From time to time, she jerked her head around, but not toward him. She looked the opposite way, at the side-view mirror mounted on the outside of her door.
He wanted to ask her if anybody was coming after them, but he held off. For one, Chalen wouldn’t be so obvious if he’d sent them on the mission for his beloved. For another, enunciation of any words was going to be too close to a feather on the back of his touchy throat for him to keep the contents of his stomach where they needed to stay.
Assuming he didn’t want to mess up her back seat—
“Pull over,” he choked out.
“What?” She twisted around. “Why?”
“Pull over—”
“I’m not stopping—”
“Put the window down then!”
There was a heartbeat, and then a rush of thumping air that reminded him of getting splashed in the face with water from a well-thrown bucket. Lunging toward the opening, he squeezed his shoulders out just in time.
As he gripped the door’s edge, his gut spasmed, a great fist vising up and ushering out everything that was inside of him.
She let off on the gas as if she were being kind, but he was too busy to care.
Everything hurt, and that got worse as the sickness continued. It was as if his senses, lit up and excited by all the stimulation newly available to them, couldn’t discriminate between the pains in his body and the environment he was in. Everything was too loud, too much, too intense: Wind tunneled into his ears. Rain pelted him on one side. His throat burned like fire.
His eyes watered.
Duran told himself that last one was because of the speed at which they were going.
Some things just didn’t bear closer inspection.
When he finally retracted himself back into her vehicle, he was a shaky, cold-sweat aftermath, and he drew his legs up tight to his chest, wrapping his arms around his knees and lowering his head onto the tripod they created with his spine. He’d always been a big male, and there wasn’t enough space for all his height and weight in this position, and that was the point.
The tight squeeze made him feel like he was being held.
And not by someone who enjoyed his pain or created it as part of their fucking employment—
“Here.”
At first, he didn’t notice he was being addressed. But then a water bottle tapped him on the shin.
“Thank you,” he said hoarsely.
Cracking the top, he brought the opening to his lips, prepared to wash the taste out of his—
Cool, clean . . . clear.
It was the first uncontaminated water he had had since he had been hit on the head in his quarters at his father’s facility and woken up in Chalen’s castle of horrors.
Laying his head back against the seat, he closed his eyes and tried not to weep.
7
AHMARE KEPT CHECKING THE back. At first, it was to see if they were being followed. But then it was equally about the prisoner.
After he threw up outside of the SUV, she closed the window a little to cut the thunderous roar of air current. When she looked again, he was sitting all compacted, like a banquet table folded up for storage, his head back, the long column of his throat working as if he were about to vomit again. Hoping to help, she took a bottle of Poland Spring and gave it to him—
The scent of tears was such a shock, her foot let off on the gas once more. She couldn’t afford to stop, though. Every instinct she had was screaming, Run! Run! GTFO!
“Are you okay?” she said.
The question was a stupid one, but the words were what little ease she could offer him, a way to reach out without touch, a connection that didn’t require her to get too close.
The distance wasn’t just because he was a dangerous stranger: She didn’t have to be a genius to know Chalen was more likely to screw her and kill her brother than be a stand-up gangster and keep his side of their new bargain. Still, she had to work with what they’d agreed to, and he wanted this “weapon” of his back.
The last thing she needed was to bond with another source of chaos, pain . . . mortality. And yet this “caged animal” she’d been so terrified by wasn’t looking very “animal” anymore. He was coming across as incredibly mortal . . . and fundamentally broken. Fragile, in spite of his incredible physical strength.
The fall-apart happening in her back seat was a shock. She’d assumed she’d have to be one eye on the road and one eye on the prisoner, playing a game of Bad Idea Blackjack between whoever Chalen sent on their tail and the predator in her car.
Not where she’d ended up. And probably the only surprise so far that didn’t work against her.
“I need to ask,” she said more loudly. “Where are we going? You’re going to have to tell me.”
The prisoner put an arm over his face and made like he was wiping sweat off his brow even though they both knew that wasn’t what he was doing. He was getting rid of the tears. Then he leveled his head. As his grim stare met hers in the rearview, she looked to the road and hoped she had some sign to focus on. Maybe a deer to swerve around.
Those bloodshot, watery eyes of his were like a black hole sucking her in.
“Where are we?” he asked.