Those words rattle around my brain as I try to fight him off, but my limbs don’t cooperate. When a strangled sound escapes me, Nate grabs me by the hair and growls into my ear.
“Shut the fuck up. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
Liquid sloshes out of the cup as he yanks my head back and plies my jaw open. He tries to pour it into my mouth, but I turn my head to the side with what little leverage I have, and he misses.
“Goddammit,” he grunts. “Can’t you at least help me hold her?”
“What part of our instructions did you not understand?”
“Fine.” Nate hurtles the cup across the yard and pulls me up with him. “I’ll get her onto the boat and make another drink.”
“Tick tock.” Another man taunts. “Proba te.”
Despite my dead weight, Nate drags me across the lawn with ease. He’s much larger than me, and I doubt I could do much to stop him, even if I could put up a fight.
Still, it doesn’t stop me from trying. I attempt to reestablish the connection between my brain and body, but it’s not working. The chances of me coming out of it right now are improbable, and the short distance to the boat proves as much.
Nate carries me on board while the other men follow with a cooler.
Time seems to slow as he props me onto a seat and grabs another drink. After he opens the bottle, he removes something from his pocket and dumps it inside.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to remember how to breathe. I won’t be able to stop him this time. He has me trapped, and I’m outnumbered.
Tears leak from my eyes as I brace for the inevitable. A second passes, followed by another, and a loud crack splits the air.
Someone curses, and three heavy thuds sound in quick succession.
“What the fu?—”
Nate’s words abruptly die off as a fourth heavy thud falls.
I open my eyes in a panic, choking on a sob when I see a man in a black balaclava towering over Nate’s prone body. His features are obscured beneath black clothing, gloves, and a dark reflective visor that covers his eyes. He’s much larger than the other men, both in height and strength, and the way he took them down so quickly triggers another cascade of fear. In a matter of seconds, he rendered them all unconscious, and I’m afraid that his attention will shift to me now. But it doesn’t.
When he hears my quiet shudder, he dips his head, and I imagine he’s closing his eyes. His entire body goes still, save for a slight tremor in his gloved hand before he clenches it. I get the sense he’s fighting something else now.
Something that lives inside him.
Instinctively, I know that demon is the one who controls the lethal energy pouring off him. I think he’s attempting to cage it, and he hasn’t yet won, but it gives me some semblance of relief. Because I know, even without seeing his face, he doesn’t want to hurt me.
A minute passes before his breath rises sharply and releases on a rough exhalation. It feels all too familiar—trying to harness and control a chaos nobody else can see. I understand it on a bone-deep level, and that common thread chips away another piece of my reservations.
As the tension in his rigid muscles slowly dissolves, he unclenches his fist, flexing his fingers before he turns and lifts his gaze to me.
“Close your eyes and cover your ears, Gabi.”
My heart pulses wildly at the recognition of that modulated voice, relief filling every cell in my body.
Eros.
My mind reels with questions, but they scatter as he approaches. He crouches in front of me, seemingly aware of my struggle to move as he takes my hands in his.
“You’re safe now. I won’t let them hurt you.”
As my gaze drifts to the men strewn across the boat deck, I wonder what he did to them. Eros pulls my focus back to him, drawing my hands up to cover my ears. Once he’s satisfied that I’ll be able to hold them there, he rises.
“Close your eyes.”
I do as he says, squeezing my eyes shut as my palms cover my ears. Even so, it doesn’t drown out all the noise. There’s a sliding sound, followed by what I think is a hatch opening, and footsteps echo off the stairs. It goes on for a while, until everything becomes muffled.
