Chapter 9 Hazy Blue

— 9 —

HAZY BLUE

Gemma

THE AIR IS on fire, but racing down the highway keeps it moving, providing some relief as it breezes across my face. Motorcycle Man's body is a furnace, but the steady thumping of his heart is strangely calming.

It's infuriating.

This is the first time I've felt anything resembling a moment's peace in weeks, months… maybe years.

Has it been years since I felt peace?

It's a false sense of peace, though. In reality, it's a moment of deception. It's my own desperation for a second of relief from the rage and fear that always threaten to consume me.

Peace is a good feeling… And good feelings are dangerous when they come from someone else because they always demand something in return. I can only imagine what this man will demand from me.

I won't let this moment fool me.

He's just like all the rest—a dangerous man who thinks I owe him something.

I owe him nothing .

If anything, he owes me a free ride back to that rock formation and the courtesy of a weapon I can use to carve out Seb's heart while it's still beating. For good measure, I might just carve out Motorcycle Man's heart and shove it up his ass because the way it calms me is so damn irritating.

I have to stop listening to the way it thump, thump, thumps inside his ribcage. Once we've reached a steady speed on a straight lane of highway, I ease my grip on him, and slowly, carefully pull away. Then we hit a small bump, and my fingers curl, clinging to the sides of his shirt as I stifle a yelp.

"Hold on tight, little flamingo."

I lift my eyes to meet his with annoyance, but the stunning blue in his hazy-gray gaze stops me.

Goddammit.

He's staring out at the highway, and I can't help but stare at him. I thought he looked less like my teenage wet dream before.

Cue the old Katy Perry song…

I'm pissed off that he was blessed with handsome features, but that's how nature works. My scientific area of expertise is astrophysics, but I'm not ignorant of the biological principles that make the strongest and most virile of the species the most attractive. But the most powerful, most handsome men aren't always the best men. Some of the worst of mankind are the most beautiful creatures.

Looking up at my kidnapper, I try to make his features ugly. I try to hate how plump and soft his lips look; I try to find disgust in the hard, chiseled lines of his jaw. I try to convince myself that the snide smirk reminds me of Seb and his haughty grin, though it doesn't.

I should be screaming at him to stop, trying to hit him, trying to hurt him, trying to do anything that would make him slow down so I can jump off and get away.

I have to get away.

I have to go back.

Seb was right there… It was as though all the stars in the universe had aligned in some strange cosmic intervention so I could commit my final act of violent revenge.

And then this asshole showed up and ruined everything.

He's a violent criminal.

He's going to hurt you, Gem.

My inner voice speaks with reason, though it's treasonously faint. The swirling blue nebulas in his eyes are so bewitching, they could hypnotize me against good sense.

He glances down at me, just long enough for his eyes to meet mine through a maddening beat of false alliance. I quickly blink away to sever the connection. But then I feel his open palm curve around the back of my head to pull me in, to press my face toward his chest again, but I immediately resist his demanding hand. We struggle back and forth, fighting each other until the bike swerves, making a quick jog to my right.

His hand finally falls away—I assume to grab the long handlebar as he quickly gains control of the motorcycle. Then he decelerates, slowing the bike to a steady crawl. The engine rumbles with a pulsing rhythm, like it has its own heartbeat.

He raises his voice so I can hear him over the roar. "Are you trying to get us both killed?"

"Are you ? Don't touch me like that again."

"Kinda hard not to."

He's not exactly wrong, given the way my arms and legs are wrapped around him, but it's not as though I'm sitting here by choice. It'd be easier for both of us if I were sitting behind him, facing forward, but that's not what I want. What I want is to get the fuck off this bike and get away from him.

"Stop for a minute, let me move behind you." I have no intention of moving behind him if he stops.

He's rolling along at a slow but steady speed, steady enough to give me a look with the tilt of his head. "Do you think I'm stupid?"

"As far as I can tell, you're a man. Same thing, right?"

I deliver the insult and reflexively draw back. My mind is hypervigilant, preparing my body for a violent retaliation in this powerless moment.

Powerless?

He doesn't retaliate.

