Home > Unraveled Love (Love and Honor Duet #2)(4)

Unraveled Love (Love and Honor Duet #2)(4)
Author: Stacey Lynn

His voice quieted, and when he blinked, those dark eyes of his softened. The lines around them lessened. So he could add inflection, and he sounded kind when he did.

I blew out a breath. “Thank you…thank you for saving me.”

“That,” he responded with the return of a hardened gleam in his eye, “was my pleasure.”

Because he’d gotten to kill people?

Good God. How had this become my life? And when would I stop asking myself that question?

My legs still trembled while I walked through the bedroom to the bathroom. After closing the door behind me, I collapsed against it. Vaguely I was aware that the room I was in was a suite, an upscale hotel not unlike what I would have stayed in when I traveled with my family. Only the best for us—except now, what family did I have if my dad would be a part of this vile business?

Memories rushed through, making my hands shake and my chin quiver.

No crying, dammit. I avoided looking at myself in the mirror. My bones ached, my wrists and ankles screamed with pain, and there was still the lingering burn beneath my chin from MaryAnne.

I needed to be clean. From all of it.

To think…I’d come minutes away from being returned to Daniel.

This would not break me. This would not end me. I would survive this like I’d survived everything else I’d been through.

I quickly stripped and jumped in the shower.

Water pelted me, coming at me from three different directions in the mammoth shower, and I put my back to one spray and scrubbed my scalp. Fire burned my wrists and my ankles as the water ran across open wounds, and still I kept my eyes closed. The less I saw, the better I could get through this.

I reached for the small bottle of shampoo and filled my palms with it. Thin rivulets of blood wrapped around my ankles, and a ball lodged in my throat.

You can’t ignore this.

My teeth ground together so hard it was a wonder I didn’t break any, but I needed to do this. I had to do this. While I massaged the shampoo into my hair, I focused on the wall in front of me.

Three breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. Every breath sped my pulse and made my knees wobble until I was at risk of passing out.

No. I looked down. Streams of pink wrapped around my feet and my toes before twisting and turning into the drain.

Blood. My blood. From my wrists. Ankles. Chin. Where else was I hurt?

A sob tore through me. They’d made me bleed. Drugged me. Hit me. Tied me and held a gun to me.

All of it flashed in my mind. There was no escaping this, no escaping what had happened.

It raced laps around my mind faster than horses at the Kentucky Derby until my head spun and I fell into a heap on the shower floor, fingers digging into my hair as I propped my elbows on my knees, bending them until I was curled into a ball.

Red flashes. Gunshots. Screams and shouts and more gunshots and a pistol to my temple. I couldn’t escape the memories.

MaryAnne’s nails became claws and knives, tearing through my throat and my stomach. Daniel’s face morphed into a demon as he threw me against a wall, slamming my cheek into it.

My dad lay there, lifeless in front of me.

Everything twisted, came so hard, so fast, reality becoming fiction, fiction becoming reality. Twisting in my mind like a cyclone and I was paralyzed, unable to escape it.

Water became blood, pouring down on me in a flood.

Hands grabbed me and I screamed, flailed, and slapped at them.

“Addi!”

My name barely penetrated and I scrambled to the corner. Away from the blood. The pain. The echoing of gunshots still vibrating in my ears.

“Addi! It’s me!”

Shawn?

He came to save me? He was here?

Oh God. He had to get to safety.

“No!” I screamed and clawed at the hands holding my shoulders.

“You’re okay. You’re okay.” Warm, wet hands slid down my shoulders, and I was swept into equally strong arms. My naked, wet body pressed to Shawn, and I was inhaling that scent of his I loved so much. Finally. I was safe.

“It’s me, Shawn. I’ve got you, Addi. Just hold on.”

Oh God. He had. Shawn had saved me. I clung to him, recognized the scent of him, and slowly the memories and visions dissipated to a dull roar, still clinging at the edges but making reality clearer.

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” he murmured against the top of my head, pressing warm, firm lips to my wet hair and squeezing me so tight it was a wonder my ribs didn’t shatter. “Sit here,” he said, and I was placed on a cold hard surface. He stepped between my legs and wrapped a towel around me, holding me to him with his hand at my lower back while he tucked the towel in between us.

“Shawn,” I cried as I clung to him. My head hit his shoulder as another violent sob racked my body. I was freezing cold, skin prickling while he wrapped me in another towel and started drying my hair.

“You’re going into shock, Addi. I need you to take deep, slow breaths, and all you have to do is listen to my voice. You’re safe, and Luca got you out with only minor injuries. That’s the most important part of all of this, and everything else can wait. But I swear to you, nothing like this will ever happen to you again.”

I attempted to do what he said, but uncontrollable shivers kept coming, one right after another. My fingertips buzzed and my arms trembled as I slid them down his body to his hips so I could wrap myself around him. I clung to Shawn, needing him, hating the weakness coursing through my body when everyone else I’d seen was strong.

“Shawn.” I croaked his name; there was nothing else to say. Terror and pain and memories kept coming at me. The blood I’d stepped over. The gun at my head. The ropes. I yanked my hands off Shawn and rubbed my wrists. They were raw from whatever those men had used.

“Hey.” Shawn’s hands came down on mine, pulling them apart. “Right now I need you to get into a robe and you need to get some clothes on. I can help or give you privacy, whichever you want, but you’ll feel better once you’re dry, and once we can get some food in you.”

The very thought of being alone sent another shiver racing down my spine. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“Then you won’t be.” His hands slid to my hips, tugging me forward. My legs wrapped around his hips on instinct and then he grabbed something, draped a thick, white robe over his shoulder, and carried me into the bedroom. Once there, he set me on my feet next to the bed. I wobbled as he finished drying me with quick and sure movements.

It wasn’t sexual. There wasn’t any part of his touch meant to arouse me, and yet every brush of him moving the towel against my body, every burn sent warmth suffusing the cold that had been growing in my veins, spreading.

“Lift your foot,” he whispered as he knelt down next to me. Soft cotton shorts, loose and lightweight, were tugged up my legs, and then he stood. “You okay?” he asked.

I wouldn’t be okay for a very long time. Not after today.

But Shawn wasn’t asking about my long-term mental state, so I nodded, and he showed me a tank top in his hands.

“Thank you,” I mumbled, taking it from him. I couldn’t summon embarrassment about needing his help. Someday it might hit me that I’d collapsed in a shower like a terrified toddler and clung to him like an octopus, but that day wasn’t today.

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