Page 27 of Lion Conquers All
Let me go. Let me go. Let me go.It’s what she wanted to scream.
She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t move.
Aarav saying her name was a distant echo in her mind now. She was so far away from being able to react. Her vision was changing. Black spots floated around, darkening and narrowing her line of sight.
Voices shouted around her, but they were so slow and drawn out that she couldn’t understand them anymore. It was all just jumbled roaring in her ears.
She looked up into Aarav’s face again.
He was still there. She could hear the rumble of his voice through the chaos in her head, but she couldn’t tell what he was saying.
Tears blurred her vision even more.
Her knees buckled.
Darkness stole the rest of her consciousness.
The humof an engine startled Connie awake. She started and sat up. She wasn’t in a dark van. She wasn’t bound. No one had their hands on her. She was okay. She was in her truck. In the front seat.
“Hey.” Aarav’s voice did that low rumbly thing. She could hear the lion’s purr beneath it. And it made her feel safe. Which was weird. She shouldn’t have felt safe around an enormous man who could change into a lion. But she did. And she wanted to touch his chest again. She wanted to feel the vibrations roll through her. It had been the most scared and safest she’d felt in so many years. “I shouldn’t have picked you up like that without warning you first. I feel like a monster for scaring you. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you,shuarra.Ever.”
She believed him. She really did.
She could see the anguish on his face. Hear the way his voice cracked over what had happened. It destroyed him emotionally to see her upset as much as the incident had wiped away her control.
“I know.” The first words came out a gravelly whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I’m okay. I promise. It just—it was the combination of the running and you grabbing me from behind.” She grit her teeth and cracked her neck back and forth, refusing to allow her mind to sink back into any of those memories yet again. “I know you meant no harm. In my head. I knew that.”
“But your instinct said otherwise.”
She stared out the window at the passing forest. They were halfway down the mountain. Her breath was creating a little bit of a fog on the window.Not good.Temperatures were still dropping.
“Tell me what happened, please.”
Tears burned at the back of her eyes. She couldn’t look at him. Shame welled up in her chest, threatening to crawl up into her throat and gag her.
“It’s not a good story. It’s not a story I share with anyone.”
The truck bumped along on the gravel and dirt road. They were getting close to the bridge over the river that ran along the west side of Mystery.
“Can I have your hand?”
My hand? He wants to touch me again. After everything that happened.Except that nagging feeling in the back of her mind really wanted to feel his lion’s purr. The rumble of his beast had made her feel so safe. He wasn’t just a man.
And he hadn’t given up on her. All this time he’d been there for her in the background of her life. He’d brought her coffee. He’d made sure anything that broke around her was fixed. He’d kept her woodpile full. He did everything he could possibly do to take care of her without intruding on her life.
She’d noticed.
She hadn’t said anything, but she’d noticed. Even perhaps come to rely on him…just a little.
But if she told him her story, her heart warned that she’d lose him, and that would be worse than never having him at all. She’d avoided men for years to avoid the heartbreak of losing them. That didn’t even take into account that she really didn’t want to be touched by one either.
Until Aarav.
He put his hand on the console between them, palm up. He didn’t ask again. He laid it there and kept driving. And open invitation.
She stared at his hand. His skin was darker than hers. He was a light brown color, while she was pale and freckled. The muscles in his fingers dwarfed hers. He was so strong. It was obvious looking at his hand. There were calluses on his palms and the pads of his fingers and she found herself wondering what they felt like.
