Chapter 11
Kat
Without a word, he walked behind me, and a low whistle escaped past his lips. It wasn’t a catcall, that's for sure. I knew exactly what caused him to do that.
“The back of your thigh is black.” He bent down, and I cringed at what he would see. “You’re going to need to go to a hospital.”
I jumped when I felt his fingers trace over my scar. “This isn’t the first time this has happened to you, is it? Is that why you’re no longer in kickboxing?”
I bit my lip. I didn’t want to get into detail as to what happened, nor did I want to tell him why it did. I nodded. “Yeah, it’s what ended my career. Can you stop staring at my leg and get me out of here please?”
“Yeah, sorry!” He moved around to the front of me where we ended up doing this weird dance of trying to figure out how to get me out of there.
“I’ll just carry you if that’s okay?”
Finally, the man had a sensible suggestion.
“If I want to get out of here, I have no choice, because I'm not walking out on my own, and I don’t think you want to be calling an ambulance with all these dead men laying around.”
His brows snapped together at the sting of my words. “No! That wouldn’t be a good thing.”
With a gentle but firm grip, he hooked his arm behind my knees and lifted me up in his arms. His muscles tensed with the effort or perhaps he was pissed off that he had to carry me. Either way, I unconsciously wrapped my arms around his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin against mine. As he carried me through the warehouse to a side door, I couldn’t help but notice the way a muscle jumped in his cheek. Probably because he was clenching his teeth, just so he didn’t have to talk to me. Which was fine by me.
The fresh breeze coming off the lake hit my face as soon as we stepped out of the building, and I could hear the distant sound of crashing waves. Rory quickened his pace towards the beach where our car was parked, I glanced up at him and felt a stirring in the pit of my stomach. I was always a sucker for a sharp, well-defined jawline, and he certainly had one.
“We’re almost there,” he announced, as if I couldn’t see. But I wasn’t looking forward to sitting in the car without his arms wrapped around me. Despite our hatred for one another, I felt a sense of safety being in them.
As we approached the car, Rory gently set me down on my feet beside it, his hand lingering on my waist for a moment before he released me. I leaned against the sun warmed surface of the vehicle, grateful for the support it offered as he unlocked the passenger side door. He helped me inside, carefully, as if I were made of fine China. Once seated, I turned to look at him standing outside the car, a silent question in my eyes, why wasn’t he getting in?
He fingered my torn bra and that act alone had me shivering on the spot. “I’m going to leave you here for a minute and see if our stuff is still on the beach. Will you be okay?” he asked, his gaze never leaving mine.
“Yes, of course,” I say between chattering teeth. I start to shake as the reality of what just happened sinks in.
He hands me the keys. “Start the engine and crank the heat, I’ll be right back.” He closed the door with a thud, and I watched as he walked away. When he was out of sight, I stuck the key in the ignition and started the 4x4. Heat soon flooded the cabin but that didn’t completely stop me from shaking. I knew it could take up to an hour before the adrenaline left my body, I just needed to be patient.
To keep me distracted, my eyes were glued to the windshield, waiting for the second that Rory’s head would pop over the steep incline that led to the beach.
I saw the umbrella before his head and was relieved to see that he had my clothes. I really didn’t want to go to the hospital wearing my underwear if he insisted on taking me, after all, I was at his mercy as to where he took me. Something I didn’t like, being at his mercy.
He tossed everything onto the backseat before he opened the driver’s door and climbed behind the wheel. “Here you go,” he said, passing me my clothes.
I took them and quickly donned on my shirt, but my jeans were going to be a bit of a challenge. Feeling his eyes on me, I looked at him, “Do you think you could give me a hand?”
Without a word, he got out and made his way over to my side of the car and opened the door. Taking my jeans from me, he barked out, “Turn in your seat.”
I did without question, both legs dangled out the door, and he bent to remove my shoes. The second he took the foot of my injured leg; I swear I drenched my panties. Because he didn’t just take my foot in his hand, no, he caressed it like it was the most precious thing in the world. His touch was electrifying, sending shivers down my spine and igniting a fire deep within me. As he slowly slid off my shoe, his fingers lingered on my skin, tracing delicate patterns along my ankle and up to my calf.
And God help me, I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him no matter how hard I tried. His intense eyes locked with mine as he continued his sensual ministrations, a smoldering heat passed between us, a silent understanding of the desire that pulsed through our veins.
