Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
I was momentarily too stunned to move, too panicked to think straight.
But when the man’s free hand started to slide up the back of my thigh, lifting the hem of my skirt, it was like an electrical current shot through my body, shocking me back to the present.
A sound I’d never made before escaped me—half human scream, half wild animal snarl.
My whole body jerked, writhed, fought.
But our bodies were too close to give me much space to get away.
The only way out was… forward.
I forced my arm up between myself and the door. Closing my hand around the knob, I turned it.
Then we both fell forward.
I was quick enough to bring my arms up to brace my fall. But when a full-grown man crashed down on top of you, apparently, your braced forearms flew outward like wings. My head whacked off the floor. Again.
There was no time to wallow in the pain, though, not now that I found myself in an even more precarious position.
My attacker recovered first—thanks to my body breaking his fall. He shifted some of his weight to his hands, easing the pressure on my chest.
As his body shifted, though, my breath caught on a silent cry as his knees pinned the backs of my thighs.
All I could think as I felt his hands on my skirt again was: No.
This could not be happening.
I threw an arm out to the side, suddenly incredibly thankful that I hadn’t had the money or time to replace the cheap plastic chairs with their rusty metal legs with the loungers or couches I’d been eyeing. I damn sure wouldn’t have been able to grab a lounge chair and pull it closer, then—as I threw my weight to allow me to twist—use it to whack my attacker.
The blow was true, but there was only a split second before he was grabbing the chair himself.
Who knew what he might do to me when he had it.
Not that I was waiting around to find out.
I scrambled forward across the still tacky floor, and some small part of me was wondering how much blood I was dripping all over the tile I’d just labored over for hours.
That would be a problem to solve if I survived this.
No.
Not if.
When.
I was going to get away, damnit.
I wasn’t going to let this monster win.
I was closing in on the front door when I felt a hand close around one ankle, the grip punishing.
I tried to kick out, but his grip just tightened.
Then my other ankle was snagged.
Just as I was trying to pull, my attacker yanked back hard, making my hands fall out from under me, pulling my body across the floor, erasing the progress I’d made.
But this time, he yanked me over toward the reception desk, away from the chairs and their potential for harm.
The desk itself was a solid wall on the front side. Nothing to grab. No way to hurt him.
And as he wrestled me against it, forcing my face into the space where the desk met the floor, I realized he was limiting my ways to escape. The definition of having your back against the wall. Except, of course, it was my face.
The pressure on my nose caused another flood of tears to escape, blurring my vision.
Hopelessness rooted, sprouted, grew.
Unexpectedly, in that low moment, it wasn’t thoughts of all the awful things that could happen to me that spread across my mind.
No.
It was Santo.
Santo and his gooey eyes and his sweet smile. Santo and the way his hands and lips worshipped over me.
Santo, who was waiting at his house for me with a home-cooked meal.
I wanted that meal, damnit.
I wanted his arms to wrap me up and tell me it was going to be okay, that I wasn’t alone.
I couldn’t let this asshole take all of that from me.
On a roar I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of until that moment, I brought my hands and knees up against the wall, shoving off of it like a springboard, sending me rolling onto my back.
On her back with a scary man looming over her was not a position a woman typically wanted to put herself in.
But at least this way, I had my legs and arms to fight with.
Hell, I had my teeth if I needed them.
Gone was the woman who, just moments before, hadn’t thought I was capable of stabbing a pen through someone’s eye.
I would bite this bastard’s nose off with my damn teeth if I needed to. I would rip his ears off with my bare hands. I would hook my fingers into his eye sockets and scoop his eyes out.
The promise of more time with Santo and the rage I felt because this man was trying to keep me from that mingled together, creating something noxious, something really dangerous. A pissed-off woman.