“And if I don’t?”
He turns to face me, his wide jaw cracking into a menacing smile, teeth gleaming like broken bones jutting through torn skin. The road flashes past the window, neither of us looking at oncoming traffic.
Then his hand leaves my chest, and he draws a finger across his throat, chuckling as he sees I get the message.
If not, you’re dead.
CHAPTERTWO
NADIA
“Fix mine,”my captor tells me once I secure my seatbelt. I lean over as he arches his hips up, bumping against the steering wheel because he’s at least twice my size in all directions. Maybe three. Possibly four. The car has a lean on his side and it’s not because he’s overweight, he’s justhuge.
It takes three goes before I can get the belt unlocked, then it won’t spin back into its holding.
“Could you fucking hurry?”
A retort springs to my lips but I bite it back, finally settling on a strangled, “I’m trying.”
“If a cop pulls me over for not wearing a seatbelt…”
He leaves the threat unsaid, but I can imagine plenty of ways he could finish that sentence. All of them terrible for me.
Giving up on the retracting device as a bad joke, I end up half crawling into his lap to get the damn thing around him and secured in place.
So close, his breath is hot against the side of my face, stirring the soft hairs there, making my skin tingle and contract with the small vibrations. By the time I finish, my throat is pinprick small, my breath whistling in and out.
“Where’s the control for the seat?”
I glance into his face and wince at the smoky tint to his eyes, the feral look as they narrow, the way he licks his lips like he’s seen something he wants to sink his teeth into.
Old fears burst into vibrant life, stoked from embers I thought had been damped down too long ago to still pose a danger. When I open my mouth, it takes three goes to get the words out, sounding closer to a whimper than speech. “On your right-hand side.”
He fumbles, then clicks his tongue against his teeth as he gives up the search to navigate the intersection. The vehicle slows, and I see the opportunity. To wrench open the door, to fling myself out on the road.
See it, but I’m too scared to take it.
Too much of a fucking pussy to even try.
“Can you get it for me?” he asks, and I hesitate before stretching across him again to pull the lever. Much as I try not to touch him, I’m hyper aware that I brush against his granite thighs, his taut abdomen, his bulging arms.
Every part of him looks honed to be a perfect weapon. Broad shoulders lead to biceps so large even the prison-issued loose white tee strains to the point of fraying. His thighs are tree trunk thick, rippling as he shifts his weight, trying to find a comfortable position in the seat that’s perfect for me and dollhouse miniature for him.
When he shoves the chair back, it goes to the farthest setting, yet he still looks cramped. I shrink against my door, trying to make myself smaller. Less of a target. My pulse beats off rhythm.
“You’re from around here, yeah?”
I nod, clearing my throat to say yes when he glances over.
“We’re going to an abandoned property to hunker down for a while. Once I get where I’m going, you can leave. Not before.”
And on any other day, that would be fine. On any other day, I would obey the hell out of any orders he wants to bark at me.
But today isn’t any other day. Today I have a shitload of drugs shoved up inside me. Drugs that I have to deliver to keep my son safe. Something I can’t achieve while careening along highways with a prisoner evading the law.
I don’t want to tempt fate by arguing with this massive stranger, but I also don’t want a bag to burst inside me from being kept in there hours longer than expected. I don’t want someone to shank my boy while every guard in the vicinity turns to look the other way.
“No. You need to let me out now.”