Without breaking eye contact, he leaned in closer, his breath hot against my skin as he whispered, “Are you sure you want me to help you with your jeans?” The double meaning hung in the air, thick with promise, and I wanted to act on it. Needed to act on it. Because in that moment, our hatred for one another melted away, leaving only raw, unbridled lust in its wake. I reached out and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him closer until our lips met in a searing kiss that set my whole body ablaze.
The alarm on the car parked next to us suddenly, for no apparent reason, started going off, and we sprung apart like we were caught siphoning gas from its tank. I jerked in my seat, the pain that it caused a reminder that I needed medical attention, and he jumped on the spot, tossing my jeans over his head. “Sonofabitch!” he yelled, bending over to retrieve them. He smacked the dust off them, then quickly put them on up to my knees. “You can do the rest of the way. I’ll just get myself in trouble if I help you any further.”
I smiled to myself as he made his way over to the driver’s seat and got in, slamming the door. Once I shimmied the jeans over my hips as best I could, he put the vehicle into reverse and started to drive away from the beach. “I’m going to take you to the nearest hospital, hopefully it’s not too busy.”
I shook my head. “Just take me back to the estate. My hamstring is not torn, just a bad pull is all.” He looked at me like I was nuts. “Trust me, I know what it feels like for it to be torn. This is not that.”
He glanced at me and then did a double take. “But the back of your thigh… it’s black… That’s a pretty good indication that something is not right.”
I sighed. “Look, all I need is some ibuprofen, crutches, ice, pillows and a thigh compressor bandage. Can you take me to a drug store for all of that?”
“Walmart is our best bet, but I seriously think you should go get checked out. How can you possibly tell if it’s not ripped somewhere?”
“Because the last time it happened, it felt like my leg was ripped in half.”
“What the hell caused it? Surely it wasn’t from kickboxing!”
I hated the thought of telling him, but I knew if I didn’t, he wouldn’t give up. “Nope. It happened when I was left for dead in the middle of a train track after being dragged behind my ex-boyfriend’s car.” I inwardly groaned and clamped my mouth shut. I said way too much just now.
He glowered at me. “What the fuck? A train track? What’s his name? I'll hunt him down and do the same thing to him.”
As touched as I was by his proclamation, I knew better than to let anyone else get tangled up in the mess of my past. “No, you won’t. It was a long time ago, he’s history. Let’s just focus on getting what I need and heading back.”
His jaw tensed. “How did you escape?’
I sighed heavily. “A trucker was coming down the road. Thank God he had his window open and heard my screams.”
“How long did it take for you to recover?”
God, I did not want to talk about this. “A year,” I said with finality .
That’s all I was giving him. He didn’t need to know that 6 months of that was laying on my front so that the skin on my back could heal. And he certainly didn’t need to know that my ankle had to be put back together with screws and a steel plate.
He eventually nodded without saying a word and turned his attention back to the road ahead. The rest of the drive was filled with an uneasy silence, the weight of unspoken words hung heavy in the air between us. When we finally pulled into the Walmart parking lot, I could sense his internal struggle as he turned off the ignition.
“I’ll come in with you and get you one of those scooters to ride on,” he stated firmly, more as a promise than a question. I didn’t argue, knowing that trying to prevent him would only prolong the inevitable.
Without a word, he got out of the vehicle and came around to my side. Scooping me up in his arms, I wrapped my arms around his neck for the second time today and felt right at home. If he wanted to keep carrying me around like this in the store, I wouldn’t object to it I decided.
But alas, he didn’t. Once inside, he marched right over to the only scooter that a couple of kids were playing on. “Get off!” he barked. “This isn’t a babysitter. Go find your mother.”
“Rory! For god’s sake that was rude of you,” I said as he dumped me onto the seat.
He looked down at me and shrugged. “It’s true, it’s not a toy. Come on. We need to get the supplies you need and get home. That leg of yours is starting to swell and seeing how you’re too stubborn to go see a doctor, it needs elevating, quick.”
He grabbed a shopping cart, and we made our way through the store to the pharmacy section, gathering everything except the ice that I would need. With each item he placed in the cart, it felt like a brick fell away. His kindness touched me in a way I never thought I would feel again. Trust in a man. Slowly the walls I had built around myself were crumbling down, at least where he was concerned.
As we waited in line at the pharmacy counter to pay, he finally broke the silence. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. It was all he needed to say for me to feel the floodgates threatening to burst open. He was the first person to have ever said that to me.
But I held them back, swallowing past the lump in my throat as I turned to him with a shaky smile. “Thank you for helping me today.”
He passed me the crutches as he pulled out his wallet to pay, and I took them and stood up. “Don’t mention it.”