time.

  “Laine! Jesus, not again.” Another hand held on to her arm. “It’s me. It’s Tye.”

  As the words hit her ears, she opened her eyes to look at him, to make sure it was really him and not… Still, it took a second for what he was saying to sink in.

  “Come on back. You’re okay. We’re here. We’re at the ranch.”

  Shaky and breathing hard, she sat up further and looked out the windshield. “I… God, I must’ve dozed off.”

  He shifted toward her, squeezing her knee gently and settling his arm across the back of the seat as he did. “You drifted off right after we left your house. I figured a little sleep would be good for you.”

  “Yeah, well,” she said, leaning back against the seat and sucking in a deep breath. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Nightmares.”

  “Yeah.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Nightmares are the last thing I need right now.”

  “Talking about it helps.”

  She opened her eyes and glanced over at him.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

  She was glad he didn’t push, but she really didn’t know how much longer he’d be patient with her. Even though he had the temperament of a saint, she recognized the controlled dominance he kept hidden just beneath the surface. But now, with him constantly helping her the way he was, all she felt capable of being to him was an invalid. And the fact that didn’t really bother her spoke to how much pain she was in and to how scared she really was. Whatever he saw inside her house, whatever that lunatic had done in there…

  Her stomach heaved as they reached the first step of the wraparound porch. “Oh God,” she said, clutching her abdomen and bending forward slightly. She breathed slowly and steadily through her nose, calming herself enough to hold back her inevitable wretch. “I need to sit, or lie down. Something.”

  “I’ve got you.”

  He lifted her in his arms, effortlessly almost, and carried her over to a grouping of white wicker porch furniture. As he placed her in the closest chair, she smiled a little, despite the grave situation and the shitty way she felt. “I never took you for a wicker kind of guy.”

  He stood back and folded his arms, which gave her a good glimpse of his rock-hard biceps. “I’m just one big surprise after another.”

  She didn’t doubt it. She also didn’t trust herself to comment any further. Instead, she gazed out beyond the porch, to the dusty driveway, the small horse stable and paddock, and the good-sized pond right behind it. Past that was a pasture full of bluegrass, which gave way to a long line of evergreens at the edge of the property. The entire setting felt serene, classic, and it fit Tye to a tee.

  “It’s so quiet out here,” she finally said.

  He rested his hip against the porch railing. “For the most part. I guess that’s why I like living out here so much,” he said, following her gaze.

  She just nodded and leaned back in her chair. The two of them stayed that way, gazing out at the landscape, avoiding pretty much everything that had transpired in the last few hours. They remained quiet, still, for a long while. Too still, for too long. It was too…weird. After a few deep breaths she decided—more like prayed—that now was as good a time as any to let it all out. She splayed her hands out over her thighs, turning the light blue of the scrubs to a darker shade as the fabric soaked up the sweat gathering over her palms.

  “He…” She cleared her throat, drew in another deep breath and started over. “I already told you that he grabbed me from behind. That I never even saw him coming.”

  With that, Tye uncrossed his arms and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. He didn’t utter a single word. He just stood there, quietly waiting for her to go on.

  Actually saying the words out loud made her reconsider the decision that now was the best time to tell him what she remembered. She was afraid to look at him, afraid of what she might see reflected back. But the flip side of her brain—the rational side that knew best—took over for her. She had to tell him, she had to get it all out in the open. Maybe, she thought, her need to do that was because she sucked at playing waiting games. The anxiety from doing so was oftentimes worse than going ahead and laying whatever it was you didn’t want to deal with out on the table in the first place. Like throwing your troubles out into the universe in one big chunk, hoping they might shatter somewhere up in the atmosphere and rai
n down on you in a spectacular display of easier to deal with pieces.

  “He covered my mouth and nose,” she went on softly, “and then dragged me down the street to his van.”

  “Do you remember anything else about the van? Did it have any windows? Either on the sides or in the back?”

  She didn’t hesitate with her answer. There hadn’t been any windows, or light, or even a remote chance that someone might see or hear her. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It was a panel van. Like a carpenter or handyman might drive.” She remembered thinking she was going to die there. “It was like a dungeon on wheels,” she whispered.

