Savior (22 page)

Paine grabbed my hips, pulling up, then slamming down, burying deep and I could feel his cock jerk inside me, his hot come filling me.

I turned my face into his neck, kissing him just below the ear.

"You don't like being on top, Elsie, tell me."

"I like it," I said into his skin, taking deep breaths to take in his unique spicy scent. "I just suck at it. I get too wrapped up to remember to... move," I said with a silent laugh.

"Got it," he said in a way that made me pretty sure he was cataloging that fact to remember for a later date. I liked that about him too; when I talked, he seemed to genuinely listen. Again maybe a trait he got from growing up around so many women. I actually found myself really excited to meet them all, silently thank them all for the man they helped create. I was really enjoying him after all.

"Alright, off," he said gently, squeezing my ass with both hands.

"I'm comfortable," I objected, snuggling in further for good measure.

"Like that you feel that way baby, but I'm gonna be leaking out of you."

I cringed slightly and nodded. "Right," I said, carefully climbing off of him and hastily closing my robe as I tried to rush out of the room to clean up without said leaking happening too badly.

By the time I came back out, the food was on the kitchen island. "Are we ever going to use the dining table?" I asked, realizing for the first time that I had literally never used it before.

"So I can sit three feet away from you? No thanks."

And, well, that was a good point.

At dinner, he asked me questions and I talked. He occasionally weighed in, especially when we got onto the topic of my father. In bed, both of us realizing we apparently weren't going to be using the bed for sex often, we snuggled. This time, I asked questions and he talked.

He was surprisingly open about his past, never sparing any gory details, never trying to hide the kind of man he was once, the things he had done. I liked that. It was refreshing. Most 'normal' men hid, evaded, hinted at things but didn't explain, or outright lied even though what they had to hide or evade or lie about was nothing big. Paine's history was big, but he shared. It was like it never even occurred to him to be anything other than forthright.

I fell asleep on the tail-end of a story about him and Enzo playing pranks on Enzo's mom, lulled by the smooth, quiet tone of his voice, his warm chest, his strong arm around me, his steady heartbeat beneath my ear, excited to figure out what picture notes I would wake up to in the morning.

Fifteen

Elsie

Three things happened the next day.

First, I woke up to more picture notes.

Second, I had a relatively normal Wednesday at work. Meaning I worked hard for about four-point-five hours then kinda fell off and lost my steam and spent time around the metaphorical water cooler.

Third, I was kidnapped.

But back to the first thing.

I woke up like I expected to, in my blanket cocoon, smiling like a fool, feeling a warmth spreading across my chest that I knew, if things went south, was going to hurt like nothing before. On my nightstand wasn't a drawing of where he was or what he was doing; it seemed we had established that he spent his mornings at the gym then went to work. Instead, it was a drawing of... me. I wasn't sure exactly what moment he used for inspiration because the picture cut off at the neck, not showing any clothing, but it truly was an exact, perfect sketch of my face. He drew me with a smile, but not a full one, no teeth, just a turning up of lips that made the corners of my eyes crinkle the tiniest bit. My hair was a little mussed like I had just run a hand through it and it settled in slight disarray.

I smiled, placing it with the others, then went about getting myself ready for my day.

As I said, work was work. Wednesdays suck. I never found it comforting that half the week was over because it still meant you had half to go. Which was especially annoying when you had things you wanted to do with your weekend. Like spend it with your new... boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

That's what he was.

The term sounded absurd given that I was twenty-eight years old and Paine was in his mid-thirties, but that's what he was. He was mine.

So yeah, while when I was single, I often clocked sixty to eighty hour weeks happily and easily, I was struggling to pull off forty to fifty hour weeks with one.

I blamed the hormones.

And the mind-bending sex.

With a super hot, alpha, but in a sweet way, guy.

I left work and headed to the gym, planning on just putting in a good twenty minutes, just to keep things tight. Chinese food always made me feel greasy and bloated the next morning and, well, it wasn't easy to feel sexy when you were greasy and bloated.

