Chasing Allie (Breaking Away Series #2) (15 page)

I hear Jeff’s car start up and the rumble of tires on the dirt road.

I look at the kitchen and realize it’s eleven forty-five at night, and we haven’t eaten anything for a half a day. I look in the fridge. There’s eggs and cheese, and a couple other things I can put together to at least fill our stomachs. I start cooking.

The front door goes
clap clap
again. Two sharp knocks of the screen door, and then silence.

“Hey! What’d you forget?” I call out. “We could use some more food, so I’m glad you came back.” 

I pour the oil into the sauté pan, and wait until it bubbles up. The screen door opens again, and then the front door opens. I hear Marissa come up behind me, and then I holler back, “Hey, do you want cheese in your...” 

And then the next thing I know, I feel nothing but pure pain.

Then darkness descends, and I stop hearing the world.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

My eyelids feel like thousand-pound weights spiked with salt as I peel my eyelashes apart. All I see is grimy ancient scuffed wood and my pale knees. The wood presses into the flesh of my bare skin, the bones digging in. Light filters into my eyes as I slowly open them. There’s no focus. Everything is soft and muted. Grey and light.

Something hurts. Everything hurts. I go to wipe my eye and can’t. My arms can’t. I tug and something burns in my wrists. My shoulders scream with pain in the bones. My joints feel fused together. My throat is dry like the sand and dirt outside. And someone has detached my arms from the rest of my body.

No, not quite. I try to move them and something rubs against the base of my back.

Everything is raw. Everything is pain. The base of my skull feels like it’s been bashed in with a sledgehammer. My hair is hanging in a matted curtain around my face.  

I blink. My eyelids feel swollen and so heavy. I swallow and taste blood, a bitter old copper sensation that slides along the edge of my lip. My heartbeat thrums in my mouth, and I realize I have yet another split lip.

Slowly, I come into a dawning awareness. Thin shafts of light poke into my eyes. Dust motes float where the sun comes in. My head is down. If I lift it, I think it will snap off.

I take a deep breath in and feel something pierce my heart. Instinctively, I try to sit up, and I can’t. I can’t, and my hip goes into a spasm that makes me want to scream. But my throat won’t. I wish I could go back to the darkness.

I look down and realize my knees are uncovered, my hands bound behind my back, tied behind the back of a small, wooden chair. I look down to find nude breasts, nipples pointing down, dirt smearing my chest. The imprint of a hand stands out in filth. The skin at my belly rolls, and my shins slide against the wood chair as hard as bone. I’m completely naked.

A sudden gush of air reinforces how nude I am, as the breeze hits parts of my body that aren’t meant to be uncovered. I clench instinctively.

The thump of boots, of wooden heels against wood, comes in time with my breath. The last time I heard that sound was in Jeff’s bar. It was the day Chase came into my world. I start to lift my head to see who the owner of those boots is. But I can’t. There’s a rope around my neck.

It’s attached, and runs along the line where my groin and my thigh meet. If I lift my head too much, I could end up with rug burns in places you don’t want to have them.

The room smells like sweat and pee and fear. I wonder if I’ve peed myself. And then I realize I don’t care. I haven’t even thought to wonder where I am. I’m lucky to know
who
I am.

The boots pause and another pair joins them. Then three. Then four. And then it seems like there’s a crowd. More than ten is all I know. I hear male voices mostly, but there’s a female voice here and there.

One set of boots breaks away from the others and steps closer to me. Two feet. Four. Ten. Maybe twenty, away from everyone else. I realize I’m in a large room, cavernous and echoing. It smells like stale hay and pee. I’m on display.

As the boots get closer, a hand reaches out. It’s a man’s hand, with hair peppering the backs of the knuckles. With grimy fingernails and calluses on the fingertips, it reaches for me and touches my chin, lifting it. As it does, I close my eyes. The push of my neck bone up is pure agony. I choke on the rope, and he lets go of my neck.

“Open your eyes,” he says.

I do, slowly, and I find myself staring into yellow eyes filled with topaz flecks. My heart, which I fear had stopped, swells with hope.

Chase.

It’s
Chase
.

I want to say his name. But when I go to move my lips, nothing comes out. I’ve forgotten how to speak. But I’m okay now. I’ll be safe.

Chase has come take me away from this.

Someone in the crowd calls out.

The words don’t make any sense. My heart flutters in my chest, like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon, ready to be unleashed.

Whatever’s happened to me, the worst is over. He’s here.

He calls back to someone. “Yeah, you were right.” His eyes come back to me, and I realize they’re cold. Dark. Different. The crowd comes closer now. Boot heels on floor sound like the crack of a gun. And they’re all standing in front of me, watching my nakedness.

I expect Chase to beat them all to a pulp, but instead he lets one of them jostle him. It’s Frenchie, and he says something so quiet I can’t hear him. But enough of the crowd laughs, throaty sounds of vulgar nastiness.

I look up, forcing myself through the pain, needing to see him. Chase’s eyes comb over me from knee to head. I can only imagine what he sees. I want to cover myself. I want to run away. I want to be whole and pretty again for him. I want...

I want anything but this.

Then he puts his hand on my chin again. It’s rough. It doesn’t care about my pain.

And Chase says, “Oh, yeah. El Brujo’s gonna love her.”

* * *

Read the final book in the Breaking Away series right now:
Keeping Allie.
 

Keeping Allie (Breaking Away #3)
 

Help.

I’m alone, tied up, bleeding and terrified.

I’m a prisoner at the Atlas motorcycle club compound. Someone kidnapped me, and it looks like it’s Chase.

No one knows I’m here. Then again, I’m no one, right? No mother, no stepfather, and my sister may have been kidnapped, too. 

They can make me disappear. Or worse. It turns out there are worse things than disappearing. 

I thought Chase was my only hope.

Now he turns out to be my worst nightmare.

Something flickers in his eyes, though. A glimmer of love. If I can get him alone, maybe I can convince him to let me go. To let me live.

To let me go back to a time when I thought he was a good guy.

Only Chase has the power to make that happen.

Everything I am is in his hands right now.

And those hands are about to touch me.

A
LSO BY
M
ELI
R
AINE

Suggested Reading Order

Finding Allie
 

Chasing Allie
 

Keeping Allie
 

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Meli Raine rode her first motorcycle when she was five years old, but she played in the ocean long before that. She lives in New England with her family. Visit her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/meliraine 

Join her New Releases and Sales newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/beV0gf 

See all her books at her
Amazon author page
. 

Table of Contents

What if Romeo and Juliet had a happy ending?

Chasing Allie

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Also by Meli Raine

About the Author