  He didn’t take anything out to write down what she was saying. Instead, he remained motionless, listening to her every word with a cool yet compassionate intensity. She felt his concentration, felt his focus, through every inch of her body.

  “Go on,” he encouraged.

  “Don’t you want to know where I was?” she said instead. That he didn’t ask, that he wasn’t wondering where she’d been—well, it was odd.

  “We’ll get to that. For now, I’d rather know what happened next.”

  She didn’t take too much time to analyze his response, which was probably for the best. After another bolstering breath, she looked out to the pasture and continued on. “He… He smashed me against the door and told me that if I made a sound, if I tried to scream, that it would only make what he had to do to me that much worse.”

  “He was still behind you?”

  She nodded. “He was tall, at least half a foot taller than me, so he spoke more over the top of my head than in my ear. But his smell…” She stopped, swallowed. Shivered. “His smell was everywhere. God, I’ll never forget it.”

  Tye shifted his rear on the railing, and when she took a chance and glanced at his face, she almost wished she hadn’t. The control he was so famous for had vanished. In its place was a ferocity, a barely restrained loathing that unexpectedly mirrored hers. She’d never seen him like this, so riled, so…disturbed. It was like he was inside her head, experiencing for himself everything she hadn’t dared let out just yet. He held his jaw tight, so fricking tight, and flexed his forearms over and over, as if he were clenching and unclenching his hands inside his pockets.

  “He opened the slider with me still pinned against it,” she continued, “then shoved me in. My cheek…” she said, laying her fingertips over the skin there. “My cheek burned so bad where the metal had stretched and pulled my skin. I figured for a second that he was just going to leave me back there, but then he…” She looked away. “He followed in after me.”

  “Jesus,” he muttered.

  “Yeah,” was all she could say. “That was when he hit me the first time.”

  He let out a weird combination of a growl mixed with a cough, and when she looked back at him, he’d closed his eyes.

  “I’m pretty sure he knocked me out not long after that. The next thing I remember was him in the driver’s seat and me being tossed around in the back.”

  “For how long?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. Not very long after I woke up. I remember there were streetlights shining through the windshield, one after the other passing by, then darkness for a while after that. When I tried to lift up enough to see where we were going, he spotted me in the rearview mirror and pulled over.”

  “Did you get a look at him then?”

  “Not really. He still had his face covered with a scarf and he wore one of those ski caps on his head.” She damned her voice for trembling then. “Only his eyes were showing.” His eyes… Something about his eyes pricked at the back of her befuddled mind, something she couldn’t quiet grab onto. “Wait. He had a scar. It ran right across his eye. But it was so dark. I couldn’t see anything else, I couldn’t do anything else…”

  She stopped at that point, choking back a sob and wrapping her arms around herself. Even though the temperature had to be close to eighty, she was so cold. Shaky and freaked and frozen to the bone. So frozen she thought she may never thaw out.

  “It’s okay.” He spoke with a hesitant restraint, but he still didn’t move. “Keep going.”

  She sniffled and collected herself as best she could. Digging her fingernails into her arms, she clenched her jaw to keep from crying. After what seemed like an eternity, she said, “The rest happened so fast.” Keeping her arms folded, she looked down at her wrists. “You can see what he did to me while I was knocked out.”

  Tye thought for a moment that he might stroke out. And she hadn’t even got to the really bad parts yet. He already knew he was going to kill the man who did this to her, the only thing he had to decide now was how to do it. And the only question he really needed the answer to was the one he knew he didn’t want to ask. Dr. Seaver told him there hadn’t been any evidence of sexual assault, but what if her attacker tried, what if he touched her, what if he…

  Fuck.

  “He tied you up. I can tell by the marks on your wrists and ankles. And I’m guessing, by the marks on your neck, that he had you restrained that way, too.”

  When her chin quivered and tears welled in her eyes for a second time in as many minutes, he knew he’d held himself back long enough. He went to her, crouching in front of where she sat. With a light touch, he stroked up her calves. Her skin was warm through the scrubs, warm yet taut. She held every muscle in her body so rigid, just as he was holding himself.

