I swallowed and it tasted like blood. Then I nodded.
“Christ, I had to leave a mark I’d been workin’ for months because of this fuckin’ shit.”
I closed my eyes and stopped pushing against him when he started to tape my chest to the beam. I tested the tape at my hands but it held fast.
“And you’re fuckin’ Stark. I cannot believe you’re fuckin’ Luke fuckin’ Stark, but I saw it with my own eyes.”
My body went still.
He felt it and he stopped wrapping tape around me and laughed. “Yeah, I watched you, Ava. I watched you and I jacked off while I did it.”
Oh… my… God.
Even though I really, really didn’t want him to, he explained, “I been followin’ you but you’re never fuckin’ alone. I knew you’d see Stella so I went there, hopin’ to nab you in the bathroom or somethin’. I watched Stark fight Zano for you, followed you and Stark home and broke into a place across the street. Lucky for me you guys left the lights on, I watched the whole thing. I wish I had a camera.”
I was breathing heavily through my nose. I couldn’t believe this was happening and I didn’t want to believe what he said.
“You were hot,” he whispered, pressing into my back in an entirely different way. His hand slid across my side to my breast, cupping it. “He did you against the wall. I thought you were a good girl. I knew you’d let me fuck you against the wall, I would have stayed around longer.”
Then for some reason his hand went still, his body went tight and his head came up.
He hissed in my ear. “I have a gun, you make a fuckin’ noise, I blow your brains out then I’ll shoot whoever’s up there too.”
That’s when I heard footfalls upstairs.
“Ava,” Luke’s voice called from upstairs. I closed my eyes and visions of a bloody, bullet-ridden Luke filled my head. I opened my eyes again immediately to clear the visions.
“Let’s make this interesting,” Noah muttered and then he moved away to drop the tape but he came right back and he pressed his body into mine.
I heard Luke’s footsteps going up the stairs to the top floor just as I felt Noah’s hand on my belt buckle. My body jerked but Noah hissed, “Not a sound or you’re both dead,” and I stopped my struggle before it started.
I could still hear Luke moving around the house and I stayed silent, even as Noah’s hands undid my pants and one slid inside while the other one went up my shirt to cup my breast again. I could feel his fingers (not hitting the target, by the way, he never did) pressing against me, his other fingers doing a nipple roll as I listened to Luke moving around the house.
Finally after it threatened all day, I threw up but choked it back down before it made it to my mouth.
Throughout it all, silently I was crying.
I tried to ignore what was happening to me physically by chanting in my head, don’t come down here, don’t come down here, don’t come down here.
Luke didn’t come down. Noah and I heard the front door slam and I knew Luke was gone.
I felt both terrified and relieved by this.
“Fuck, now I have a hard on,” Noah said in my ear, pressing his groin against my ass, rubbing against me and his hands kept at me. “You always did have a sweet ass,” he mumbled in my ear. “You do it doggie-style with Stark as well as against the wall?”
I had, that was one of the three positions of a few days ago.
I did not share. Not only because I couldn’t, as he had taped my mouth closed, but also because it was none of his business and he was dry humping me against a steel pole that he had taped me to, the screaming, unbelievably horrible, awful, maniac jerk!
I heard him groan into my neck (luckily, as was usual with Noah, this didn’t take very long) and he sagged against me when he was done.
I hate you, I thought and this time I meant it with all my heart.
His hand swept across my ass.
“Sweet,” he muttered.
Then he finished taping me to the pole. When he was done my hands, wrists, arms, chest, waist, knees and ankles were all taped to the beam and I couldn’t move, not even an inch.
He got in my face. “Next time, Ava, if you don’t call off the Indian, I won’t be so nice.”
I made an angry noise in my throat but it was too late, he was gone.
Before he left he closed the door to the coal room and I heard him fix the lock. The door had a padlock on the outside, don’t ask me why, I’d inherited it from the former owners and never removed it but I also never locked it.
Now it was locking me in, even if I was to get loose I’d be locked in my creepy basement in a room completely devoid of light. But I was taped from hands to ankles to a steel pole and I didn’t know if I could get free. I had blood in my mouth, the taste of vomit in my throat and had just been violated in a very-not-nice way, even though I knew it could have been worse, that didn’t help much in the current situation.
Keep your head together, darling, Luke will come back looking for you, Good Ava whispered in my ear.
You’re strong, you’ve been strong through a lot, stay strong, girl, this, too, shall pass, Bad Ava whispered in my other ear.
I’m scared, I told them.
So are we, Good Ava admitted.
But we’ll make it, Bad Ava said. We always do.
