I cried out in pain, feeling like I’d touched a live wire. My vision went white and my grip on his hand loosened. He twisted out from under me before I could regain my composure and reversed the hold, climbing onto my back like a monkey to put me in a headlock. The pressure from his arm squeezed my throat, cutting off my air. I turned my head into the crook of his arm, easing it a bit, then pushed up on my forearms, bringing my legs up. Balancing on my right hand, I brought my left elbow back, trying to connect with any part of him, but I missed.
Deke leaned back, putting more pressure on my windpipe. Stars danced in front of my eyes. I clawed at his arm, panic starting to set in.
“There it is,” Deke breathed in my ear. The cold, unemotional tone to his voice penetrated my panic and sent a shiver down my spine. He was enjoying this.
Blackness edged my vision, my muscles growing heavy.
“I had really hoped you’d put up a bigger fight. It’s not every day I get to fight a man so much bigger than myself and win.”
His words came to me like he spoke them from the end of a long tunnel. My brain understood I was losing. That my body, all six-feet-eight inches and two-hundred fifty pounds of it, was failing me when it mattered most.
He was going to win this. And when he did, he was going to walk out my front door.
Into a yard full of squawking chickens.
And Lana.
Sweet, beautiful, tenacious Lana.
The woman who’d found the hole in my armor and wiggled inside to plant herself in my heart.
I’d told her I didn’t want a relationship because I couldn’t handle losing someone I loved again. I’d built my life around that for the last six years.
And it had been a lie. The whole time, I’d lied to myself. Because right now, with Deke squeezing the life out of my lungs, the only thought going through my mind wasn’t that I didn’t want to die. It was that I didn’t want to leaveheralone to die.
Lana.
She was out there, alone except for Eloise, and if I lost, Deke would find her and do to her what he was doing to me.
No matter what, I lost her.
That was unacceptable.
Gathering every last ounce of strength I had, I used my height to my advantage. I leaned back into Deke’s hold until I was kneeling on the ground. Our size difference forced him to put his feet on the ground and balance if he wanted to maintain his hold on my neck. Grasping his forearm, I planted the toes of my right foot, turned my hips and tucked my shoulder to the right and drove sideways, flipping Deke over my shoulder.
He hit the ground with a thud.
I didn’t give myself time to suck in much needed gulps of air. Now running on pure adrenaline, I landed on top of him, pressing my left forearm to his throat while my right hand grasped his left to keep him from clawing at me. I pinned his other arm between my leg and his side.
For the first time since he showed up, I saw a flicker of something other than cold calculation in his eyes.
Now there was fear.
Good.
“You should have run,” I muttered through my teeth, my voice nothing more than a growl.
The back door banged open.
“Toren!”
God help me, I couldn’t stop the impulse to look up at the sound of Lana’s voice. My head snapped toward the door. She stood there flushed and wild-eyed in the entrance.
The half second I was distracted was all the time Deke needed.
He bucked under me, hard, gaining enough space to scramble backward. He hit the end table, sending the contents flying. The lamp crashed to the floor, shattering, and my hunting knife clattered onto the hardwood.
We both saw it at the same time, but he was closer. His hand closed around it, and he swung it forward, slashing at my ribs.
