He’d just kill the male first.
Tori waited until the strip of yellow light under her door went out and she knew that her father had gone to bed. She reached under the mattress, found her e-reader. The green glow wavering through cracks in the blinds was spooky. Wind ticked a branch against the tin roof, and cones bombed down from the trees.
She turned on the e-reader. Snuggled deeper into her duvet, her mother’s words coming to life.
The sound of the returning geese reached her. On hands and bare knees she scrabbled over the floor to the crack in the chinking. She strained against the rope to glimpse a slice of sky. Then she saw him. In the clearing on old snow, his legs planted wide and strong.
All around him the forest dripped, cracked, popped. Sounds of thaw. His breath showed in white puffs. He glanced toward her shed.
She scuttled back into her corner, careful not to clink the shackles or to rub the rope further into her neck. Curling into a ball on the skins, she wrapped around her baby like a protective carapace, pretending she was asleep,
The door creaked open. She felt the light cut in.
“It’s time,” he said.
Her pulse kicked. She turned her head slowly and blinked into the shaft of white light that sliced into her hut.
“Get up.”
“Time for what?” Her voice, thick with disuse, came out like a croak. The sound scared her. Who was she, really? What had she become?
He didn’t answer.
He crouched down in the center of the floor, watching her. His scent filled her nostrils. Her mind began to close in on itself, drifting out and above the cabin. But he didn’t undress. He placed a pair of boots in the middle of the shack. She blinked. Her boots. The boots she’d been wearing the afternoon he took her.
He came closer, in a crouch. Like an animal. She held her breath as he moved the burlap off her bare legs. He touched her foot. She braced. Jaw clenched. But he unlocked the shackles. The chain clinked on the hard floor. He came even closer, his breathing heavy as he brought out a knife. Her heart raced. Sweat beaded. The blade glinted in a sliver of light that sliced through a hole in the rafters. This was it. This was what he meant by “It’s time.” She coiled her body tight, ready to kick, ready to fight for her life, for her baby’s life. He raised the knife . . . and sawed through the rope that bound her to the wall. The cut end of her noose dropped to the ground. She stared. Started to shake.
He left. The shed door banged shut.
Silence. Just noise from outside. Dripping. The burble of a small creek somewhere that had grown louder with the thaw.
She waited for the familiar grating sound of the bolt being slid home on the outside of the door.
It didn’t come.
Tension, confusion whispered through her.
He hadn’t locked it?
Something had changed.
It’s time.
She waited. No idea how long. Until she could no longer hear him outside. Would he return? Should she run? Where to? Was he waiting outside for her to try? She got onto her knees, crawled over to her boots, touched them, bracing for his entry.
He didn’t come.
Panting, she struggled with stiff fingers to get her swollen, cracked feet into the cold leather boots. She fumbled, shaking, sweating to tie the laces.
Carefully, she tried to stand. Pain seared. She braced her hand against the shed wall, wobbly as hell. She peered through the slats. Trees. Endless trees. Up high, glimpses of blue sky.
Freedom?
A kind of mad ferocity seeped into her terror.
Raw adrenaline pounding in her blood, she hobbled quickly over to her corner, gathered up a burlap sack, wrapped it around her naked, swollen waist, securing it with parts of the rope she found on the ground. She was thinking of Ethan. Home. Getting home. The child inside her. Hope. She began to shake. Tears streamed down her face.
Hope could be a thing of extraordinary power. It fueled her then.
She draped a bearskin around her bare shoulders and stood there for a long while. Unsure.
Then, carefully, she edged open the door and blinked like a mole into daylight.
A rifle was propped against the shed wall, just by the door. Within her reach.
Where was he?
What did he want?
What game was this?
Cole kissed her deeply as he shucked himself out of his jacket, letting it fall to the floor as he unzipped hers.
Dizzying kaleidoscopic swirls of red and black obliterated Olivia’s thoughts as heat rushed up through her chest. She ran her hands along his waist, across his abs, feeling the iron-like solidity of his muscles. She drank in his scent, his taste, filling herself, drowning herself in a place of deep vestigial pleasure.
He lifted the hem of her sweater and slid his hand onto her belly. His palm was hot, his skin rough. He moved his hand up higher and unclasped the front opening of her bra. Her breasts swelled free. A moan rose from deep in his chest as he cupped her breast, his thumb finding her nipple tight. Then his fingers neared the crater of a scar—the bite mark Sebastian George had left in her.
A shaft of ice speared to her core.
She froze.
It was the mark forensics techs had matched to Sebastian’s teeth. Just one of many traces he’d left on her body that had convicted him. A suffocating blackness filled her lungs. Olivia clamped her hand over Cole’s, halting him, as memories raced through her mind.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. Claustrophobia tightened. Her heart started to palpitate.
She held tightly onto his wrist, fighting against the images, against the past, sweating, starting to shake. No.
No!
She would not let Sebastian back in. She would fuck the living daylights out of the past. She would own this, take it all back. Be whole, a woman. Have this man. Show herself she was free, because if she couldn’t do this now, she never would. She’d be forever a half person.
