My Tye (6 page)

“Laine, for God’s sake, look at me.”

The voice—deep, familiar, and a little rough—ricocheted through her thoughts. She tried to kick one final time, but it did no good. He held her down too tightly.

“Come on now. Settle down. You’re safe. I’ve got you, and you’re safe.”

She stilled and listened to the voice once again. Burning breaths seesawed in and out of her lungs and she was sure her heart was going to beat right out of her chest. She sucked back a clean breath, then another, before lowering her arms and peeking over her shoulder.

“Who…” she croaked. She squeezed her good eye shut for a moment to refocus, praying the spasms of pain racking her brain and body would ease at least a fraction, before she worked to open it again slowly. When she was finally able to clear her vision and focus long enough to get a good look at the man holding her down, she bit back a grateful cry instead of screaming like she had just moments ago.

Tye Carter.

How… Why was he here? How did he know where she was?

“Where am I?” she managed in a gravelly, breathy murmur.

“In the ER,” he said, easing off her legs and trying unsuccessfully to straighten the rumpled blanket before giving up and standing beside the bed.

Dear God
. She tried to push herself up again. “The ER? How did I…” She could barely croak the words out. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I gotta get out of here—”

This time two hands came to her shoulders to roll her over and hold her down. “Oh no. Absolutely not. You’re not going anywhere.”

“I have to,” she said, renewing her struggle against him. Jesus, it hurt to speak, to move. To think.

“
No
.”

She stopped for a moment, whether to absorb the command his rugged, masculine voice created or because of the incessant ringing in her ears, she couldn’t be sure. “Tye…”

His name sounded odd rolling off her thick tongue, or maybe the awkwardness slammed into her from the many memories of how she’d been moaning the name in her dreams for months now. Either way, she couldn’t believe he was really here.

Sketchy breaths echoed in the plastic covering her nose and lips. She reached up with a shaky hand and yanked the mask down under her chin. “Why are you here?”

His dark eyes softened as he ran his hands through his hair and sat on the edge of the bed next to her thigh. The innocent touch—his leg sliding next to hers—whizzed past her pain and zinged her with an awkward fireball straight to her gut.

“Pete found you behind his bar.”

She ended up at Pete’s place? She’d been in that van a long time, she knew, by the time she’d come around. All she’d remembered was grabbing that screwdriver and stabbing her attacker with it after he’d pulled over to come at her again. She’d then flung the slider door open and blindly jumped out. She’d run, but she didn’t know for how long. God, she didn’t have a clue.

When she laid her head back on the pillow, weary from even that little bit of remembering, she bit the inside of her cheek so she wouldn’t cry out from the pain. “Hells bells. I think a herd of buffalo is stampeding through my brain.”

“You’ve got a concussion.”

Her only reply was a weak moan.

He shifted to hitch his foot up on the chair next to the bed. “Tell me what happened.”

What? Oh hell. She didn’t even want to
think
about it, let alone confess to him where she’d gone tonight. All she wanted was to forget, for all of it to simply go away.

Yeah, fat chance of that happening.

Her good eye stung with the threat of looming tears as the tip of her nose warmed and tingled from what was sure to be a horrendous, slobbery breakdown. She’d do just about anything to not cry right now, especially in front of Tye. But even as she pulled back on the reins of her imminent crash, she could do nothing to stop her traitorous chin for speaking for her and trembling. Regardless, she unwaveringly met his stare, yet said nothing.

Tye lowered his chin to his chest and reached for her hand, concentrating as he stroked his thumb across her knuckles. The tenderness of this one simple gesture rocked her to the core, as did the disquiet in his eyes when he looked at her again. “Silence won’t work, Laine. I need you to tell me what happened. The longer we wait…” He paused. ”You know you can trust me. With whatever it is.”

She carefully cocked her head to study him further, and the sincerity in his gaze took her aback. Sweet heaven, now that she was here facing him… The mere thought of him finding out the truth of what happened tonight—let alone where she was when
it all happened—she didn’t want that, didn’t want to deal with how awful she’d feel if he started to look at her differently.

So she did what she did best. She tossed up her tough-woman persona and locked all those insecurities away in the corner of her mind. If she ignored all the bad, then her troubles would disappear, right? The twisted idea worked for her, but only for a moment.

“I trust you.”

His thick, black eyebrows drew together over the darkest eyes she’d ever seen. Since the day she met him, she’d loved his eyes. The dark chocolate shade and the long, lush eyelashes surrounding them. A girl could get lost in eyes like that. And she ought to know, she’d done it often enough herself.

But still she kept quiet.

“Damn it, Laine. I can’t help if you don’t talk to me.”

The fierceness of his statement snapped her back to reality. “I know. But…” Even though her heart was screaming that she’d love nothing more than to watch him rip apart the man who did this to her, she wasn’t sure how to start. Where to begin.

“But?” The tenacity lacing that one word pierced her deep. “I’m not going to let this drop. One way or another I’ll get my answers, so you might as well cut the chase and tell me now. What happened? Who hurt you? Who the hell did this to you?”

A knot formed in her chest and her heart ached more than the rest of her body at the concern on his face. Out of everyone she’d ever met in her life, she knew Tye Carter was the type of man she could count on. He was dependable. Understanding. Powerful, yet quiet. And every bit of that spoke to her in ways she’d never experienced before.

But this situation was different. This wasn’t about Laine Morgan, Public Defender. This was about Laine Morgan, the woman. This was about her secrets, her hidden desires. And about how, after lowering her defenses for the first time in her life to try something new, she’d nearly been killed.

