Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
It was the most significant thing he could ever do.
In that moment, he knew he would endure anything to make sure she smiled again. He would kill, bleed, cry, break, and die for her. There was nothing, absolutely fucking nothing he wouldn’t do for her.
Fortitude built in his mind and girded his spine. It wasn’t just a willingness to fight for her. It was an insistence.
“You know why I’m here.” He leveled Badell with a look that encapsulated the depth of his conviction. “As for finding out what I’ll do for her, the answer is yes.”
“Yes?” Badell’s eyebrows rutted together.
“Get her and Van out of here. Give her the treatment, let them go, and my answer is yes to anything you want from me.”
Lucia burst into a sobbing wail and sped up her harrowing crawl.
“Fascinating.” Badell stepped out of her path, studying her as she closed the distance.
“Tate.” She collapsed beneath him and slid a trembling hand over his bare toes, along the arch of his foot, and curled cold fingers around his ankle beneath the jeans.
His eyes burned, and his heart rate skyrocketed. God how he wanted to cradle her against him and console her. He wanted to clutch her hair and press his face to hers and smell her and hold her and kiss her. His inability to do so filled him with such maddening anger he couldn’t form words over the scalding heave of his breaths.
Across the room, Van wore a bleak expression, but there was something else in his eyes. His strength and redemption was rooted in his love for his wife. He understood.
“The human spirit intrigues me.” Badell closed the blade on his finger and pocketed it. Then he leaned down and gripped Lucia’s hips, lifting her until she was eye-level with Tate. “Show me what you want, Lucia.”
Her hands immediately slid around Tate’s torso, and tears streaked her ashen cheeks as she tried to pull herself against him.
Badell adjusted his hold, hooking an arm across her stomach and giving her what she sought—contact, connection, togetherness.
Tate clutched the chains that suspended his arms and pressed toward her, chest to chest, breathing her in. Their lips met, and he fed her what they needed. Commitment and unity. Substance and meaning. Promise and love. His tongue rubbed against hers, dedicated, possessive, licking away the salt of her grief as everything inside him roared with desperation.
It was a kiss that would carry them through the night. A kiss that hoped for tomorrow. A kiss that would survive the end of time.
Too soon, Badell pulled her away and carried her back to Van.
“No! No, please!” She sobbed, thrashing her head and feebly wheeling her arms. “Let him go! Let him go! You can’t do this.”
She continued to cry as Badell positioned her on her side with her cheek on Van’s thigh, facing Tate. The placement was deliberate and cruel. He wanted her to watch.
“You think you love her.” He returned to Tate, his dark eyes gleaming with morbid curiosity. “I’m not convinced.”
“Do we have a deal?” He gritted his teeth.
“She’s a beautiful woman. And compassionate. If you’re into that kind of thing.”
“Give her the medicine, Badell.” He yanked at the chains, coughing against the agony in his ribs. “She needs it now!”
“I understand your urgency.” Badell cast her a passing glance. When he turned back, the indifference in his expression faded, replaced with impatience and a hint of anger. He sucked on his teeth, his voice dropping an octave. “Once I’m convinced of your feelings, when I fully understand the lengths you’ll go for her, I’ll give her the medicine. Then I’ll let her leave. I’ll set her free.”
Lucia screamed her protests, her words too hoarse to be discernible.
“How can I trust you?” His heart stammered, dying a thousand deaths.
“Lucia?” Badell called over his shoulder. “Have I ever broken a promise to you?”
“No,” she wept weakly, miserably.
“We should get started.” He removed the blade from his pocket and attached it to his finger. “She doesn’t have much time.”
CHAPTER 24
Tate memorized the delicate lines of Lucia’s face, the fall of glossy black hair around her tiny shoulders, and the love glistening in her deep brown eyes. He devoured her pain and beauty, anchored himself to it, to her, as hands grabbed him and spun him toward the wall.
The hands, as he’d learned when he was driven to the compound, belonged to Armando. Badell’s torturer. The man who raped Lucia just hours earlier.
While Armando adjusted the chains, Tate played out all the slow, agonizing ways the rapist would die. Didn’t matter the method. Blood would spill. More blood than that which coated the wall inches from his face.
Why was there a sheet of wood on this wall and not the others?
“The chains usually prevent movement.” Badell tested the links that ran from Tate’s wrist to the ceiling. “But you’re a big guy. Strong.”