Page 23 of King of Wrath
The door to the bathroom flies open.
This is the second time Jake has barged in and it’s completely obvious the lock doesn’t work, as Jake stands over me. “Nia! What’s wrong?” He growls out above me.
“Snake!” I gasp. “Tub.”
“Shit,” he rumbles but he doesn’t step over me to look in the tub. Instead, he scoops me up in his arms, the curtain and the rod coming with us.
I’m painfully aware that the thin opaque plastic is the only thing separating my naked body from his as he plasters my torso to his bare chest, my arms coming around his neck.
And that’s when my shoulder throbs and I give another moan.
“Did it bite you?”
“No,” I shake my head, burrowing my face in his neck, the painthreatening to pull me under. “It’s my shoulder. I landed on it when I fell.”
He stops in the middle our room, looking down at me with a deep, penetrating stare. “How bad?”
I take a cleansing breath, adjusting my arm to check the severity of the injury. “Not too bad,” I answer, knowing I’m going to have a nasty bruise, but I don’t think I broke anything. The pain is already receding.
He gently sets me down on my bed. “Don’t move.”
And then he’s gone.
I lay there, aware that I’m in a wet shower curtain as he goes back in the bathroom. I hear a loud thump and then he returns. “Snake is dead, though it wasn’t poisonous. Just a bullsnake.”
He’s next to me again, peeling the curtain away from my arm before I can even respond. How is he so damn quick in a crisis?
“What are you doing?” I gasp, though my shoulder throbs again, my wince making my pain obvious.
“Sweetheart,” he whispers. “I just want to check you for injuries.”
I shake my head. For so many reasons, I don’t want him to see my body. First of all, no one ever has. I don’t date.
Second, I barely know him and he’s my… I can’t saykidnapperas he strokes his fingers down my uninjured arm. “If it’s bad, I need to take you to a doctor.”
I look at him then, my brows scrunching as my body relaxes. “But aren’t we locked in here…”
“Nia,” he whispers, his fingers reaching my wrist and starting back up my arm. “You think I’d keep you here if you were hurt? I told you. I’m a crusty old bastard but not like that. Besides, we’re here to help each other.”
I melt into the bed, the words disarming even more of my defenses, until I remember the third reason I don’t want him to see me. The bruises…
And not the new ones blooming on my shoulder.
But it’s too late as he peels back the curtain, revealing my breasts and then my ribs.
But he stops, his eyes narrowing. “What. The. Actual. Fuck?”
I turn my face away, shame making my chest tight. I don’t talk, because I’m not sure thatwhat the fuckis an actual question. And because I don’t even talk about this with Jess. I can’t. It’s easier to just ignore. Push it down.
“Nia. Did he give you all these bruises? Did Toni do this to you?”
My throat swells and I swallow trying to clear it. I attempt to grab the plastic curtain and pull it back up my body. But he places his hand over mine.
“Tell me, Nia.”
I can’t. I shouldn’t. but I feel the cracks inside growing wider. Dare I bare my hurts to him? “It’s only when he gets really drunk. But when Little Anthony got arrested and he found out about the Diamond…”
Jake spits a string of curses that could curl the hair of a sailor. I take it he knows who Little Anthony is. Of course he does. It was his nephew Leo Kincaid who got Anthony arrested.