“It really seemed like you needed saving,” Silas insisted.
My cheeks flushed. I was too embarrassed to make eye contact with anyone else in the car. I was no longer drunk, nor did my head or stomach show any signs of misery, but I was still aching. “I didn’t,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Silas asked. “I could have sworn you needed me.”
For fuck’s sake.I tried to ignore the double entendre in his words.
“What I need is a minute to myself,” I said, holding up a shaky index finger.
His voice dropped a register. “Anything I can help with?”
My entire body heated. I was too trapped to throw a punch, but I knew for certain that he’d done this on purpose. “Oh my god.”
“What?” he asked, one hand still on my inner thigh from where he’d jostled me awake.
Nia and Kirby were too mortal to sense what had occurred, and Azrames, for whatever reason, was allowing the torture to take place.
“You’re an absolute asshole,” I said, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes.
One more minute, and we’d reach our destination. Kirby had already exited the highway and was navigating their way through a neighborhood that had been hit particularly hard by the recession.
Silas shot me a wink, all but confirming that he’d shaken me awake to do little more than ruin my perfect release, the well-deserved reward from my favorite memory.
“I hate you,” I murmured so only he could hear, hurling every ounce of angst from my ruined orgasm I could muster.
Leaning toward me, he murmured his response into myhair. “But you sided with me nonetheless.”
I focused my attention outside on the plywood over the windows, the slumping, chain-linked fences, the weeds popping through the sidewalk as we inched toward our destination.
My peripherals snagged on the rearview mirror.
Forehead creased, I stared into the mirror, struggling to make sense of what I saw.
Everything was normal. Everything was safe. Everything was fine.
Except…
My blood chilled.
Two sets of eyes looked back at me—and neither pair belonged to someone I expected to see. I opened my mouth to say something, but the barbed, pained surprise caught in my throat.
Two men stared back—muscled, armed, and unfamiliar. The claustrophobic cab filled with the pungent scents of sharp spice, all oxygen sucked from the Jeep. My vision blurred. My lungs screamed. I gripped the seats in front of me with bruising strength as the men took the air, the light, the life.
I was too frantic to make a sound. My eyes bulged. My spine buckled under the weight.
There was a din of chaos in the car as the others began to yell.
Kirby swerved, though I was barely aware of the car’s chaotic path. Nia was shouting at our men. Azrames may have been trying to clap me on the back, though if he was, I was too far gone to receive the help.
A painful, high-pitched ringing shattered me from the inside out. A shadowy vignette pressed in on my vision as the world began to dim.
Silas was wrong. We didn’t have three days. We didn’t even have three hours. The angels were here, and I was dying.
I was a trout, lips moving uselessly as I was held abovewater. I tried to scream for help, to beg them to stop, to rebuke Heaven, to chant a prayer backward,something, but they’d handicapped me so totally that I was rendered utterly helpless as the last bits of color and light faded into a pinprick.
Five of us were in the Jeep, yet I was completely alone with two cruel entities watching me die.
The car swerved again. Kirby was screaming, but the sound didn’t reach me.
