Chapter 7
MARA
I must have stopped crying long enough to doze off, but something drags me halfway from my sleep. “Emmaline?” I murmur drowsily, burrowing my face into the pillow that is somehow firmer than before.
“Shh,” the pillow soothes.
What? This isn’t right. My eyes fly open to a blurred yet instantly recognizable red plaid. Recognizable because I was just watching the man who wore it.
Warren.
And he’s carrying me away. Icy fear streaks down my spine and into my fingertips. I knew it! Knew he must have mistaken my watching him through the window as an invitation to something more.
“No!” But my yell is nothing more than a choked gurgle in my panicked state.
“You’re okay, Mara,” Warren murmurs as his arms tighten. “Go back to sleep.”
Sleep? For him to do whatever he wants with me?
No! No no no. I’ve got to do something. I can’t be—refuse to be—raped again. Not anymore. Not with my baby bearing witness to it. Fully awake now and half feral with equal parts rage and fear, I flail about, my feet to the floor my only aim. “Let me go!”
“Mara, stop it. I’m just moving—”
The punch that bounces off his jaw steals his balance along with his words because his arms lock about me as he fumbles to regain his footing. Then my world shifts as my back hits the bed.
The bed.
Cold dread constricts my ribcage.
No. Not again.
“Mara…” he grunts into my ear, hips pressed into mine from the force of our landing. “You don’t understand. I’m not going to—”
“Stop,” I gasp. A tear slides into my hairline as I thrash and silently pray to a God I haven’t believed in for years. Just let me get one leg free…just one.
There!
In a twist of fate that has never been favorable to me, Warren’s weight lifts enough for me to shove a knee between his legs and jab upwards until his breath catches in a deep groan. But that turns out to be a poor plan because he collapses onto me, trapping me beneath his heavy weight.
“Mara—” Warren wheezes. “By all that’s holy, woman…” He rolls off, one hand protectively cupping his manhood and the other thrown over his face in a manner that does nothing to hide his pained grimace.
I greedily expand my air-starved lungs and jerk away, endless thoughts crashing through my mind. Emmaline. Need to hold her. Need to find a place to hide and keep her safe.
But the moment my trembling limbs reach the edge of the bed, Warren takes another ragged breath behind me. And just like that, I realize what I’ve done.
I hit him.
Punched him all over and kneed him between the legs.
Like a bear that’s been poked one too many times, punishment is sure to come when he’s able to move again.
Punishment that I have to keep far away from my little girl because, in his anger, he might forget what small bit of affection he holds for her.
Affection that was only a trick to gain my trust.
I could grab her and run, but where would we go?
Down the long, dusty road back into the town that was my prison and hope against hope that the kindly doctor’s wife would take us in?
That’s only if we don’t get accosted on the road before then.
And with as often as Emmaline needs to eat, it would take two, maybe even three times as long before we arrived.
No.
All hope seeps from me as reality sets in. At least for tonight, I’ll have to accept whatever punishment he deems fit. Anything to keep her safe. I numbly sink back down against the headboard, hugging my empty arms to myself instead of reaching for my sleeping baby sleeping mere feet away.
Warren’s hand falls from his face, and my heartbeat triples in cadence. This is it. What will he do to me? Hit me? Or worse…
The wall opposite me opens up into a field of flowers.
The chrysanthemums call to me, promising safety within their depths.
I’m more than ready to disappear into them until Warren is finished punishing me, but no…
I can’t do that. Not with Emmaline defenseless in her makeshift cradle.
My lips tremble as I ignore the flowers’ soft whispers and stay present for whatever I must endure next.
“Mara. What did you do to me, woman?”
Now he sounds just like him. Such cruelty to make me confess my transgression. A fleeting thought for a helpless Emmaline is all it takes for my tightened lips to force out the words he wants. Better not to make him repeat himself. “I hit you.”
His low, relaxed chuckle is not what I expected in response. “That you did, Mara. That you did. You’ve got a hell of a right hook and a fast knee to boot. Here, lemme see your hand.”
No. Anything but that. As if even my fingers were suspicious of the big hand he stretches my way, they curl protectively into my palm. Is this another dream? I glance wildly around the room, but there’s no cane. “Wake up,” I whisper to myself as I rock back and forth. “It’s only a dream.”
But it’s not a dream.
No, the warm hand that wraps around my own is all too real. This is how he’s going to teach me my place. Just like he used to do. Pain for pain. I jerk away, but Warren’s grip is strong as iron and just as inescapable.
“It’s okay, wife,” he says in a voice too soft for comfort. “Be still and let me look.”
Wife. The very word disgusts me, reminding me of his ownership over me.
Ownership I willingly gave him in exchange for protection against all other men, including himself.
When he runs a finger over sore knuckles, I can’t take it anymore.
“No,” I choke out. “Please don’t hurt me.
Not my hands. I need to take care of Emmaline…
to hold her and feed her. Please—just…just kick me back instead.
Or slap me.” I could easily take care of her in bed even with a bruised face.
