Page 61 of Summer Ride

They struggled for a moment before she managed to kick him back a few steps.

He smiled, and his perfect white teeth gleamed in the light of the parking area. Then he rushed her again.

“Found you, bitch,” he growled as he tried to get a grip on her.

All of Aubrey’s self-defense lessons kicked in at once. She was still half seated in the front seat of her car, but she swung out, using her arms and legs as a barrier.

She knew the first rules of defense. Use your voice as a weapon. Use the weight of your body. Use your nails, your teeth, anything you can get your hands on. Fight like hell until you can’t fight.

So she did. She clawed at Axel as she screamed at the top of her lungs.

He was cursing and telling her in an excited voice that he had found her, over and over again.

If she’d thought about it, she would have remembered that there weren’t any other homes nearby to hear her screams. But she was too busy trying to stop him from pulling her out of the car. Too busy trying to defend herself against the blows as his fists flew at her head.

She knew his MO. He would get her someplace, tie her up, then use his knife to make her bleed before using her body.

None of that was going to happen this time.

“You bitch,” he spat out after she left a large gash on his cheek with her nails. She shoved her palm hard upward, straight into his nose, causing it to snap. Blood gushed down over his lips. He was bleeding. Good.

“You’re mine,” he growled as he slowly moved towards her. “I’m going to enjoy showing you just how good the doctors stitched me up.” He grinned. “You’ll be the first that gets to see just what I can do now.” He spit blood on the ground.

He rushed towards her again, his hands swiping out, trying to lock onto her wrists.

She kept fighting, kicking out towards his groin, towards any weakness, using her thigh strength to push and kick his body away from hers.

He fell backwards onto the cement floor and then suddenly changed tactics. He moved quickly over towards Carter, and she watched in horror as he slid a large blade out of his pants. The light reflected off the knife and she froze.

“Don’t!” she screamed as his arm arched upward and hovered over Carter.

Without thinking, she jumped out of the car and covered Carter’s unconscious body with her own.

“You don’t get to hurt him,” she screamed, and she blocked the knife’s downward motion with her arms.

She felt the sting of the blade, but it wasn’t the first cut that she’d suffered at his hands, and she quickly recovered to kick out. She swiped her legs against his shins, and he crumpled and fell backwards.

The knife clattered to the ground, and she kicked hard and watched it slide under the car with satisfaction.

Not giving him time to recover, she jumped on top of Axel and held him down, pinning her knees to his chest as she plowed her fists into his face over and over again.

She heard bones snap, felt his skin break under her blows. Her own knuckles turned numb as she continued to hit him. When she heard gurgling noises coming from his chest, she put more power behind each blow as if the sound was an encouragement that she was winning.

He groaned and begged her to stop. Still, she didn’t even slow down. Each blow she gave him was locked with a memory.

She slammed her fist to his left cheek for payback the first time that he raped her. The next one was for when he’d raped Britney while she’d been tied to a chair and had forced her to watch. The next one was for when he killed Britney and forced her to bury her in the desert. She felt her knuckles crunch his nose. It was almost completely flat now as his blood spurt over her clothes, over her face, in her hair.

“That one was for Abigail,” she screamed as she hit him just above his left ear as he turned his face away from her.

She hadn’t realized that she’d been speaking out loud each time she’d punched him until she was screaming.

“This is for hurting Carter,” she said, a little breathless now. Her throat was raw from screaming, and she was pretty sure she’d broken a couple knuckles, which were raw and bleeding.

She heard Carter groan behind her and turned slightly to see if he was okay. That split second when she was distracted, Axel bucked and jolted underneath to finally dislodge her.

Too late, she tried to gain control again. They wrestled one another, rolling back and forth. For several feet they fought, each one trying to get control until, finally, he grabbed her wrist and she felt her bone snap.

She cried out and felt her entire body go limp with pain.