Chapter 20 #2
He jerks and reaches for the embedded blade, but I step over him and press my foot on his hand as blood begins to gurgle from his mouth.
“Lorell won’t get away with this.”
The man smiles, despite the blood spilling beneath him on the grass that means he won’t last long. He knows he’s dying and doesn’t care. “He already has.”
RAVEN
The room around me spins.
My vision goes in and out—from pitch black to fuzzy, strange light that makes me blink away from it.
Pain throbs through my temples.
The split in my lip stings, and the coppery tang of blood in my mouth makes me gag again.
That only makes the dozens of slices and cuts that sadistic piece of shit made all over my body over the last several hours hurt even more.
So much blood drips across my skin now, that I don’t dare look down.
If I even tried, I would only gag more, and each time that happens, the agony is worse.
It clouds my head.
Makes it hard to process what’s happening.
Whatever sound came from outside drew him out there a minute ago…
And it was the first glimmer of hope I’ve had since I first found him in here.
When was that?
I’ve lost all sense of time.
But I know hours have passed. Only because the sun disappeared from the window a long time ago and my captor stoked the fire in the stove several times against the chill and to light the small cabin…
So he could see what he was doing to me better. So he could witness his handiwork and get off on it…
I gag on the blood in my mouth and spit it to the side, trying to swallow without that awful taste so I can gather my breath to cry out.
Because whatever made that noise wasn’t an animal.
It was a monster…
It was the one Connor had to become to save his family on the homestead, the one he has warned me about countless times up on this mountain.
Deep in my gut, I know it’s him.
I know he came back for me.
A sob tears from my chest, and gunshots ring through the air.
“Connor!” I try to cry out, but my voice is barely above a whisper.
I don’t have any strength left. Not after the last round of blows and cuts. Everything feels so heavy.
My limbs tied to the chair…
My eyelids that don’t want to stay open…
My chest every time I try to take a breath…
I choke on blood again and spit it out, trying to call out for him, but another gunshot rings out, and instead, all that comes from my throat is a strangled sob.
Another shot comes, along with darkness creeping in around the edges of my already blurry vision. I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. They’re too heavy…
I barely hear the footsteps approaching over the sound of blood rushing in my ears and my own sobs.
Only when familiar, calloused hands take my cheeks in them do I finally open my eyes again to the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Connor fucking McBride’s dark, onyx eyes staring back at me, searching my face. “Oh, my God, Firefly, what’d he do to you?”
A blond head appears, and someone cuts my hands and feet free. More intense pain instantly rushes through them as the circulation starts to return, and the warm drip of blood on my skin shifts direction.
“Raven, can you hear us?”
Killian.
It’s Killian.
I force myself to take a shaky breath, and one of Connor’s hands lifts from my face. His gaze darts to the blood all over it, and I squeeze my eyes closed again, both unable to watch as he takes in what that fucker did to me or capable of holding them open any longer.
My body sags, but Connor’s familiar strong hold keeps me upright as he examines me. And even through the fog enveloping my brain, I know what he sees.
The blood-soaked bra and panties—all that man left me in after cutting away the rest of my clothes.
My split lip.
The gash above my eye from when my captor hit me so hard the chair toppled over and I struck my head on the rough floorboards.
Cuts up and down my arms and thighs from the drag of his blade across my skin.
A deep stab in my side from when he began to get really frustrated with my refusal to name my sources or give him a way to find them…
I was completely at his mercy. He knew it. And he enjoyed toying with me, playing this game for hours, allowing me to slowly bleed out until I was finally too weak to fight him and would cave.
At least, that was his plan.
“Raven, look at me.” Connor gently shakes my face with his palm at my cheek. “Firefly, open your eyes. Don’t fall asleep.”
I struggle to do it as tears stream down my cheeks, stinging the broken and cut skin there. When I finally manage to get my heavy lids to lift, I wish I hadn’t.
The agony in Connor’s gaze is almost worse than what I’m feeling.
“What did he do to you, Firefly?”
My lips tremble so badly I struggle to get the words out, but then Connor’s strong arms are sliding around my back and under my legs and lifting me.
He clutches me to him, the smell of the mountain that I’ve come to associate with him filling my breath, somehow calming me slightly, even though my sobs won’t seem to stop. “I’ve got you, Firefly. I’m going to take you home.”
Home?
The word doesn’t fully register.
My brain turns it over but so many different, fractured images flicker through my memories that I can’t place just one.