“What the fuck do you mean, Nance’?” I growled, hoping I was wrong. Because what he’d done was so fucked up and wrong I couldn’t imagine it getting any worse. But it did. So much worse.
She tried to look away, but I held her chin and made her look at me. “What do you mean, you thought he’d stop it?”
Tears tumbled from her eyes. “He stood in the doorway and he watched them rape me. I thought he’d stop them, but by the second friend, I knew he didn’t care, that he wasn’t going to stop anything, because it had all been part of the plan. He’d used me—he’d set me up. I was trailer trash, but I thought I was better than that, and now he was showing me exactly who and what I was and making sure that lesson was strong enough to last me a lifetime.”
~ 13 ~
Silence fell between us like lead. My muscles ached, throbbing with the need to break something and destroy these men that had broken her in the most brutal way possible.
I would kill them.
Every last motherfucking one of them.
And I’d make it slow and painful.
“I need names,” I gritted out, seeing red.
It wasn’t the cool night air around us now, it was an inferno, a volcanic eruption of anger and hatred for the pieces of shit that had done this to her or any woman. I was on fire with my hatred and anger
“No,” she said, quietly, like I was going to just accept that.
I snorted out a dark laugh. Woman had another thing coming if she thought I was the sort of man to just accept that.
My name was Sketch and I was a member of the Devil’s Highwaymen. A lawless nomad who lived without rules and didn’t accept anything I didn’t want to. And there was no way in hell that I would accept this from her.
Not today.
Not tomorrow.
Not ever.
“I’ll ask you one more time, Nancy. Gimme the names.” I glared at her and she shuddered under the force of it. The taste of her was still on my lips, and while once delicious, it was now bitter tasting as anger burned in my gut.
She shook her head and pushed against my chest. “It doesn’t matter now. It was a long time ago and I’m over it.” She pushed at me again and I stepped away, letting her get some space. “I’ve moved on and they can’t hurt me anymore.”
“They still are!” I roared. “They’re still fucking hurting you. They’re still in your head and in your body and they’ll never be gone, not unless you let me make them gone. I’ll send them somewhere they’ll never come back from!”
She let out a bitter laugh, dragging a hand through her hair. Her eyes flashed with pain and fear and I knew she sensed the danger in me, of what was going to become of these men. And it frightened her. That was good, because it should have frightened her.
Death was nothing to breathe easy over.
Death was final.
But death was all they deserved.
“Babe,” I growled out.
“Don’t call me that!” she snapped. “I’m not your babe. I’m nothing to you, okay? So just take me home and just forget I said anything.”
“Can’t do that,” I replied bluntly. “I told you—you’re my woman now.”
And that was the damned truth. The thought of her, so young, so innocent, being brutalized by these boys was killing me. But the thought of them getting away with it, of doing it again over the years to other girls…fuck no. they needed to go to ground. Tonight.
“Sure you can,” she sobbed angrily. “Just pretend that I’m one of those other cheap sluts that you fuck so often. Just move on!” She paused, her head tilting to one side a little, and then she laughed. “Or is that it? You can’t move on until you’ve had me? Is that it? Is that what this is all about?” she taunted, knowing full well that had nothing to do with it.
Perhaps that was how this shit started, but that wasn’t how it was going to end.
She was spiraling now, her emotions getting the better of her, and that wicked temper I’d seen in her was escaping as she lashed out. Good. She could lash out and kick out and do whatever the fuck else she wanted, because none of it bothered me. I wasn’t going anywhere. Despite knowing all that I shook my head. My mind was spinning as I tried to catch up with her. Between my growing fury about what had happened to her all those years ago and my lust for her, and now her rising anger at me for reasons I was still to fathom, I was completely fucking spinning out.
