Cambria Hebert - Text

Nathan dropped to his knees beside me. It was like he didn’t care about what I was doing at all. His warm hands gathered the loose, wet strands of my hair and pulled them back while he murmured words that were meant to comfort me.

Finally, thankfully, I stopped.

I would have collapsed in the mess I just made, but he caught me and hauled me into his lap. I really liked sitting in his lap.

I hated being so vulnerable. Yet my body couldn’t take anymore. I was a strong person, but everyone had their limits.

He rocked me back and forth, holding me close while the rain fell in sheets around us. He didn’t tell me I was being a baby. He didn’t tell me we had to go. He acted as if we had all the time in the world and he would hold me as long as I wanted.

I couldn’t even properly appreciate that because I was being assaulted.

Assaulted by images I had no doubt my mind had pushed away to protect itself.

I hit the bottom of the truck bed. The rough Rhino liner scraped my knee. He had tied my hands behind my back and then rolled me so I was lying on top of them.

He stood above me, staring down… hatred and lust glittering in his cold eyes.

I didn’t know lust and hatred could ever go together.

But there was no denying the lust.

Because he unzipped his jeans and pulled out his very hard penis. I gagged at the sight. Fear of what he planned to do overwhelmed me.

I struggled. I tried to pull my hands free. I tried to protect myself.

He dropped to his knees, straddling my chest. He shoved himself in my face, demanding I take him in my mouth.

His satiny skin pushed at my lips, trying to get me to open up, trying to get me to let him in.

I opened up all right. And I screamed my head off.

My captor looked around sharply, like he was afraid someone would hear. Then he trained his angry gaze back down at me, took a handful of my hair, and slammed my head into the floor.

I blinked, trying to recall what happened next, but I couldn’t. I must have blacked out from the hit. Automatically, my hand reached up to the back of my neck and delved into my hair. There in the center of my head was a bump.

I thought my headache was because I was hungry and weak.

But now I knew differently.

“What’s going on, Honor?” Nathan said, his voice a little desperate.

“I remembered something,” I said hollow. “Something I’d… forgotten.”

He made a sound in the back of his throat. In one swift move, he stood, bringing me with him. He cradled me against his chest like a child. I tried to tell him I would walk, but when I glanced back at the truck, the words died on my lips.

“Are we taking that?” I asked shakily.

“Yep.”

I began to shake. He stopped and looked between me and the truck. His lips turned into a thin, straight line.

“I’ll be okay,” I said, forcing my voice to be strong. That truck was our way out of this hell. I wasn’t about to make things harder than they were.

He nodded briskly and strode the short distance to the truck and peered into the passenger-side window. When he tried the handle, it opened and he snorted.

“Idiot,” I heard him mouth under his breath.

He stepped up to the inside of the truck, between the seat and the door. Instead of depositing me on the seat, he tightened his hold and looked down.

“The bad shit’s over. I won’t let him touch you again.”

I nodded. His words loosened something inside me and made it easier to breathe. Gently, he placed me on the seat and then pulled back slightly. From this close, I could see the tenderness in his eyes, and then he pressed a kiss to my forehead.

When he climbed into the driver’s seat, I glanced at the ignition. “There’s no keys,” I noted, nerves fluttering around in my chest.

“I don’t need keys,” he replied confidently.

I couldn’t see what he was doing, but it sounded like he ripped out a part of the dash and then he shoved his hand up inside and pulled out a handful of wires.

“They teach you how to hotwire a car in the Marine Corps?” I asked incredulously.

He grinned. “Nope. I was a teenager once.”

I couldn’t help it. I smiled.

Then I glanced out the window. A familiar figure was rushing through the rain at us.

“Nathan,” I cried, pointing in the direction of Lex.

The truck roared to life and he threw it in drive. The blast of a gun and the shattering of glass had me screaming.

“Get down,” Nathan barked as he shoved at my head until I slid onto the floorboard.

I heard the truck accelerate and it fishtailed over the slick ground, but he didn’t slow down. He ripped and roared down the side of the mountain until the gunshots couldn’t even be heard in the distance.

He shot out the back window. Holy shit, when that glass shattered and shards of it started raining from behind, I almost busted a vein. Honor was sitting right there. Right. Fucking. There.

If she’d have been shot or stabbed, I would have stopped the truck right then and killed him.

Bullets wouldn’t have stopped me.

But the bullet didn’t hit her, and as I tore down the mountain, I glanced toward the floorboard, expecting to see her spurting out red rain.

I never wanted to see that sight again.

But she wasn’t bleeding. She didn’t look hurt at all (well, no more than before).

“He’s crazy!” she yelled over the rumble of the truck’s engine as she gripped the edge of the seat while I flew around a curve. We came a little too close to going over the edge and plummeting down into the trees, so I laid off the gas.

Honor started to push herself up but then swore. I cut my eyes over to see a fresh trail of red sliding from the palm of her hand and winding a path down the inside of her wrist.

My stomach turned. The sight of blood didn’t bother me, but the sight of it pouring from Honor’s body did.

“Stay down,” I said, averting my gaze. “There’s too much glass up here.”

But just because I wasn’t looking didn’t mean she stopped bleeding. With one hand, I reached around my neck and yanked the long-sleeve waffle-knit tee I was wearing over my head. I tossed it at her. “Here, wrap that around your hand.”

“I don’t want to ruin your shirt.”

“You prefer blood loss?”

“I owe you a shirt with your pie,” she said, and I smiled.

A few minutes later, I glanced back down at her hand, which was now completely covered with my shirt. She looked small, hunched down there on the floor. And pale. Her skin stood out against the darkness.

The reaction she had when she saw this truck wasn’t good. I’d seen enough during my time in the Corps to know that something bad happened to her in this truck, something that her brain probably suppressed until she was brought face to face with it.

I felt like the world’s biggest ass by forcing her into this vehicle. I was afraid to even know what the hell caused her to have such a violent reaction back there. But I didn’t have a choice. This truck was our best option at getting away. It was beyond clear to me that Honor needed away from here as soon as possible.

Yeah, I wanted to stay and take him down.

Yeah, beating him in the head might feel good.

But the price of that would cost… maybe not cost someone like me anything, but it would cost Honor a lot. She’d already been through enough.

It was strange, the streak of protectiveness I felt when I looked at her. I’d never felt that way about anyone but my family and some of the men I worked with. But this was different… I’d only just met her. Why did I feel this innate drive to keep her safe?