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Chapter 12
NIKLAS
I look at my broken front door and curse. The cold is already getting in the house, the fire is off.
It’s dark, but I have to put her down to turn on the light. I lay her gently on the sheepskin in front of the fireplace, cursing again at the irony of the situation and the fucked up dejá vu.
After I check the damage to the front door, I drape a leftover piece of plywood and cover the hole where a window used to be.
I hurry back to Suki, and I can’t help but let out the faintest gasp. That motherfucker did a number on her. The left side of her face is red and slightly swollen, her right temple is bleeding. I look at her bare, soft, pale legs and I turn her gently on her side.
“Fuck!” I’m seething. Her beautiful legs are marked by bloody scrapes and red lines. I know the fucker hit her and dragged her through the fucking snow, but seeing her body like this… I curse violent promises under my breath.
She moans again, the softest sound. I thought she was coming back to reality, but she isn’t. She shivers and gathers her body, rolling into a ball on the sheepskin. I take that as a cue and shift to the fireplace so I can build the fire, but halfway through the process I decide it’s not enough, and I head upstairs after I cover her cold body with the blanket.
When I come back downstairs, she’s in the exact same position, still unconscious, and I scoop up her battered body, carrying her upstairs to the bathroom. The bathtub is halfway full by the time I lay her gently on the floor right next to it, and the steam from the hot water is already calming her shivering body.
I undress myself first, then gently pull off every single item of clothing covering her body, before I finish with the boots.
I can’t stop looking at her. So many fucking battle scars from this motherfucker. No matter how many times I see her naked body, I can’t seem to get used to the idea. On the contrary, my anger grows, my demons howl in hunger for the savage that did this to her.
I gather her in my arms, step into the bathtub and lay her down, feet first, before sitting behind her and gathering her between my legs, her back against my chest, her head resting on my right shoulder.
“Niklas...” she whispers, and I swear to the fucking gods something shifts in my brain, almost like it’s getting rewired, like voice fucking recognition getting used to its user. Those letters flowing from her pretty, pale lips sound like they invented my name themselves, almost like it never really existed before she put those letters together. Fucking surreal.
I take a deep, slow, strained breath, and I feel her shifting in my arms.
“You’re okay, Suki. You’re okay.”
“Niklas?” she finally sounds like she’s waking up. I shift a bit so I can see her face. Grabbing a sponge, I start cleaning the blood from her temple as she’s slowly coming back to reality.
“Thank you…” she tells me in her tired voice as her sleepy, gorgeous, bright eyes knock down more walls inside of me. She shifts, lies back in the middle of my chest, and I loosen my grip on her body. She slides down until everything but her face is underwater—lying there, in-between my legs, almost floating in this big bathtub, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. I let her be, but I can’t take my eyes off her.
She’s mesmerizing, like a true fucking siren, her dark hair dancing gently in the water that’s turned pink with our blood.
“For a man that wants to hurt me, you seem to be saving me quite a lot.”
She’s right and isn’t that fucking ironic. “For a woman that keeps running from me, you seem to seek me quite a lot.” She stiffens in the water at my words. Like she only just realized that she’s been calling my name for real, not just in her mind.
I wrap my arm around her ribs, under her boobs again and pull her onto me. She doesn’t protest, but she winces in pain and I groan. Only her head is out of the water, the rest of her is safely tucked away in the warmth of the bath.
“What happened?” It wasn’t hard to figure it out, but it’s my detached way of asking her if she’s okay.
She sighs, “He saw us…”
It’s not fear that I hear in her voice. It’s… annoyance. “What?!” my tone harsher than I intend.
“In the woods… when you chased me… when you pinned me down and…”
“Fucked you?” I finish for her.
She sighs again, “Then too…”
“Motherfucker…” I mouth. That bastard watched us, all this time he knew where she was, and I was the asshole that couldn’t protect her. I’m also the asshole that wasn’t supposed to protect her. This is not why I brought her here, she wasn’t supposed to be mine to protect…
“What now?” she asks. There’s no fear in her voice, no emotion, just a matter of fact type question.
“I will kill him. Your life… He has no claim to it.”
