Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 100367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
DARBY
“Says the restraining order, for starters,” I reply and reach around to my back pocket for my phone and then realize that I left it in the garden. Shit.
“A piece of paper doesn’t do anything. You’re old enough to know that.” Peter scoffs and shakes his head, but he doesn’t move from the doorway, as if he’s biding his time. As if he’s enjoying the idea of making me scared.
And I am.
I’m fucking terrified of him now because he outweighs me by fifty pounds of muscle, and I’m not stupid enough to think that he couldn’t easily hurt me. The only reason he hasn’t hurt me in the past is because someone else interrupted him. There’s no one else here, and honestly, I’m so fucking exhausted.
How long am I going to have to do this with this asshole?
I may be scared, but I’m fast, and I absolutely won’t go down without a fucking fight.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble with you,” I tell him. “And that’s the fucking truth.”
“See, I don’t believe you.” Now he pushes away from the door and slowly walks toward me, but I step back, and he moves in a circle, as if there’s a magnet in the middle of us, keeping us apart.
And that works for me while I figure out what in the hell I’m going to do.
“I think you do want trouble because ever since I met you, I’ve had nothing but exactly that. I’ve been to jail, lost a damn good job, and now because of you, I lost another job. Sure, it was shitty, mucking stalls and being treated no better than a fucking slave, but it put food on the table.”
God, how do I call for help without my phone?
“I didn’t say anything to Kincaid about you,” I tell him. And it’s true, I didn’t.
Tucker did, but I’m not going to tell him that.
“Then how the fuck did he find out that I was fired before? And how did he get the stupid idea that I ever put my hands on you?”
“You did put your hands on me,” I remind him with a scowl, but he just smiles.
“That’s your word against mine. Now, it seems to me that you’re all alone out here.”
“Tucker will be back any minute.”
“Nah, he won’t. He’s out with the herd.” His smile widens when he sees my frown. “Betcha didn’t know that one of his ranch hands is my brother-in-law, did you? All I had to do was call him and ask what was going on out here today to know that you’re going to be alone for some time.”
“So, what are you going to do, Peter? Rape me?”
“Maybe.” He nods and my heart falls when he pulls a whip off the barn wall. “Sure was a shame, what happened to you with that whip. Looked like it hurt real bad.”
“You’re not going to whip me.”
My voice sounds vicious. Because I feel vicious. I’m so fucking livid that he would have the audacity to even consider threatening me with a goddamn whip.
Never again.
“The thing is,” he says as he lets the leather uncoil and fall in one long strip to the dirt floor, “that I can do whatever the fuck I want with you right now. There’s no one to help you. No one to hear you scream.”
I can’t hear you if you scream when I’m out with the herd.
I’m truly fucked. I don’t see how I get out of this unscathed because Peter’s right. And that terrifies me down to the marrow of my goddamn bones.
“Ah, it’s finally sinking in,” he says, nodding and smiling that sick smile. “I told you before, I like it when you’re scared of me. It’s exciting. Those pretty blue eyes of yours get wide, and you go a little pale, and fuck if it isn’t sexy as hell.”
“Fuck you.”
“You will.” He winks at me and cracks the whip, making me jump. “I wonder what it is with you and these whips. It’s just a strip of leather, you know.”
He cracks it again, and I feel myself start to shake, and I desperately want to hide the fact that he’s scaring me because I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.
“What would you rather?” he asks. “A whipping or a good fucking? Because I’ll bet that Tucker doesn’t give it to you the way you should get it. You should be fucked like the little whore you are.”
“I’m not a whore.”
“Oh, sure you are.” He tsks, as if he’s disappointed in me. “I bet you spread those pretty thighs for Tucker any time he wants, don’t you?”
I refuse to answer him. I need to just shut my mouth because no matter what I say, it’s not going to change this.
It’s not going to stop him.
He snaps the whip again, and it almost hits me. I can feel the burst of air from it, and I can’t hold the whimper in because the memories are starting to come to the surface, and I can’t have that.