I took a quick shower, dressed in plain jeans and my old college sweatshirt and headed out the door.

I did this while not looking up because I was searching for my keys.

As such, I ran into a solid wall of man.

"Oomph," I grunted on impact, my keys falling out of my hand as I took a hasty step back. "Hey sorry, I wasn't paying..." I looked up and froze.

He looked down and sneered.

Because we both recognized each other.

It was actually kind of hard to realize that it was only nine days before. It felt like a lifetime. But it was just the Monday before last that I found myself running through the streets of Navesink Bank being chased by a not-so-fit man named Trick who had at least half of a brain and a muscle-bound, brutish, single-celled organism named D.

Now, granted, I hadn't gotten the best look at either of them being that I was scared out of my skin and running for my life, but I'd caught a good enough look at D to recognize him as the man standing in front of me in black basketball shorts, black sneakers, and a too-tight gray wifebeater. Yeah, shorts and a wifebeater... in the middle of winter. I wondered if steroids somehow made your body temperature rise.

"Barbie," he smiled evilly.

In about point-three seconds, I took in the empty parking lot and knew the front doors were only about twenty feet behind me. There was a tree blocking it from view, but if I ran and screamed, there was a gym full of big, muscle-y guys who could run to my rescue.

I turned and had one leg out to start my sprint. But one hand clamped down around my mouth while the other arm curled around my belly so hard it felt like it was rearranging my insides, and lifted me up off my feet against his chest.

The panic started in a second, making my heart hammer in my chest, a sweat spread across my body, my throat start to feel constricted. I flailed as much as the position would allow as I was dragged backward. I needed to get my feet on the ground. I remembered a self-defense video I watched once where they grabbed a guy from behind and he said the only way to overpower a much stronger attacker from behind was to get your feet on the ground and jump as hard and fast as possible, thereby breaking his hold on you. Then you were supposed to run like hell. But my feet never hit the ground again as I was pulled across the lot.

We stopped beside an old tan sedan, as in old, like it had been alive almost as long as me. The next move happened so fast that I couldn't react. One second, a hand was still over my mouth and an arm around my middle, my entire body dangling. The next, my mouth was uncovered and my middle was released as my feet slammed down hard, the pain ricocheting up my thighs. But before I could even scream, a strong forearm was around my throat from behind, cutting off my air supply. My hands went up automatically, trying to claw his arm away to no avail as I felt my brain start to get fuzzy. I didn't know much about things like self-defense, but I did know it only took seconds to pass out while being choked. I was vaguely aware of D moving around behind me, of a trunk being opened.

But then, only a matter of five or six seconds later, I wasn't aware of anything as unconsciousness claimed me.

I woke up fully alert.

That hit me as strange. I figured I would wake up groggy, unfocused, a little unaware of what happened. But that wasn't what happened. One second, I was trying to claw a hand from my neck. Seemingly the next, I was rolling around in a trunk, acutely aware of what just happened to me. I was choked out and thrown in a trunk by a member of the Third Street gang.

I threw out my arms and legs automatically, hitting all four corners of the trunk and holding myself in place as the car took a hard turn that made my stomach do an uncomfortable flip-flop.

Okay. I needed to focus. I needed to ignore the painful thrumming of my heart in my chest, the throbbing points of my pulse in my throat, wrists, and temples. I had to swallow the nausea.

I needed to not panic.

Everyone knew the story about car trunks. Hell, we all learned that in assemblies at school. Newer cars had an emergency escape latch. Older cars didn't. This was an older car. In older cars, your best bet was to kick out the brake lights. I scrunched up in the small space, finding the corners where the lights were situated and slamming my heel into it three times before, on the fourth strike, my foot went straight through. I turned again, thrusting my hand out of the space and waving it around frantically, wondering if anyone was even around to see it, let alone try to intervene.