Instead, he grins.

His smile is wide and handsome, showing genuine amusement. His smile could have me fooled into thinking there's no malice lurking behind it. My four killers would grin at me just as wide, but I think I could always see the violence hiding behind the false charm—even in the beginning. And if I can't even see it in this man, then he must be more dangerous than they ever were.

He's dangerous…

But I'm not powerless.

The bike is moving slow enough that I could jump, and if I land just right, I'd be able to run away with nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises. I decide to test my balance. Slowly, I pull back, unwrapping my arms from his waist. I watch his face as I unwrap, see his eyes flicker back and forth between me and the highway as his smile fades.

"I know what you're doing." He rolls the throttle to increase our speed, and the lurch of acceleration throws me against his chest again. I can't jump at this speed, but with me between him and the handlebars, he can't easily control the machine at this speed, either.

I'm not powerless…

I know how to take back control.

Instead of wrapping my arms around his waist to hold on, I bring them between us, sliding my palms up his chest. I bunch the fabric of his black shirt, gripping it over his pecs, and hold myself against him. I gaze up at him, lock my stare on his ridiculously beautiful eyes, and set my intention on distraction.

If he's distracted enough, he'll naturally slow his speed.

I stare until he glances away from the road and meets my eyes. I keep staring while they dance back and forth between me and the highway, as he holds each look longer and longer. I pull down on his shirt as I lift my face closer to his, lengthening my spine. And when his eyes hold mine as long as two heartbeats, I plant the ultimate distraction on his lips with mine.

A soft, deceitful kiss for a lonely, dangerous outlaw.

A means of distraction and nothing more.

It's "nothing more" that buzzes electric in the pit of my stomach.

His guttural groan vibrates through my lips, and that's… good. It's good because it tells me the distraction is working. That, and the fact that his speed reduces drastically for the few seconds I hold my lips to his.

He slows nearly enough for me to jump, but I need a gut-punch moment first—something that will distract him long enough for me to unwrap my legs. I drag my lips from his and lean back, noticing the way he naturally leans with me.

Stuck his whole damn face in that sticky honey trap, didn't he?

I lay it on thick, smother him with it, give him bedroom eyes, parted lips, and a breathy whisper that has him slowing to a crawl. "I wanted to do this from the moment I saw you…" I slowly draw back my right knee.

He lowers over me as I lean away. "Don't tell me lies, baby."

Baby…

The way he says it grinds my teeth.

I tighten my grip on his shirt as I inch my right leg back a little more. I'm nearly lying back on the fuel tank, and he's right there with me, practically on top of me. "I'm not lying, blue eyes."

He comes to a sudden stop, dropping his black boots to the concrete to balance the machine. I can't tell if calling him blue eyes made him horny or angry… but neither really swings in my favor. Regardless, my leg is where I need it now, so this is my moment.

"Honestly," I whisper, tugging at his shirt to pull him closer, to tilt him off-balanced from his center of mass. "From the second I saw you watching me, I wanted to do this more than anything."

With a single, forceful motion, I push, throwing him backward as I pull my right knee to my chest. Then, I thrust my leg out in front of me, slam my foot into the center of his chest, striking him hard in the sternum. I hear the air rush out of him on impact.

He falls backward, and I twist, rolling toward my left leg and off the bike. I try to catch myself on my feet, but the bike falls in the opposite direction, the unexpected motion knocking me off balance. I land on my hip, but I'm ready for the impact, letting my body roll through it. Then I scramble to my feet and whip around, expecting to see him lunge for me. Instead, I see him flat on his back with one leg sandwiched between the fallen motorcycle and the pavement.

But he's not completely pinned.

He's already fighting to free his leg.

And his face is twisted in rage.

Fuck.

I turn away from him and run, ditching the highway to sprint into the open desert… The vast, open, barren terrain.

There's nothing to run to.

There's no place to hide.

What do I do? Where do I go?

Just run, Gem.

I keep running, even when I hear his footfalls in the dirt behind me, the sound of his boots plodding after me. I'm panting, fighting for a replenishing breath against the consuming heat.