* * * * *
For a very long time, I alternately hung there and fought against the tape. Every once in awhile I’d make progress, a little more movement, but it was exhausting and I wasn’t getting very far. So I’d stop and rest and work on trying to get the tape off my mouth by rubbing it against my shoulder.
This worked, I was able to pull off the tape and it hurt, mainly because it also pulled against what I knew now was a tear on my lip. I also managed to get my ankles far looser but couldn’t get my feet free.
Eventually, having exhausted myself, I fell asleep tied to the beam.
I woke up when I heard a noise.
“Basement!” I meant to scream but it came out as a croak.
I tried again. “Basement, basement, basement! I’m in the basement!”
This came out a lot louder.
I heard fast footfalls on the stairs.
“Coal room, at the back, the room with the lock on the door,” I shouted. “There’s pull lights in each room. There’s a padlock. The key’s…”
I stopped shouting because I didn’t know where the key was or even if I had the key.
Then I heard a gunshot.
The door came open and I winced as the light from a flashlight hit my face.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Lee muttered.
“Thank you, God,” I said.
He moved forward, his hand going to the back of his jeans.
“Hang on, honey,” Lee murmured softly. “I’ll have you free in a second.”
“Hanging on is my only option at this point,” I whispered my joke and it didn’t sound very funny which must have been why Lee didn’t laugh.
He put the flashlight in his armpit and with a pocketknife he cut through the tape, ripping it free. A couple of times I made pain sounds in the back of my throat when he ripped tape off my skin but I did my best to swallow them down. When I was mostly loose, I drooped into him even though I tried not to, but my entire body was numb. He took my weight and kept working at the tape until I was free. When he was done, he straightened. He pulled me fully into his arms, his going tight around me as pins and needles shot through my whole body.
Then to my horror, I started crying.
He stroked my hair with one hand and held me tighter with his other arm.
“S… s… sorry. I’m a wuss,” I told him.
“You’re fine.”
“I’ll have it together in a second,” I said.
“Ava, you’re fine.”
I nodded.
I started deep breathing and he kept stroking my hair. After awhile I got the tears in check, wiped my face against his shirt and took one, last, deep breath.
“I gotta call Luke,” he said when I exhaled.
I nodded again.
“You know who did this to you?” Lee asked.
I answered immediately, “Noah.”
I knew my answer surprised him by the way his body went still.
Then he pulled back and, even in the dark (he was holding his flashlight behind my back), I could tell he was looking at me.
His hand came to my neck and his thumb stroked my jaw.
In an ultra soft voice, he asked, “You wanna tell me why your jeans are undone?”
I shook my head, his hand flexed against my neck and then I said, a hitch in my voice, “He kind of… touched me.”
The air in the room went static in a flash and just as quickly I felt it move with the fury rolling off Lee in waves, pounding against the walls and slamming back into the both of us.
“Let’s get you out of here,” he said, his voice tight.
He started to move to pick me up but I pulled away. “I’m okay now, I can walk.”
He nodded, guiding the way with the flashlight, holding my hand. He took me upstairs, to the bathroom and led me in.
Before he closed the door behind him, he said, “You need anything, call me. I’ll be right outside.”
I nodded again. He closed the door.
I stood at the sink, hands at the basin, avoiding looking in the mirror and listened very carefully. Therefore, as intended, I heard him make the call.
“Vance, you with Luke?” Pause. “Okay, I found Ava. She was taped to a support in her basement. Dexter did it. I want you here, Mace, Eddie and Hank, everyone you can get. She’s in bad shape, been beaten up but it’s worse,” he paused again. “Yeah, that’s it. She was dressed but her pants were undone. She says he touched her.” I closed my eyes tight at hearing these words coming from Lee. Somehow, hearing them made the whole thing seem more real. “I want the boys around when Luke finds out. I’ll give you five then I’m callin’ Luke,” Pause. “Yeah, out.”
At that I walked to the door and pulled it open. Lee was leaning against the wall in the hall. His head came up when the door opened.
“It wasn’t as bad as you think,” I told him.
“Ava, honey, get yourself cleaned up.”
I went into the hall and stood in front of him. “He didn’t rape me or anything.”
“Don’t talk now, we’ll talk later. You want me to help you clean up?”
I was getting panicked. “Lee, don’t tell Luke he touched me. It wasn’t that bad.”
His hands came out and his fingers went into my waistband. Wordlessly, he pulled me to him and then did up the button on my pants that I’d forgotten about. After that, he cinched the belt.
This was so sweet, so gentle, I had to swallow down tears again.