Swollen eyes would be more of a hardship but still doable.
But I have to have my hands in one piece.
“Kick you?” Outrage slackens his jaw as his grip falls away. Then he carefully stands and rounds the bed, a man intent with purpose even with his hobbled gait. “The hell are you saying, Mara?”
Blood whooshes at my temples and dizzies me, but I stand my ground as an upset Warren gets closer to me. Closer to Emmaline. “No!” Jerking up from the bed, I wipe salty tears on my sleeve and throw up an arm to block his path. “Don’t you touch her!”
“Good God, woman, you’re my wife now and she’s my daughter!” Warren tugs his hair in either anger or frustration. “I’m not gonna hurt either one of you,” he almost bellows in a bewildered tone.
“As if I could trust you. You said you wouldn’t lay with me.
Not until you’re ready, you said. But look at you.
It’s only been three days and already you break your word.
” I hate the way my broken voice shakes right along with the rest of me, the weakness I try to hide now revealed in blatant exposure.
“Why should I let you anywhere near her?”
Warren locks eyes with my watery ones as his hand drops to his neck. “Mara, listen to me. Please listen to me. I would never break my word. Never.”
“Only because I stopped you,” I whisper rawly. He’s too close. Too intense. But to back away is to allow him even closer to Emmaline. I settle for staring at his throat, watching the protrusion there bob up and down with his swallow. “Why…why else would you be bringing me to the bed?”
“Oh, Mara.” His hand moves to my tear-stained cheek but stops when my head rears backward.
Not quite touching, but close enough to still feel the warmth radiating from his palm before it drops to his side.
“I didn’t break my word to you. I would never.
I was only moving you to the bed so you could sleep better than on the hard floor. ”
The seconds tick on, quiet and tense as I look no higher than his neck and try to understand what he said.
Could the truth really be so simple and innocent?
This wouldn’t even have happened if I had just gotten in the bed to begin with?
A small noise comes from behind me, and we both look at a squirming Emmaline.
A sharp cry follows, one that makes me suck in a breath as my breasts tingle with the threat of milk.
“Go on, wife,” he urges softly at my halting lurch towards her. “Go get our baby girl.” Half of me expects this to be a trick, but the gentle sincerity in his tone feels real. One cautious step turns into two, and with two more, I have my baby in my arms.
“Momma’s got you,” I say through a quavery voice as I blink away another onset of tears and attempt to rock her.
My bounces are probably too rough to soothe her, but Emmaline’s tiny fist rubs against her mouth until she manages to find her thumb.
As she noisily sucks, her innocence strikes me all over again and has my lips trembling with emotion.
She has no idea of what she just interrupted.
No idea that her mother is barely holding on by a sliver of a thread.
“Mara.” Warren eases closer.
Hunter to the prey.
I want to put more distance between us, but with the wall behind me and him in front of me, there’s nowhere else to go.
“I’m not gonna hurt you. I swore to you that I would never ever do that.
I’m no liar, wife, and I’ll keep proving it to you until you believe me.
And I would never hurt Emmaline. She’s just a little baby, for Christ’s sake.
One that I’ve claimed as my own flesh and blood.
You’re both mine to protect, and hurting either one of you isn’t the proper way to do that.
” Maintaining eye contact, he slowly leans down, cupping her small head as he presses a kiss to her dark locks.
His hand is big. So big he could no doubt crush her skull.
Or so big that he could shield her with it.
I fight the instinct to squirm away at his intensity.
“Dogs sleep outside,” he says as he lifts up.
“Out in the barn or here on the floor if it’s cold enough.
Others may have treated you this way, but that’s not happening in this house.
You’re not an animal. You’re my wife, and that means you sleep in our bed.
Need a nap in the middle of the day? You sleep in this bed.
Feel like going to sleep before I do? You do it in this bed.
If I find you on the floor again, you best believe I’m gonna be picking you up and putting you in it where you belong. ”
The roughness of his tone has me thinking he truly means it. But… “You say I’m not an animal, but what about Emmaline? The floor is all that’s good for her?” I’m surprised by the words that escape from me. Then again, maybe not. Not when it comes to my baby.
A wince tightens his lips as he rubs the back of his neck. “I’m working on it. I’ve been in the barn making a cradle.”
“Just for her?” A glimmer of hope shines through before I can squash it down. That’s what he was chopping wood for? To keep his promise?
“Just for her,” he confirms. Then his face softens even more. “I’m sorry I scared you and made you cry. That’s the last thing I ever meant to do. But you can’t fault me for wanting to take care of you. I’m a Shay, and taking care of our family is what we do. Can you believe me when I say that?”
Senses and emotions still reeling, I clasp Emmaline more tightly. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Can you at least promise to try?” Warren caresses my baby’s hair, his fingers brushing against mine and then stilling.
I look at his hand, at those fingers that cradle my daughter’s head and that still touch me. Do I have any other choice? For Emmaline, there’s only one answer, even if it feels like a lie at the moment. “I…promise to try.”