She screamed and curled into a fetal position to escape his pelting blows. While her body took the abuse, she reached across the floor looking for something, anything, to use as a weapon. She found the leg of the kitchen table and grabbed onto it. She tried to get a footing to pull herself up, but the floor was slimy from the Osso Bucco.
Her Osso Bucco. Her masterpiece. Her anniversary treat for her husband.
Her husband who was beating her senseless.
The dull aches turned into sharp pain as Riggs continued to kick her. He yelled, but she no longer understood the words. A searing pain shot from her right elbow up to her shoulder, ending in a torturous agony so intense she blacked out again. Several seconds later she awakened. Riggs had stopped kicking her and was forcing her skirt around her waist. He ripped off her panties. Her left hand still gripped the table leg, so she willed her right hand to reach for something. Anything.
But it wouldn’t move. The acute pain throbbed. She couldn’t move her arm. Damn, she couldn’t move her arm!
Although the table leg served no purpose, she held onto it as a sort of buoy. For some odd reason that she couldn’t rationalize, the thought of letting go tormented her. But she had to. Her other arm wasn’t working. Bracing herself, she uncurled her fingers from around the wooden pole and began groping for a makeshift weapon.
Nothing. There was nothing.
She writhed, engulfed in heated pain but determined to get away. The breeze from the ceiling fan flowed over her bare buttocks. Then clammy hands, Riggs’s firm pinching hold.
“Spread your legs, bitch.” He wrenched her thighs apart and plastered himself between them. The slow unzipping of his fly went straight to her stomach. She threw up.
“So I make you sick, do I? Well, you make me just as sick. More so, even. I can’t stand the sight of you.”
“Then why do you want to fuck me?” she croaked out. “If you can’t stand—”
“Shut up!” He kneed her between the legs.
Her mind had gone numb. That was the only reason for her next reaction. She laughed. She erupted in gales of giggles. “You’re so stupid, Riggs,?
?? she said, her voice a cracking whisper. “That doesn’t work on girls.”
“Don’t you ever fucking call me stupid!” He thrust his fingers into her with such force her head propelled forward and slammed into the table leg that had been her anchor. She groaned as tiny sparks of light danced in her eyes.
“How do you like that, bitch?” Riggs continued to violate her with his hands. “Nice, huh?”
His fingers stretched her dry sex, shooting pain into her chest. God, let him just get it over with, she pleaded to herself. I tried. I tried to get away. I’ve done all I can. Just let it be over.
He removed his fingers and thrust into her with his hard cock. She heaved again, but threw up only yellow stomach acid. With each thrust, her head slammed into the table leg until she finally lost consciousness.
The blackness was a welcome relief.
* * *
When she awoke later, she’d had no idea how much time had passed. For a few moments she’d had the sensation of being outside her body, suspended against the ceiling. Then she had slammed back into her body with full force, and the torturous suffering began. Her right arm lay limply on the floor. It throbbed, and she still couldn’t move it. Wetness trickled out of her private parts and she gagged, remembering the rape. Her cheeks and eyes still stung from the burns, and her body ached all over from the kicking.
She had crawled, with only one arm, to the phone and dialed 9-1-1.
Then she had gone to the hospital, and Riggs had gone to prison.
The meat hadn’t been hot enough to do any lasting damage, despite the fact it had felt like hot coals raking her face at the time. But her right shoulder had been dislocated, and her left kidney had been bruised. The doctors had been amazed that no bones were broken. Still more skin than not was black–and-blue.
Two weeks later, she had been released.
She had rebuilt her life over the next two years. She took self-defense classes. Got counseling. Scrimped and saved. Then her aunt had died, leaving her a small inheritance. With money in the bank, she made her move. A small rural town in south eastern Colorado was looking for a vet.
Three hundred days of sunshine a year…
For two weeks, she had lived in Bakersville, tending to animals, making friends, finding love. Or what she had foolishly thought was love.
And now her past was back to haunt her. Riggs out on parole. Dallas, the cowboy she loved, had left her. All because of a decision she had made to protect an innocent child from her violent ex-husband.
She turned her head into the vinyl car seat and let the fog take her brain once more.