Tye would go after the man who did this to her, she knew he would. And he’d find him, too. He’d never let up, never let it go, not until the creep was behind bars. But then everything else would come out into the open too.

What would he think of her then? Would he look at her like some sort of kinky sub-wannabe? Would he see her curiosity about the bondage lifestyle as odd? Or maybe even offensive? Would he freak to learn that whenever she fantasized lately about being sexually restrained, in every single one of those fantasies he was the man doing the restraining?

She’d never told a soul any of this. Walking into that BDSM club tonight had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done. But to be bombarded with new uncertainties and end up leaving only to be attacked once she reached her car…

She swallowed, and while she held her breath at the burn in her throat, a new emotion emerged. Anger. Her fingertips itched with it. Her heart raced because of it. There was no way she could sit idly by while some whacked-out joy-rider got away with hurting her, especially when said whacko still had her purse, along with her ID. He knew where she lived, had taunted her by flicking her license in her face before she managed to escape from the van. That part, she remembered. Clearly, and in vivid detail.

She deserved to nail that bastard to the wall, just as Tye deserved to know what happened. And with that dawning, came the decision to stop the all the useless head-in-the-sand garbage and reveal some of what she remembered.

She shrugged a sore shoulder and settled in to tell him the truth—an abbreviated version, but the truth nonetheless. It would be the only truth he would get out of her right now. The only truth she could bear to tell him. Everything else—the whys of it all, along with the hows—would just have to wait.

And with that, she blurted out, “I’m in trouble, Tye. You’ve got to help me, because I’m in so much trouble.”

Even though Laine’s statement shouldn’t have come as a surprise, Tye couldn’t help but feel a little sucker-punched. From the get-go, nothing about the situation had screamed simple, but actually hearing the words “I’m in trouble” spill from her lips tightened his gut like it was clenched in a vise. What he needed was more information. And he needed it right-fucking-now.

He narrowed his eyes on her and ran the hand that wasn’t busy stroking her knuckles through his hair.

“I was getting in my car—” she started.

“Where?”

“I was in Carson. Off 87. I was attacked from behind. I didn’t see anything or hear anything. Not until it was too late.”

“Carson? What the…” Club Euphoria was in Carson off Route 87. Goddamn it. “So you didn’t see who did this?”

“No. Once he shoved me in the van and came at me to…”

When she stopped and tears welled again, Tye’s throat sealed tight. Even though she could barely get the words out, he was able to figure out exactly what she was going to say.
When he came at me to tie me up…

“That’s when I saw he was covered head to toe in black. A black knit hat. A black scarf. He had on a black shirt and black pants.”

“And he drove you back here? Back to Pete’s? In a van? Do you remember the make? The color?”

She looked up to him. “God, it was so dark out, and so was the van. Black? Dark green or blue maybe? It was an older model, that I know. Old enough and beat up enough that the doors and side panels were rusted out.”

“Where off 87 were you?”

She drew her lips between her teeth and studied him for a moment before answering. “I was parked at the corner of Rogers and Tinley.”

He didn’t know the names of all the cross-streets in Carson, but if he had to hazard a guess, Rogers and Tinley wasn’t going to be too far away from Club Euphoria. “What were you doing? Were you with anyone?”

She looked from where he held her hand in her lap up to his eyes and then over to the door before concentrating on their entwined fingers once again. “Look, I’ll tell you what happened. I’ll tell you everything I remember, I promise.” She said the words like she was trying to convince herself she really would. “It’s just… Not here.”

“Why
not
here? Laine, just tell me…”

When she started to shake her head, she winced and drew her eyebrows together. He’d had more than a few concussions over the years while playing football throughout high school and college, so he understood how much her head had to be killing her right now. But holding true to classic Laine style, she never alluded to it, never uttered a single derogatory word about it.

“Not here,” she repeated, looking around like the walls had ears and they were eavesdropping on every word she said.

It took every ounce of control he possessed not to jump to his feet and turn around to punch the wall. Yet, even through his boiling blood, he was able to recognize his need to hit something was due only to his growing concern for her. She was hurt. Scared. And her terrified ambiguousness was driving him up a flipping wall.

He’d gotten some information out of her, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

He dialed his edginess back a fraction with a deep breath. Not that it helped. His blood still rocketed through his veins, joined now by cramping muscles along his shoulders and an irritating new tic at the edge of his jaw.

“I need to hear it all. And sooner rather than later.”

She slipped her hand from his and closed her good eye. The strangled breath she let loose and the return of her quivering chin had him feeling like a jerk for pushing her so hard. But he had to. He didn’t have a choice.

“When can I leave?” she whispered.

Tye continued to study her—the pallor of her skin, the unsteady tremor of her fingers as she twisted them together over her stomach. “I don’t know. You took quite a hit to your head. The concussion might be a mild one, but it’s still a concussion. You should stay.”

“No, it would be better if I left. I can’t stay here…”

“Why not? You’ve just had the crap beat out of you,” he reiterated, drawing on the one clear fact—the
only
clear fact—that he knew.

She attempted to shake her head again before fingering the bandage at her temple. “Believe me, I know that. But it’s not so simple.” Resting her forehead in her palm, she said, “God, I can’t think straight. I just want to leave. I want to go…”

Home was the obvious choice, but she didn’t say it. Something just wasn’t adding up here. The cryptic runaround, and now the way she insisted on leaving? This odd beating around the bush was getting to him and made him even more determined to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. “Go where? What the hell are you running from?”

She didn’t answer, only looked away. He could read the turmoil on her face, knew by the way her chest rose and fell on each rapid breath that she was on the verge of tears. But he wouldn’t stop, not until he had some answers.