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“He’s on our side,” Nita whispered shakily in his ear as she clung to his body.
“Montgomery?” he asked, stepping to see the man more clearly.
“Ganz recht,” Montgomery groaned. “Exactly.”
34
Nita’s body reacted with no thought. She’d tolerated Montgomery carrying her, but once she was in the familiar arms of Ryder, the last thing she wanted was for the smell and muck on her coat to touch him.
She twisted away from him, then attacked the waxy coat, grappling with the zipper and half whimpering when she couldn’t get it to budge.
“It’s pouring—” he murmured.
“I don’t, I don’t care. I can’t—” she stammered, feeling the zipper give a few inches. She struggled mindlessly, clawing at the small opening until the zipper lowered a little more. When her shoulder wiggled out of the small opening, followed by her arm, the putrid stench of decomposition wafted around her and she stumbled to the side of the driveway, throwing up the last of the contents of her stomach.
Ryder’s hands cupped her shoulders, and she cringed away from them, mortified that he would see her barfing her brains out.
“It’s me, darlin’, it’s just me. It’s okay, you’re okay,” Ryder soothed, and it registered that he was helping strip off the horrid coat. He leaned over her, around her, cradling her with his body from the rain, letting her retch up the terror of the last hour.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he kept murmuring, touching her but not touching her. Seeming to know exactly what she needed.
“It was a dead body,” she choked out when her stomach had finished spasming and she pushed back to sit on her knees. In a flash, Ryder pulled her onto his lap, protecting her from the hard, wet pavement. “I fell into some… some… shallow fucking grave.”
She heard her voice tremble, and she hated it, hated the weakness in it.
“A grave?” Ryder asked, his voice rumbling against her back. She could tell by the way his muscles tensed, he was looking at Montgomery.
She looked up as the rain poured down relentlessly, drenching her face. She took stock of herself, now that the awful coat was gone.
Her clothes were soaked, clinging to her body, and strangely enough, she only had one rubber boot on. She shivered as she thought of the other one back in the grave, on top of whatever… whoever was still there.
Not all of him is still there, she thought, and looked down at her arms, still muddy.
Trembling, she leaned away from Ryder’s protection and held her hands out in the rain. When that didn’t work fast enough, she scrambled off his lap and tried to scrape her arms against the water on the rough driveway, sobs of fear and trauma escaping her in ragged bursts.
“It won’t get off, it won’t—”
“Hey, hey,” he said, and suddenly he was wiping her arms with something black. His powerful hands scraped the fabric from her elbows to her wrists, pressed it against the wet driveway, then continued to clean. First her arms, then her hands, then between every finger. He even scooped under every fingernail, all the while he kept murmuring, “It’s gone, it’s gone.”
When her arms were raw but cleaned, she let him gather her against his bare chest, sobs rolling up and out of her. He enveloped her, his hands warm and firm against her back, as he stood them both up.
“I’ve got you,” Ryder whispered, his voice a rock that she swam toward. “You’re safe. Just breathe.”
After a time, she sniffled, wiping her tear-streaked face against his chest. She huffed out a small laugh when it didn’t help her tears dry.
She looked up at him through spiky lashes, lines around his wide eyes in an expression she’d never seen before. He looked haunted.
She reached a reddened hand to his cheek, touching it in a kind of wonder.
“Yeah, you’ve got me,” she agreed, letting out a shaky breath.
He nodded.
“I do,” he stated, and his eyes widened even more as he slid his hands into her hair. “Christ.”
He pulled her head against his cheek, kissing her temple, before pushing her face under his chin. His hand continued to smooth her hair back, his body trembling a little. She wrapped her arms around him and after a moment, she wrapped one leg around his, too.
“I’m not letting you go,” she whispered, and his arms convulsed around her. “At least not yet.”
