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She hadn’t expected that question. At least he understood that she had to attempt escape.
“The sky.”
He looked up, and if he hadn’t had her arms held down, she might have tried to punch him, but the odds weren’t in her favor this time.Don’t escalate the situation anymore. Get away if you can, but don’t escalate. Wait for the next opportunity.
But she feared she’d only get the one opportunity. And now it was gone, lost because she couldn’t help being swept away by the awe-inspiring beauty of nature. No city lights. No city noise. No dark buildings threatening to crush her. Just the sky and the stars and a million brilliant tiny white flowers glowing in the moonlight.
“You’ll love the ranch. This is our sky.”
She didn’t say anything to that because anyone who would do something like this had to be so mad she couldn’t trust anything he said. He helped her to her feet and led her back to the truck. She didn’t try to pull away; his grip was far too tight for that.
“Am I in trouble?” She didn’t know how else to phrase it—how else to ask him if there would be retaliation for running.
“It was my fault for being distracted. You were going to follow your nature. But you won’t have another opportunity like that.”
When he got her secured in the truck, he noticed the bloody trails down her arms.
“Trees got you pretty bad. I’ve got something for that.” He rummaged through the truck bed and came back with a first aid kit. “Hold your arms out.”
There was nothing left to do but try to appease him and pretend she’d learned her lesson. He took a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the case and poured it over the cuts.
“Ow.”
“Some of these are a little deep. It only stings for a minute.” Then he did the craziest thing. He leaned in and blew on her arms, like a mother trying to soothe the sting on a child’s scraped knee—not that she’d ever had that kind of mother. But she’d seen them in commercials.
Only one of her arms was scraped badly enough to wrap in gauze, but she still felt like a mummy when he’d finished. Then he got back in the driver’s side and started the truck up.
“We’re two hours from the ranch,” he said, as if putting a fine point on the fact that her last chance to escape had just slipped past.
In the thirty minutes they’d been at the rest stop, not one other vehicle had come by.
* * *
It wastwo o’clock in the morning when they reached the ranch. The white house stood two stories with a wraparound porch on the bottom floor as well as on the top, creating an extended second-story balcony. There were two doors on the second floor that opened out onto the shared balcony.
“The room on your left is mine. You’ll sleep in the other room,” Luke said.
“I get my own room?” She wanted to smack herself for asking that question.
“I told you I’d take care of you.” He hadn’t actually said those words, but he seemed to feel the implication had been heavy. “You’ll get to see more tomorrow in daylight. It’s late. We usually go to bed a lot earlier than this.”
He came over to her side and opened her door. Before he untied her, he took her shoes. “Wouldn’t want you to run off now, would we?”
After he’d untied her, he turned his back and went up to the front porch. “Coming, princess?”
Veronica stepped gingerly out of the truck and slammed the door. It was hard to see in the dark, even as big as the sky and as bright as the moon. She stood in the dirt by the truck, looking off into the night, wondering how far she’d have to go to reach rescue. She took a few tentative steps toward the unknown blackness and stopped, afraid to go farther in bare feet.
“Better than an electric fence,” he said, as if she were an unruly poodle.
She took a few more steps away from him. The fear of what she’d encounter, what might slither over her foot or bite her, or what broken glass or rusty nail she might step on, was enough that she wouldn’t go far, but his words had made it impossible for her to stop yet. Was she really more afraid of walking on the ground without shoes than of this man? So far, yes. That answer might be different later when it was too late.
“What are you going back to?” he taunted. “A motel room until the money runs out? Then where? On the streets? In a ditch? Under a bridge? Giving blow jobs in back alleys to buy groceries?”
She turned back toward him but didn’t move from her spot. “Will I be doing that here?”
Luke looked thoughtful. “I haven’t decided what you’ll do, but I can promise you’ll love every second of it.”
Something low in her stomach twinged against her will at that statement. She turned back toward the blackness and took another couple of steps.