The heat, the hunger, the adrenaline fatigue of this fucking exhausting day—it all weighs me down and eases me back.

I feel like he has a lasso around my waist, and he holds it taut; he doesn't pull me to a stop, but he doesn't allow me to move, either. It feels like running in place as his steps grow louder and he closes the distance between us.

It's not long before I feel his hands graze my arms.

He throws his arms around me from behind and tugs me to a stop. The abrupt movement unbalances us both, and though he tries to keep us upright, the way I struggle against his hold knocks us sideways. We land together on our hips, both of us groaning at the painful impact.

Then, he's on top of me in a flash, twisting me onto my belly, straddling my hips to pin me down against the dry, cracked earth. I can't move, can't crawl out from beneath him. Being trapped under his weight unsettles me, but it's the way he slaps his palm to my cheek and presses my face into the dirt that disturbs me.

There's a growling vibration in his tone that intimidates me. "Feisty little scrapper, aren't you?"

Panting, he removes his hand from my cheek to grip my wrists. I struggle beneath him, but he easily wrestles my arms behind me as he sits on my ass, holding them together at the small of my back.

"No…" I grind the word between my teeth.

I fought.

I ran.

I tried.

I lost.

I'm not powerless…

I am powerless.

Every time I think I have it, a man takes it from me.

I liberate the primal roar that's been building in my gut, scream it out with a blast of heat from my lungs.

I hate this world.

I hate this place as much as I hated my life before.

I hate men and the way they hurt me.

I hate the way they steal from me, break me, make me bleed.

This hatred doesn't fuel me the way it used to. Instead, it fills me with shame, exhausts me with guilt for the fact that I've once again found myself powerless to a man.

I'm here because I chose to be. I'm here because I was so desperate for revenge that I lost myself in violence. It's my fault. I chose to kill them—

No.

It's their fault, not mine.

It's what they did to me that brought me here.

Their fault or mine, I've failed all the same.

Unexpected tears fill my eyes. "Take me back..." My voice cracks. "Take me back and let me kill him."

"I'm not taking you back." He doesn't move; he just sits there, straddling my hips, holding me down.

I stifle the sobs, but I can't hold back the tears as they flow from my eyes, dripping from my cheek, falling to the ground, and are drunk by the thirsty earth.

He shifts my wrists, holds them both in one large hand, and I flinch as the other touches my forehead. A fingertip drags my hair back from my sweat-soaked skin, and then he strokes my hair… With a gentle hand, he fucking strokes my hair.

"That's good, baby. Just be still. Everything will be okay."

It's silent beyond his voice until the faint rumble of an engine fades in from a distance, the volume gradually increasing.

"You hear that? Vultures are on the way. We'll get back on the road soon."

"Take me back." My voice is quiet, and it shakes. "Take me back or—"

"Or what?"

"Or kill me." I spit the words with forced fury that tries to mask my pain.

"I already told you I'm not taking you back." His knuckles stroke down the side of my cheek. "And you're no good to me dead."

I'm no good to him dead?

I don't know if it's the words or the hopelessness of my situation that completely undoes me, but I can no longer hold back the pathetic sobs that ache for me to unleash them—so I let them out. I let myself cry, embarrassingly loud and long. I let despair have me.

"That's it," he soothes. "Let it all out, professor ."

With the speed of a lightning strike, despair retreats.

Professor.

That's the word that brings me back, that snaps me out of sorrow and drenches me in rage.

I'm not a professor .

I never got to be a professor because of them.

They broke me so tragically, so effectively, that no amount of therapy or rehabilitation could ever fix me. Seb said it to hurt me, and this no-name Motorcycle Man is doing the same.

My jaw tenses as I force a warning out from between my grinding teeth. "Don't call me that again."

He bends over me and his lips graze my cheek as he whispers, "I'll call you whatever I want, professor ."

My head jerks up from the ground as I try to bash his fucking nose with the side of my face. He rises quickly, and I miss him by a mile. With my eyes turned, I can see him smiling down at me from where he sits, perched on my ass.

