AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Trying to run away, bitch? I don’t like women who misbehave.”
Her stomach quivered in revulsion as he panted, warming the sharp point of the blade against her neck. Sergey’s breath reeked of onions, meat, and stale cigarette smoke, and she scrunched up her nose to block the smell. Her hands trembled, and she willed herself silent. His earlier comments dismayed her, and her body tensed, rigid as a stone. Given Mark was still locked up, she was unsure what to do next. Her lungs tightened, as if the barn had collapsed and crushed out her breath. Fighting to control her panic, she breathed in four counts, paused, then exhaled in four counts.
Behind her, she heard Dmitry join Sergey and say something in Russian.
Sergey gave a crude laugh, accompanied by a hip thrust against her back.
To escape his grip, she jolted forward and recoiled from him. Sergey’s tone of voice left no doubt what unique danger she faced as a woman, and she couldn’t stop her hands from quaking. She wriggled and attempted to shake off his body, which was still plastered against her back like filthy mud.
“Let her go!” Mark rattled the metal bars of the window.
“Yesli ty ub'yesh' yeye, my ne poluchim deneg. Yuri porezhet tebya na melkiye kusochki. On ubival lyudey za men'sheye.” Dimitri shook a fist and shouted a long string of words.
“Eto slukh KGB, ne boleye togo.”
Listening to the men argue, she rotated slowly to watch them. She concluded whatever Dimitri yelled in his angry diatribe, it didn’t rebuff Sergey, who stood wearing a smirk.
“Yuri tochit nozhi kazhdyy den. Ne zli yego.” Dmitry pointed a finger at Sergey.
Judging from Dmitry’s tone of voice, Tess guessed he had issued Sergey a warning. From behind, Sergey locked his calloused grip around her arm like a vise so tight, it cut off her hand’s circulation. Somehow the door slid open.
Sergey wound up his fist and walloped her back.
The force jettisoned her across the cell, and she landed with her face buried in the hay and gasped for air.
“Don’t run away again. We guard you all night tonight.” Sergey grunted, then locked the door before he lumbered out of the barn.
Inside the cell, she groaned from the impact of the hit and curled into a ball on the floor.
Mark rushed over. “Are you hurt?”
The savage hit knocked the air out of her, and she gasped several times to refill her lungs. Grimacing, she used her hands to ease herself into a sitting position. Scratchy hay prickled her face, and she swept it away. “Damn it, I was so close and almost made it. I didn’t see anyone in the barnyard.” She studied Mark’s frown and glimpsed his clenched fists. “What were they talking about?”
He avoided meeting her gaze. “Ugly things. Sergey wants to, uh, do bad things, but Dmitry said if you die, they don’t get paid. If Sergey ruins the ransom deal, Yuri will kill him with sharp knives. Sergey doesn’t believe it, but Dmitry’s damn scared of Yuri.”
“Figures. We need a new plan.” She didn’t need to guess what things Mark avoided translating and wouldn’t say out loud.
“Don’t apologize. We’ll find another way, but we need to get you out of here fast.” He studied her again. “You took a brutal hit. Let me check your back.”
Too crestfallen to protest, Tess relented. Her once-ivory silk top was untucked, and she reached an arm to lift its back.
Mark stopped her. “Don’t twist. I’ll lift it for you.”
His hands were warm and confident. Embers of attraction sprang up underneath the surface of her pain. He placed one hand on her back to hold her blouse up, and with the other, he palpated the area where Sergey had pummeled her. When his hand grazed her bare skin to examine her injury, sparks of unexpected pleasure assuaged the raw ache. Inadvertently, she leaned into his hand a couple inches. For a moment, she imagined him slipping his arms around her, holding her. No one had held her since Kyle died, and her yearning for comfort overwhelmed her at the worst possible time.
He placed his ear against her back. “I need to hear your lungs. Breathe, please. Again.”
She complied. He discovered the target of Sergey’s punch, eliciting her painful wince.
“This spot will be tender, but he didn’t break your ribs. No aeration indicating damage to the lung. Slow your breathing, if you can.” He dropped the bottom of her blouse over her bare skin and stood, then extended a hand to help her to her feet.
“Thanks.” The physical pain she could ignore, but her hypersensitivity to Mark standing so close, paired with the warmth radiating off his body, confounded her. She careened between anger at their failed escape, her pain, and ill-timed, yet irresistible, desire. She stretched tall and stumbled to a hay bale, clutching her rib cage in self-protection.
Mark crouched on his knees beside her. “We’ve got to get you out of here fast. Dmitry convinced Sergey not to, uh, harm you now, but they’re coming back to guard us tonight. We’ve got a few minutes alone now.” He lowered his voice to an urgent whisper.
The mention of Sergey’s intentions chilled her blood. Her dad’s worst fear, and her own, too, lurked outside the barn, mere yards away. “We need to be more aggressive. I’ve got my pepper spray in my jacket, and you have my knife.”
“What next?”