And Olivia’s dearest dream, her deepest hope, was to be whole again. She’d fought so hard to get this far, but she hadn’t yet gone all the way. On some level she knew that only then would she be truly free.
“Liv?” he whispered, breath warm against her ear.
She released his wrist and began to squirm out from under him, wildly undoing the zipper of her jeans, wriggling out of them and her panties. Her jeans bunched around her boots. She kicked one leg of her pants free. With a feral kind of madness, with shaking hands, she pushed Cole down onto his back on the sofa and straddled him. Panting, half blind, she grappled with the fly of his jeans. Sweat was beginning to drench her body. Her breathing turned ragged. Don’t think, don’t think, don’t let him back in . . .
She yanked his jeans partially down his hips. His erection swelled free in her hands. Big, hard. Hot. Damp at the rounded tip. She couldn’t breathe. His hands clamped over her wrists.
“Olivia,” he whispered darkly, voice thick, raw. There was question in his features, concern in his eyes. “What’re you doing?”
Tears began to stream down her face. She fought against his grip as she maneuvered her hips, opening her thighs wide above him as she sought the smooth, hot tip of his erection. It met her skin. Anticipation, anger, fear—it all smashed through her as she closed her eyes tightly and angled down onto his cock, opening her legs wider as she sank inch by inch onto the delicious length of hard, hot shaft. Her breath caught at the shock of the sensation of him inside her. But she pushed against pain until he was in to the hilt, right up against her inner core. And she felt a sweet, quivering explosion of wetness as she adjusted to the size of him. It was an exquisite, titillating kind of hurt that just drove her higher, wilder.
Breathless, she scrabbled to undo the buttons of his soft flannel shirt as she rocked her pelvis against his hips, sliding up and down on him, wetter, sli
cker, hotter. Faster. Buttons popped off, pinged to the wood floor, some rolling under the sofa. She slid her hands over his chest, drinking in the roughness of the hair on his pecs, the way it ran in a tight whorl to his groin where it flared out in an even rougher, springy mass. The rub of it on the sensitive skin of her inner thighs fueled the fire inside her, and the softness of his balls was sweet against her butt.
In the next instant she was blinded as her vaginal muscles tightened like a vise around his cock, screaming for release. She banged harder, faster, her hands going to his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin. Somewhere in the distance of her mind she felt his large hands on her bare hips, trying to control her, slow her down. Stop her. But she fought him. She dominated and owned him. She obliterated the past with each pelvic thrust until she froze. Her spine arced.
A wild roar began in her ears.
She threw her head back, and her muscles released suddenly in an explosive spasm that took hold of her entire body, forcing her to cry out loud and gasp until she was spent.
She collapsed onto Cole’s bare chest, tears wetting her face, her heart racing, her skin slick with sweat. She was shaking.
He wrapped his arms around her. Held.
Then, slowly, the edges of consciousness began to crawl back in. Olivia stilled.
His cock was still inside her. Still hard. But he wasn’t moving.
Reality seeped in fully, along with a cold thread of anxiety. She lifted her head, looked into his eyes. He took her face between his hands and studied her in the eerie undulating light from the window. The shadows of trees moved across his features.
But still he made no move for his own release.
She swallowed, becoming aware that he was fully dressed. And she was in her sweater and socks, her jeans half on.
And although she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes in this light, she felt it. The concern. The questions. And she felt him going soft inside her.
Hot embarrassment washed through her.
Shame.
“Liv,” he whispered.
Desperately she tried to move her hips, to vaginally massage and coax him back to desire.
“No, please. Wait. Let me take you to your bed. I want to be with you there. Properly. I want you naked, all of you, in my arms.”
“Just . . .” She swallowed, trying to rock against him, tears coming. “Just come . . . please . . . like this . . .” Desperately, she tried to milk his dying erection, rotate her hips, a sob building in her chest. Please, please.
She felt his penis slip out of her.
“Please . . .” She clenched desperately with her muscles, trying to hold him in. But couldn’t. Tears swelled into her eyes, ran down her face.
He held her hips firmly now. “Olivia. Stop.”
Her body trembled.
He didn’t want her. He hadn’t come. He’d softened inside her . . . she’d turned him off.
Like she’d turned Ethan off, disgusted her own husband, who couldn’t get it up when he looked at her.
She scrambled off Cole, extracting her limbs from his, hopping on one socked foot as she stuffed her other foot into the leg of her jeans, emotional walls slamming up. Cold. Hard. Safe.
He sat, reached for her hands. “Liv, come here. Let’s go into your room.”
She couldn’t.
She didn’t have the courage that she’d thought she had a moment ago. She felt humiliated and unable to strip herself fully naked, expose herself and her scars to this man. She was unable to reveal to him that she was Sarah Baker.
She’d been mad, insane. Blinded by something irrational. How could she sacrifice eight goddamn years for a moment of stupid hot lust?
She took a step back, zipping up her pants, her hair a wild mess hanging in front of her eyes. “This was a mistake. Please, get out.”
She was going to crack. She was shaking against her own foundations, against every ounce of control. The line between Sarah and Olivia, the past and present, was glass thin, with hairline cracks fissuring out in all directions, and she was going to shatter in a nanosecond. She would not let him witness that.
