Tag: romantic suspense

“Stay still,” Stephen ordered as he attempted to drag the woman from her mangled car.

The woman just continued to scream and struggle to get away from him. The urge to shake some sense into her and physically make her stop screaming was strong. But he’d had to put his flashlight down to get the door open and now he he couldn’t see well enough to check to see how badly she was injured.

Stephen took a long slow breath, now was not the time to lose his temper. The woman was hurt and no doubt scared, getting angry with her wasn’t going to help.

“Ma’am, I’m a cop,” he said, hoping that would calm her.

It didn’t.

She continued to yell at the top of her lungs, too bad for her the wind caught any sound she made and whipped it away, rendering it useless.

Unable to take another second of her screams he shook her as firmly as he could without causing her more harm. Hysterical women were hard enough to handle on a good day, but on a freezing, snowy night they were a definite no.

“Just do it,” she shrieked. “Go ahead. Kill me.”

Kill her?

The lady had clearly hit her head. Why would she think he was going to kill her? This was what he got for stopping to help a stranger in need. No more runs through the woods as a storm was coming in for him. He didn’t usually, only this storm was supposed to last for a few days and he couldn’t spend that long cooped up in his cabin, so he’d needed one last run. A long one that would last him a few days.

“Please. Please. I won’t tell anyone what I saw, I promise. Just please don’t kill me.” The woman had gone from telling him to kill her to begging him to leave her alone in under ten seconds. He really needed to know how badly she was hurt, but first he needed to get her out of the car.

Keeping a firm grip on her biceps he dragged her forcefully from the vehicle. She was still squirming but her strength seemed to be waning, that probably wasn’t a good thing. The storm seemed to have knocked out reception so he couldn’t call for help, that meant he was going to have to take her back to his cabin, driving in this was out of the question, they’d both wind up dead. He just hoped her injuries weren’t so bad she would be dead before the weather cleared enough to get her to a hospital.

“Please,” she whimpered, she would have hit the ground if he wasn’t still holding her up.

“I’m a cop,” he repeated slowly, carefully enunciating each word so it penetrated her terrified haze.

The woman froze.

He could feel her eyes on him even though all he could see was the shadowy outline of her face.

“A cop?” she echoed.

“I’m a cop,” he confirmed.

“Oh, thank goodness.” With that she threw herself against him, her hands curled into her jacket, her shivering body pressed against him, and he felt something. Something inside him stirred, a feeling right in the pit of his belly, a spark, a tingle, a whatever you wanted to call it, but this woman made him feel something he didn’t think he’d ever experience again.

He was in big trouble now.

“Ahh.”

The sound of moaning caught her by surprise.

Was someone here?

Where was here?

Paisley felt numb. Like she was floating. She was so tired. She wanted to let her mind go blank and drift away again but something was niggling at the back of her mind. A memory, but she couldn’t catch hold of it. She felt like she should be moving, like she shouldn’t be here, but she had no idea why.

“Ahh.”

There was that moaning again.

Where was it coming from?

“Ahh.’

Oh.

Wait.

The moaning was coming from her.

With that realisation she was flooded with pain. It covered every inch of her like a heavy blanket.

She still had no idea of the cause, when suddenly she was blinded by light.

Instinct had her squinting against it and raising her hands to cover her face. Then everything came back with a rush. The man in the road holding a human head. He’d pointed a gun at her. She’d lost control of the car and crashed it.

Now someone was standing beside her car.

Trying to open the door.

When the man with the flashlight began to try to force her battered car’s door open, Paisley forgot about the pain, she forgot about everything but getting out of here.

Her hands were shaking badly, and she fought with her seatbelt to get it undone. Her limbs were heavy and sluggish, and once the seatbelt finally came undone she got tangled in it as she tried to shove it away from her.

With a huge creak that shuddered through the car, the man wrenched open her door.

Large hands reached for her.

Paisley tried to move out of his reach, climb further back into the car where she could escape through another door, but her body wouldn’t cooperate, and soon those large hands were wrapping around her biceps and dragging her from the car.

She screamed, and screamed, and screamed as though her life depended on it. Because it did.