“You stupid fucking bitch,” he snarled into her ear, dragging her kicking and screaming against his chest. Her heels dragged in the gravel as he pulled her backward. She sobbed, the pain in her scalp overpowering everything.
He stopped, using the hand in her hair to spin her around, her knees hitting the gravel agonizingly, and she could feel the jeans tearing on the sharp rocks beneath her knees. His other hand left her mouth, but it was a heartbeat later that pain ricocheted through her as he backhanded her across the face, his knuckles connecting sickeningly with her cheekbone.
She stopped fighting, her body sagging as he leaned down, panting as he snarled, “I told you, Rox. I told you what would happen… you only have yourself to blame.” Yanking her head back with his fingers still fisted in her hair, he caressed her unbattered cheek and she flinched violently, sobbing silently. His voice softened then and he whispered beseechingly, “I don’t like having to do this, Rox.Why do you make me do this?”
“P-please—” she whimpered, her lower lip wobbling. “Neal—”
He hummed in the back of his throat and she squeezed her eyes shut. “Say it again, Rox. Say my name again. I haven’t heard you call me by my name in so long…”
She shook her head, as much as she could with her hair still fisted in his fingers. He snarled and shook her.
“Say it,” he snarled, leaning down into her face again.
“No,” she gritted out, bracing herself. Another blow to her face knocked her off her knees, her palms hitting the ground,the gravel digging into the tender flesh through the jeans. “Fuck you.”
Neal growled in outrage and she knew whatever was coming next was going to hurt. Where the hell was everyone? How was there not a single soul walking through the parking lot? Not one person to see, to help her. She was completely at his mercy.
The sound of gravel beneath feet sounded to her left and she snapped her eyes open just in time to see a huge, looming figure dart around the back of the vehicle he had her against. Her hair was released and she fell to the ground, landing on her rear as Neal was lifted away from her by a hand at his throat. Tossed against the vehicle parked next to them, Neal gasped for breath against the fingers squeezing his trachea.
“So, you like feeling like a big tough guy, putting your hands on women? Does it make you feel like a man?”
Roxy gasped out a broken sob.Travis. It was Travis.
Neal struggled futilely against Travis’s superior strength, his toes barely scraping the ground where Travis had him lifted off of his feet, pinned to the side of the lifted truck. He gasped for breath, his hands scrabbling uselessly against Travis’s arm.
“Pieces of shit like you make me fucking sick,” Travis growled low, his voice deep and menacing. “I’m going to let you go, buddy. You want to hit someone, you fucking hit me, and I’ll even let you.”
She watched as Travis let Neal go, and he dropped back onto his feet with a wheezing gasp as he sucked air back into his lungs. Travis stepped so that he was fully between herself and Neal. She attempted to stand, but her legs shook too badly. Travis’s hand splayed wide, as if to tell her to stay where she was, so she did. Her face ached, her cheek on fire, and she felt loose tendrils of hair falling out of the abused topknot.
Travis splayed his feet wide, angling his body slightly toward Neal, who had regained some of his composure and was lookingabsolutely furious at being humiliated. Travis pointed to his own right cheek and taunted, “Come on, buddy. You wanna hit someone? You get one shot at me before I lay your ass out, so make it count.”
Panic flooded Roxy again. What if Neal did do enough damage to Travis to take him down? She’d be at Neal’s mercy again. “Travis—”
Neal’s face went a mottled red with rage as his eyes bounced from hers back to Travis, and he was shaking with fury. Roaring, he took a wild swing at Travis, who dodged it effortlessly. A quick jab into Neal’s kidney knocked him back before a deadly right hook connected with Neal’s cheek, snapping his head back. And then he was flat on his back in the gravel, too dazed to even move.
Travis stepped over him, grabbing him roughly by the front of his shirt, and he leaned down to snarl into his face, “You willnevergo near Roxy again, do you hear me? I beat a man to death with my bare hands once; I have no problem doing it again if you so much as evenbreathein her goddamn direction.Are we clear?”
Neal’s head lolled in the gravel; his torso half lifted off the ground by his shirt still fisted in Travis’s hands. He nodded dazedly, and Travis released him, shoving him back to the ground as he straightened. Stepping over him, he turned and reached for her where she still huddled against the side of the vehicle.
She stared up into his face, the fury from moments before gone, his sandy brown brows pulled low over his eyes in concern.Where had he even come from?she thought shakily. Had he been here the whole night?
His large hands spanned around her waist, pulling her into a standing position. She swayed slightly and one of his hands slid around to her back, pressing lightly to steady her as her handscame up to fist into the fabric of the t-shirt that stretched across his impressive upper body. He was so warm. She trembled from cold and shock.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured quietly at her temple, and she nodded mutely, staring down at a groaning Neal. “I’ve got you, Red.”
He sidestepped them around the end of the car, though his hands and arms never released her. He moved them toward the doors and she panicked, twisting slightly in his hold. “Travis—”
“We need to go find Blondie while we wait for the police to show up. They should be here any minute, I called them when I couldn’t find you or this piece of shit inside.”
“But what are you doing here?” she asked slowly. Her head was pounding, her stomach roiling with the pain.
He stopped, turning toward her. “I couldn’t pass up the chance to dance with you, Roxy, even if you were too stubborn to ask me out.” She let out a halfhearted, scoffing laugh, more an expulsion of breath than anything. His hands trailed up her arms and then she sighed, letting her eyes drift closed when the warmth of his hands cupped her jaw on either side. “I had just gotten here when I saw you dancing with that puppy. I was about to come cut in when I saw this guy watching you the way he was… I just had a bad feeling, but then someone recognized me and I got caught up signing autographs for a few minutes. I lost sight of you both and when I couldn’t find you inside and realized you weren’t with Blondie, I came looking for you. I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time.”
She opened her eyes as his thumb tracked over her battered cheek ever so gently, but just the faintest touch made her wince. His thumb grazed over her lower lip, touching the jagged white scar that bisected the left side. She swallowed hard, pulling her face away from his touch and lowering her gaze to the ground.
“This isn’t the first time, is it? He did this, too?” he asked quietly and she took a deep breath in before letting it out slowly. She nodded. “How long?”
“It’s… complicated,” she whispered, lifting her hands so that they bracketed her temples, pressing in and closing her eyes against the pain that reverberated through her skull. Her cheek was still on fire, but she was grateful that the skin hadn’t split this time.