I put my hand on his chest and leaned into him. “Lee, you tell Luke, he’s gonna go gonzo.”
Lee nodded. “He’s gonna go gonzo.”
“Please, he just, put his hand… and then put his other hand…” I stopped. “And then he took care of himself just using me to rub against.”
God, this was embarrassing.
As I was talking I’d been avoiding his eyes. When I was done, I looked at Lee.
Oops.
I was thinking that Lee didn’t think that was any better than being raped. I was thinking that because the fury waves were pounding again and his face, which had been gentle until now, had turned hard as stone.
“You’re not gonna go gonzo, are you?” I whispered.
“I’m keepin’ a very fuckin’ loose hold on going gonzo, Ava.”
I swallowed again, this time at the anger vibrating in his tone. “I don’t want you boys to get into any trouble for me,” I told him.
“Only person’s got trouble right now is Noah Dexter or whatever that fuckin’ guy’s name is.”
“Lee.”
His hand came up and his fingers wrapped around my head and the third hot guy in a day (or a little more than one, I didn’t know what time it was, I just knew it was dark outside) leaned forward and put his forehead against mine.
Lee’s forehead lean was a lot different than Luke’s or Ren’s.
Lee’s was scary.
“You ask him to touch you like that?”
I shook my head, mainly because I couldn’t find my voice.
“So he did it against your will.”
I nodded my head.
“A man doesn’t put his hands on a woman like that against her will. A man doesn’t put his hands on a woman at all against her will, but especially not like that. A man does that, that man earns retribution. Automatic. A man does that to a woman I know, the woman of a friend of mine, a friend I trust and respect, that retribution turns ugly.”
Yikes multiplied by about two thousand.
“What are you gonna do?” I whispered.
“I’m gonna do whatever I have to do to protect Luke while he does whatever the fuck he wants to do.”
“What if I don’t want him to do it?”
His face lost some of its scary-stony quality and went slightly gentle. “Sorry, honey. You’re gonna have to let us work this out. It’s a guy thing.”
After he finished speaking, to my shock he kissed my forehead, let me go and then flipped open his phone, hit a couple of buttons and put it to his ear.
“Get cleaned up,” he murmured softly to me. Then his head came up but his eyes didn’t leave mine when he said, “Luke. I found her.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Precious Cargo
Since he lived so close, Tex was the first to arrive.
Lee sent him to help me clean up while Lee did whatever it was that Lee was doing (my guess, searching my house for rope to fashion a noose).
Tex sat me on the toilet seat and cleaned up the blood, put some Neosporin on my cut lip, took me downstairs and got me an ice pack for my swollen eye. He was mostly silent during his ministrations but his mouth was tight and his eyes were shining with what could only be described as controlled hellfire.
For your information, I didn’t look too bad except for the blood down my shirt and rimming my nostrils, my torn lip and my eye which was already bruising. In the grand scheme of things I decided to think of it as “not too bad”.
Even so, after looking at myself, I transferred my sextuple revenge from Dom to Noah, the double extra, loser, rat-bastard.
By the time we got downstairs, Lee had all the lights blazing. I suspected he did this for me since I’d been locked in a pitch black room for however many hours. All I could think was that he was definitely on the very short Good Guy List.
Matt was the second to arrive. He took one look at me and his face got red.
Lee said one word to him, “Focus.”
Matt nodded his head once and then he focused. I could actually see him focus.
Hank and Roxie arrived next. Tears filled Roxie’s eyes when she saw me and she came right up to me and grabbed my hand, holding on tight.
“Thought she might need someone who had been there,” Hank muttered to Lee.
Okay so Hank just earned a place on my Good Guy List too and, as I was being so magnanimous, Matt’s angry red face earned him a place as well.
Tex was already on it.
“How are you doing?” Roxie asked me, leading me to my couch.
“I’m fine. Everyone’s overreacting. This isn’t a big deal. I knew Noah was a jerk, he just proved it irrefutably,” I told her as we sat down.
She looked at Hank but Hank, Lee, Matt and Tex were all looking at me.
“Seriously you guys, this isn’t a big deal. It isn’t as if this is a big surprise. He had already screwed me over once,” I announced.
The door opened, I held my breath thinking it would be Luke but it was Vance.
Then I sucked in breath again when Vance got a look at me and his body went visibly tight.
I feared for my lamps because Vance looked like he definitely wanted to throw one of them (or possibly
all of them). Instead he looked at Lee and said something bizarre, “I call a shot and I don’t even care if he’s conscious when I get my turn.”
Rock Chick Revenge Page 40
