“Where are we going?” I asked and yawned. Between my early morning and my recent orgasm, I was worn out. I snuggled back against the seat and hugged my arms around myself as the exhaustion hit me like two tons of bricks.
“It’s a surprise,” he said softly.
“I like surprises.”
He clasped my hand, and I drifted for a while.
Sirens jerked me upright. I hadn’t thought I was sleeping, but the horrible noise was so sudden I must’ve been. Fumbling, I tugged up a corner of the blindfold from my right eye and focused on Tyler, who was hunched over, gripping the wheel with his teeth bared. He looked terrifying, as if he would take a bite out of anything that got too close to him. I tugged the blindfold up farther.
“What’s wrong? Why aren’t we pulling over? And… where are we?” I asked, mystified as trees whipped by along the roadside. A white sign—Speed Limit 55—blurred past my window. I leaned back and glanced over behind the steering wheel as the speedometer jumped from 89 mph to 90. We definitely weren’t in the fucking city. The clock on the dashboard read 1:09 a.m. We’d been traveling for hours. I turned and glanced back at what were clearly police behind us with red and blue lights flashing to go along with their insistent sirens. “Why are they following us? Are we beingchased? Tyler, what the fuck?”
“This car isn’t exactly mine,” Tyler muttered and jerked the wheel to avoid a deer that darted across the road in front of us. I whimpered as we narrowly missed hitting the animal, my heart stuck in my throat. He stepped on the gas and the cop cars behind us weren’t quite so close anymore. The rear tires shimmied as if they didn’t enjoy the speed, and I was right there with them.
“What?” I shook my head, but I was still foggy from sleep. This seemed a lot like a bad dream.
“They think I killed that asshole, Enoch. He’s dead, like all those other corpses in the park.”
Horrified, I stared at Tyler’s rugged profile, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to get as worked up about the announcement of a man’s death as I thought maybe I should. I touched a hand to my neck, hard enough to feel the pain from my bruises, and swallowed as the throb of discomfort twinged through me. “Didyou kill him?”
Tyler growled. “No, I didn’t, but they think it was me.” He wiped at his forehead with the back of his hand and squinted at the road ahead of him, nodding as if he was thinking about something. I wanted to ask him to slow down, but when I turned back, the police cruisers were even farther behind us. I couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing as I gripped my seat belt tightly.
“Why don’t you tell them you didn’t?”
“Fuck, it’s not that easy, okay?” he shouted, and I cringed back against my seat. He cut me a glance and let out a sigh. “Sorry. Hold on.”
“Why?”
Tyler spun the wheel and the car bounced from the road down a small embankment and precisely onto what looked like an old logging trail. The change in direction was so sudden it stole my breath. He must know where we are, or he would never have been able to time that maneuver so he didn’t murder us. The car, an old Civic, bounced and jolted over ruts that had my teeth chattering and made squeaking sounds in the undercarriage I didn’t think it would recover from. He turned the wheel again, and I gasped as the car plunged down another rough path that was far steeper than the first embankment. Tyler let go of the wheel and flung himself across the seat, wrapping his arms around me. He cradled my head in both of his big hands and shoved it tight to his chest.
The car juddered, and pain snapped through me—
9
Noble
“Cold,”I mumbled, shivering. My arms were asleep from the weird angle I was being held, and there was swaying; someone was carrying me. Inhaling Tyler’s masculine musk, I allowed his familiar scent to give me some comfort, but the pain in my body stabbed at me as he hitched me higher in his grasp. I cracked open my eyes and turned my face away from the warmth of Tyler’s broad chest. The trees’ limbs seemed to be dancing overhead. Far beyond the mostly naked branches, a gray sky boiled and threatened rain. The movement of being carried got to me, and I turned my head, emptying what little there was in my stomach. I wasn’t sure if I missed Tyler’s boots with my mess or not, but I couldn’t do any better, and he only rested his forehead against my ear, as if to tell me it was okay.
My head ached and I fumbled my fingers along the right side of my scalp. My thumb skimmed over the fleshy mound of a goose egg above my temple, but the skin wasn’t broken. I didn’t feel too terrible, considering I remembered some sort of car accident. Screwing up my mouth, I tried to work out why I was being carried through the woods rather than lying in a hospital bed.
“Are you okay?” Tyler asked quietly, but he hadn’t stopped walking, not even when my stomach had turned inside out.
“Mm. No, but I’m clearly alive,” I grumbled, wiping the back of my hand over my mouth. The acrid taste coating my tongue was terrible. “What in God’s name happened?”
Tension turned his muscles to stone against my body. “I was taking you out of the city… for a surprise. We were in an accident.”
“Did I dream the cops were chasing us?” Groaning, I turned so I was tucked against his front again, staring at his face from a strange angle that meant I could see up his nose. I was comfortable enough and didn’t hurt, so I didn’t move.
Tyler’s jaw hardened and he said nothing.
“Did I?”
He sighed. “No.” The rough scrape of his voice startled some small birds into taking flight toward the canopy from a stringy, leafless bush nearby. I stared at them and had no idea what they were, other than beautiful. “But it will take them a while to sort out that wreck and decide we’re gone and not in pieces somewhere, thrown from the car. I’ve been walking half the night. We’re almost to a place where we can rest up. No one knows where to find it, except me.”
He hefted me again, and I hissed out a sound that went along with the stab of pain from my head. “I hurt all over.”
Tyler was quiet. Maybe he didn’t care or was too busy thinking? I didn’t feel well enough to worry much about thewhyof everything—though I could sense an impending breakdown on the horizon. My heart hammered and my palms were sweaty. Vaguely I wished for water but doubted that would be happening anytime soon.
“Do you need a doctor?” he asked a few minutes later. “If you do I’ll turn back.” He didn’t say anything about needing one himself, or mention that he’d likely be headed to jail if I chose that route.