“Listen to me, Olivia, I know what—”
“Please, just get the hell out. Now!”
CHAPTER 18
“No,” Cole said, eyes lasering hers. “This was not a mistake. You’re beating yourself up here. Tell me what’s going on.”
“You made it pretty damn clear what’s going on. You couldn’t even fuck me. Now please, do me a favor, and don’t humiliate me further. Just leave.” She tossed his jacket at him. It landed in his lap.
“It’s not like that.”
“Oh, then what was it?”
Cole stood, zipped up his pants. “Don’t pretend here. Do not try and turn this around on me.” He reached for her hand, and she stepped back sharply, bumping against the table. Hot panic flared in her eyes.
Shit. This was a mistake. A major one.
“Listen to me. I want to make love to you, all of you, slowly, in your bed. I want to be with you the whole night, not go to combat with you.” He pointed to the couch. “You didn’t want me back there. You were screwing something else. I was just a sexual punching bag. That’s not how I want you.”
She swallowed, eyes gleaming. Feral. Afraid.
He raised both his hands. “It’s okay. I’ll go. I . . . I just don’t want to leave you like this, that’s all. I want—Whatever it is, you can tell me. I can help.”
She said nothing, just glared at him, mouth in a tight line.
He cursed to himself, reached for his jacket. He went up to her and kissed her on her cheek. She held herself stiff as steel, hands braced against the table behind her.
Cole stepped out into the night, closed the door gently behind him. He pulled on his jacket against the bracing cold.
He paused on the deck as he heard the snick of a dead bolt sliding home.
I have nothing to fear out here . . .
And now she did.
She was afraid of him. Of what he represented.
But as Cole made his way down the stairs and along the dirt trail to his cabin, he realized it wasn’t him. She was afraid of herself, and what she was feeling inside.
Tori turned the electronic page.
Secured with a string through the trigger guard of the rifle was a drawstring bag. Her gaze darted around the clearing, then warily she crouched down and grasped the gun. Inside the bag was a box containing several rounds of ammunition.
Confusion chased through her. She peered into the forest, took a tentative step. Nothing happened. Heart thudding, she moved in a crouch with the rifle into the center of the clearing, her senses bombarded with stimuli from not having been outside for an entire winter.
Somewhere behind her he racked a pump-action shotgun. The sound made a tha-thunk that echoed into the woods. She froze. He fired. A boom that scattered birds from trees. With a scream she raced for the woods. She scrambled through leafless budding willow brush that tore at her bare white legs.
She heard him crashing after her. She ran deeper, deeper, into the forest, breath going ragged in her lungs. When she could breathe no more, she crouched down in a ditch of rotten snow, sharp corn crystals slicing into her bare shins.
She waited, panting, mouth open, hair tangled in front of her eyes.
He was waiting, too. Just listening. Or had she lost him? What was his game?
Cautiously, in the gloam of the deep forest, she checked the rifle. Loaded. He’d left her armed with spares.
“There is no hunting like the hunting of armed men.” He’d told her that once.
She got into a wobbly crouch. Then, slowly, quietly, trying not to allow her boots to punch too often through the deep, rotten snow crust, she aimed for ground where pine needles lay thick and soft. Where she’d make less sound, leav
e less trace.
It was twilight when he found her. She was cowering against the giant buttress roots of cedar.
He materialized silently in the shadows among branches, his eyes trained on her like a mountain lion. Slowly he raised the stock to his shoulder, fired to her right. She gasped, scrambling away on hands and knees, bushes tearing free her burlap sack, leaving her buttocks flashing naked at him as she burrowed into a tunnel of brush. She heard his footfalls approaching.
She was trapped.
“What do you want!” she screamed, tears streaking with dirt down her face, blood oozing from the cuts on her shins.
“Run!”
“Go to hell!”
“Run!” He fired a 12-gauge shotgun slug into the ground near her feet. Loam and stones exploded around the bullet, stinging into her skin. She screamed . . .
Olivia closed the bathroom door. Locked it. Undressed. She stared at her body in the long mirror. Ripped, bitten, cratered by Sebastian George. Branded. Owned. She couldn’t look at her naked self without reliving him.
Slowly, she reached up and touched the bite marks on her breasts, then she fingered the rope scar around her neck. Her gaze lowered, taking in her scarred legs, her frostbitten toes—two missing, another two amputated at the joint. Her attention went to the suicide scars on her wrists.
She felt the swell of shame and disgust. She hated to look at herself. How could she expect the love of anyone else? How could she hope to actually turn anyone on?
Her deepest need was to be free, normal, a real woman again, but she saw now that to be free would mean fully exposing herself, stripping naked in a way that would trap her again. Because it would mean exposing her past as Sarah Baker to Cole. It would mean exposing this body.
Cole was a ticking time bomb of questions. Already he’d seen enough to clue him in, if he looked hard. He was gallant and wonderful for not pushing her.
But she’d not had enough goddamn courage to reveal herself in the hopes that even after seeing her like this, he’d still find her attractive. It was madness to think he wouldn’t ask the hard questions when he saw the full extent of her maiming.
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