Before long, three dark shadows block the sun, slowly moving over me. It's the men from the truck—the three who stood between me and Seb, holding their weapons as Motorcycle Man dragged me away.

I quickly take stock of my situation.

One man is holding me down.

Three men are watching me.

Four men are about to take everything from me all over again.

A flood of traumatic memories wash over me, forcing fear to take hold of me. In a sudden panic, I use every muscle to thrash beneath him, fighting like hell to get out from under him as I scream, "No!"

He flips me over beneath his spread legs and brings my hands in front of me. I swing my arms, try to punch him, hit him, slap him, scratch him, but he's so much stronger than me. He brings my hands between his legs, presses down on my wrists to hold them steady against my waist. Then a new deluge of fearful tears fill my eyes, and everything becomes blurry. The four men become faceless, nameless… Dark shadows of the men from my past who still haunt me.

Is it all happening again?

Am I dead? Is this hell?

Am I doomed to suffer this nightmare forever?

Motorcycle Man lifts his head to look at one of the men. "Did you find two more girls at the Crevice?"

That same man—whose face is blurred behind a sheen of tears—moves in close and takes a knee beside me. He touches one of my wrists and I flinch, jerking away. But then another man on the opposite side of me bends, too, helping them hold my hands together. They wrap something plastic around my wrists—a cable tie—and pull it tight.

"No, no, no…" My head shakes slowly from side to side.

It's all happening again…

"Yep," one of them says as he rises to his feet. "Got two girls at the Crevice, plus the one we took from the lawless men on the highway before… And your runner here makes four."

I know they mean me. I'm the runner.

Four hands grip my wrists, my arms, and hoist me to my feet. I blink my eyes as much as I can, trying to clear away the tears, but no matter how much I dry them, reality remains a hellish blur.

A waking nightmare.

These men may as well be my killers—my delirious mind can't seem to tell the difference.

It's Seb standing in front of me.

No… That's not right.

It's Motorcycle Man.

"Did you get her bag?" He tucks my hair behind my ears, runs his hands down my shoulders.

"It's in the cab," someone says.

"Did any of the Reborn follow you?"

"Nah. Santi slammed the back of that blond dickwad's knee pretty good, and they were more concerned about him than us."

Blond dickwad…

Seb?

"Did you break his leg?" Motorcycle Man asks.

"I don't think so."

"Swing harder next time." He grabs my bound hands and lifts them up high, setting my wrists on his shoulders as he steps into me. Then he dips, lifts, and hoists me up over his shoulder. "Let's get back on the road. Pick up my bike and help me put her on behind me."

"She can go in the cab. Tucker can ride in the truck bed with the dead guys."

"Why do I always have to ride with the dead guys?"

"No," Motorcycle Man snaps. His hand lands on my ass, and he squeezes. "She rides with me."

I'm so out of it, so lost in this frightening daydream, that I can't even muster a reaction—no anger, no great expression of sorrow, not even a smart-ass, sarcastic quip in response.

I fucking hate it.

I feel like a ghost reliving my haunted past.

Maybe this fate is inevitable.

Maybe I cheated death when I survived my killers.

Maybe I'm doomed to relive the hell they made until they finally succeed in ending my life.

What's the point of fighting destiny?

I retreat into my mind, find a dark corner to hide in, and focus on the shifting shadows. It's always black here in the darkness where I hide, but now the purity of darkness is tainted with swirls of hazy blue, dancing to an old song by Katy Perry about a Teenage Dream that speaks of a life I never got to live.

It speaks of an intense passion I could never hope to feel, and a love that could never endure in a world ruled by men.

I start to cry again, pathetic as I've ever been.

I'm breaking my own heart. That voice inside my head is destroying whatever's left of my soul. It tells me to give up, to give in, to accept my weakness and the inevitability of my death. It tells me to let them inflict their irreversible damage because fighting back didn't save me the first time—not really.

It didn't matter that I killed the men who hurt me.

It didn't make me stronger.

It didn't give me back my power.

It only brought me to this world, where all the worst men are gathered and needy, aching and desperate to defile me without consequence.

And that's exactly what these men will do.