“Did you get to her first?”
“Mostly.” I hurried through the main room and into the bedroom, setting her down on the bed and kneeling in front of her.
Her lip was split, her cheeks and forehead wind burned. There was a cut on her leg. She was dirty, with black dirt under her fingernails and smudges on her face. The urge to kill everyone who’d hurt her, chased her, tried to violate her rose up inside me and threatened to block out any rational thought.
She reached out with a trembling hand and stripped off my mask, tears welling in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. “You came for me.”
“I told you I always would.”
“Jesus.” Lucius kicked an accent table, breaking the leg off.
Usually, I would have scolded him for the outburst, but for this the noise was necessary, desired even. Everyone needed to believe Lucius was rough fucking her while she cried. The more brutal, the better.
“Get the first aid stuff I brought.”
Lucius unzipped a case and yanked out some of my clothes and other items, including a bag full of medical supplies. He handed it over to me. “If that’s all you need, I’m going into the other room.”
“Go ahead. Make plenty of noise.”
“Not a fucking problem.” He slammed the bedroom door, cranked up the sound system with some angry metal, and then there were a series of crashes.
“Stella, I’ll need you to scream for me. Can you do that?”
She nodded as I moved the pads of my thumbs over her cheeks, wiping away the tears. A shallow cut ran along my palm. I’d used her knife on myself and smeared the blood on the bottom of her dress, made it even more believable as I’d carried her around like a trophy.
“Go ahead. Scream.”
She let out a peel of shrieks, her body quaking from the effort.
“Okay, that’s good for now.”
She stopped and shivered, shaking uncontrollably, her teeth chattering. She needed heat.
A scream sounded from somewhere else in the building. They must have found Brianne.
“No.” Stella’s faced crumpled and she covered it with her hands. “No. I hid her. I hid her.”
“It’s not your fault.” It was mine. I’d seen Brianne’s hiding spot when I’d first set out for Stella. I’d radioed back to another party that something appeared odd at that break in the forest and intentionally used an open channel so everyone heard. The ensuing search for Brianne bought more time for me to find Stella first. But I’d still failed. I could only hope that Dylan would keep his mouth shut about what happened. He’d turned out to be more intelligent than I’d originally thought, and definitely more devious. I might have even liked him if he weren’t trying to take what was mine.
I gently pulled her wrists away, the coldness of her skin shocking me into action. I rose and went to the bathroom, finding a whirlpool tub with a forest mosaic of tiles surrounding it. I turned on the water and adjusted it until it was just north of lukewarm. Once the bath was running at the right temperature, I went back to her. She sat unmoved, fear and sadness painting her face, turning her eyes into sad emerald pools.
“Come on.” I helped her up, but she groaned as she stood and fell back. “What is it?”
“Everything, but mostly my feet.” She bent over and tried to unzip her boots, but her fingers couldn’t grasp the tabs. I eased her hands away and slid the zipper down on each one.
Her legs were burned like her face, and I was as careful as I could be. I pulled the first boot off. Her sock was bloody, and she cried out as I stripped it from her foot. Blisters had risen and burst all along her feet and ankles.
“Shit.” The bath would sting like hell, but I need to clean all her wounds. “Just hang on to my shoulders, okay? You can hurt me all you want. I don’t care. Just hold on to me.”
She grabbed me as I pulled the second boot away, her nails digging into my thermal shirt and the skin underneath. When I peeled the sock off, she let out a strangled scream, and I heard something break on the other side of the suite door.
“I got it. I got you.” I looked up at her. The pain in her eyes tore me apart. I wanted nothing more than to stop her hurt.
I eased my hands to her shoulders, keeping it slow as I pushed her jacket off. Underneath was nothing more than a paltry white shift, the bottom hem ripped away. I clenched my jaw at the thought of her out in the woods, frightened, and wearing nothing more than a thin nightgown. Cal was a sadistic piece of shit.
I gripped the muddied hem. “I have to take this off.”