  He closed his eyes, but only for a second, in order to steel his control for what he had to ask her. “Did he touch you? Sexually, I mean.” He dropped his knees to the deck. “Dr. Seaver said there was no evidence, but—”

  “No!” she croaked out. “God no. He didn’t. He tied me up, hit me, over and over, telling me again and again what a stupid whore I was, what an abomination women like me were. But he didn’t… No, no, he didn’t.”

  “Thank God,” Tye said, sitting back on his heels and laying his forehead against her knees. Her adamancy, combined with a deep breath, went a long way in helping him relax just a fraction. Not enough to kill the urge he had to tear this fucker limb from limb, but enough for him to know he could handle the type of violence she endured way easier than if she’d been raped. In fact, he knew he wouldn’t have been able to handle it at all if she had been.

  When she ran her hands over the back of his head and down to his neck, his body tensed again for an entirely different reason. He blew out his held breath before lifting his head to meet her gaze.

  “He hurt me,” she said. “He’s got me scared to the bone, Tye. But he didn’t touch me. Not like that.”

  “Tell me where you were.”

  She brought her hands around to cup his face. “You act like you already know.”

  He had a pretty good idea. He just needed her to confirm it. Raising off his heels, he straightened and met her eye to eye. When she opened her knees the tiniest bit, he slid right in between them. “I need to hear you say it.”

  She shook her head ever so slightly. “I don’t want to. I’m afraid…”

  Ah God. Hearing that nearly killed him. “Don’t be. Not of me. Don’t ever be afraid of me.”

  “It’s not you, it’s…”

  She didn’t say any more, and he didn’t push her. She’d tell him that particular detail eventually, one way or the other. It was important, and he needed to know, but for now he’d have to make do with finding out the rest.

  “What did you do after he stopped and came at you again?”

  She slid her hands down his chest and carefully leaned back in the chair. “The only thing I could do. He had that rope around my neck, and I was sitting up against the wall, tied to a hook inside the van so I wouldn’t get away. I’d turned away from him and covered my head as best I could with my wrists tied together, expecting the worst. That’s when my foot hit something.”

  “What was it?”

  “I wasn’t sure at first. I managed to get it under my foot and bring it closer. I didn’t know it was a scre
wdriver until I wrapped my hands around it.”

  Chapter Six

  Son of a bitch.

  “A screwdriver?”

  She nodded. “One of those long-shafted ones. I got the butt of it in my hands and was able to turn on him just as he reached me.”

  “You stabbed him with it.” It wasn’t a question. Didn’t need to be one, since the scene he found back at her house had already clued him in.

  She closed her eyes, squeezing them a little. “He was coming at me and I just… I don’t know how I did it.”

  He knew. Adrenaline. Instinct. And a shit-ton of bravery. “You did what you had to do. You did what anyone would do to survive.”

  When she opened her eyes, a tear escaped. “I got him in the shoulder. He fell backward, against the rear doors, swearing and spitting and calling me every name in the book. It was like I was moving under some kind of fast-forward remote control then. I managed to get up on my knees. I remember my hands were shaking like crazy. But I did it. I untied the knot holding me to the wall. He kept lunging at me, but I started kicking at him—mostly trying to hit his head and that screwdriver—while biting on the ropes at my wrists.” She sucked in a deep breath. “It took forever, and he kept coming at me, punching me, but I eventually got loose. The rope around my ankles… That one was harder, tighter, but by then I’d kicked him enough and jammed that screwdriver in even deeper. At that point, he was clutching his arm against his chest and I was able to get one more good kick in at his head before I worked the rope free.” He wasn’t sure what rode him harder—the aching need to draw her into his arms and never let her go, or the blood-rage running through him to kill the man who did this to her. Each reaction warred within him, fighting for that top spot, the one that would make him react.

  But she was here, sitting in front of him. Warm and alive, yet despite the strength he saw in her, also terrified to her bones. Taking her hands into his, he held on and prompted her again.

  “That’s when you got away?”