The car took another sharp turn and something slammed into my side. I reached for it with my free hand, feeling the familiar slippery material of my gym bag. I always locked my purse in my trunk when I was leaving work for the gym, not trusting leaving it in a locker room even though I had a lock. Two things came to me right at that minute. One, I had a lock. As in a padlock. As in a solid piece of metal that could really cause some pain. Two, while I locked up my purse in my trunk, I always threw two essentials into my gym bag along with my clothes and water bottle: my Ipod... and my cell.

I pulled my hand out of the hole, knowing that was probably not going to help me anyway, and fumbled through my bag, cursing the sweaty gym clothes and tossing them into the dark of the trunk. My hand found the metal of my gym lock first and I pulled it out, clicking it closed, then slipping two fingers into the loop so I wouldn't lose it. I found my cell with a sharp exhale. I got it in my hands and tapped in my passcode when I felt the car stop. Not more than a second later, the driver's door slammed.

He was coming.

He was coming and I had no time to call the police.

And I didn't even have Paine's number.

Christ.

Okay.

My hands shook as my screen came up and I clicked my Facebook app, thankful for good service even in a freaking trunk parked God-knew where. I hit my status and dropped a pin.

It was a long, long, long shot.

But it was all I had time to do.

I prayed as I heard the key slip into the trunk lock, turning off my phone and slipping it into my back pocket, that Sawyer and Barrett were still on my case. If Barrett was, he would see the pin. And, if maybe he was suspicious enough, he would know something was wrong. And then I hoped to hell he would call his pain in the ass, cocksure, annoying, baddass mother effing brother who would call Paine and they would come save me.

But like I said, I knew that was a long shot. As in, it was probably never going to happen. So I had to try to save myself. I curled the lock into my hand, knowing it was too awkward a position for me to hit him as soon as he opened the trunk. I didn't have enough of a range of motion to get a good hit in. So I had to wait.

"Gotta take you to the boss," he said as he reached in and curled his hand around my bicep, squeezing in hard enough for me to wince and hiss out a breath as he started dragging me out of the trunk. I scrambled out, trying to keep my feet. He slammed the trunk and then he slammed me against it, locking me there with his body. His pelvis was against mine and I could feel his erection through his jeans. "But maybe I can have a little fun with you first," he said with that ugly-freaking sneer again, his hand moving out and closing over my breast through my lightweight sweater.

And, well, that was apparently my breaking point.

I leaned slightly backward as I planted my feet. My arm went back and, without even pausing to think, I swung out with the lock. It made a sickening crunching sound as it collided with his cheekbone, making him rear back on a howl.

I didn't consider the chance of staying and fighting, hitting him until he couldn't see so he couldn't chase me. I just turned and ran.

I realized too late that I should have went with the blinding him idea because I was shoved so hard in my lower back that I fell forward, flailing, stomach dropping. I had the foresight at the last possible moment to throw my hands out to break my fall. But my momentum was high and the impact was hard, scraping across my palms which didn't hold my weight and I went down on my forearms, crying out in agony as it felt like something snapped inside as the pavement burned and ripped the skin. The side of my face collided too, but much more gently because I instinctively locked my neck. The road scratched my cheekbone, but not bad enough to cause any real damage.

I couldn't even blink away the tears before a hand reached down and grabbed my hair at the ends and pulled so viciously that I pushed up onto my busted palms just to try to ease the searing pain in my scalp. But it was no use, because he just kept yanking as I went onto my knees, as I moved to try to stand.

"You stupid fucking cunt!" he screamed, finally releasing my hair, but only because he needed his dominant hand to swing out and collide solidly with my jaw. The impact did two things at once. One, the pain spread out from the point of impact until the throbbing ache overtook the entire left side of my face. Two, it was enough to drop me two my knees.

And, well, my knees was somewhere I didn't want to be.

I knew this when his leg cocked back then kicked forward, hitting right above my navel and knocking out my air. I doubled over, gasping uselessly, taking in nothing but the taste of my own blood from the punch from before.