She escaped from his hold only to be snatched again by a hand as unbending as stone. He hauled her back so forcibly her trapped limb felt as if it pulled from the socket.
Gathering her wrists, he held her against his chest, his mouth a severe slash. “My name is Luke Sanch.”
“I don’t give a fuck! It’s too late.” She bucked, her vision smearing with tears. “Let me go!”
“You will hear this.” He shook her until her head tipped back and her watery gaze snapped to his. “I lived on the streets in Texas until I was nineteen. Until I was abducted, snatched off the park bench where I slept, by a small-town sex trafficker.” He lowered his face to hers. “He raped me in his attic for eight weeks. Whipped me every day until I learned how to enjoy giving head and getting fucked in the ass. Then he sold me to a monster for six figures.”
Good God. Her heart surged and spilled over in waves of denial. “You’re lying.”
“His name is Van Quiso. I was his fourth captive. Tomas, number three, escaped before I arrived. The day I was delivered to the man who’d bought me, Tomas—along with Van’s other escapees—showed up, shot my buyer, and took me in. That was eight years ago.”
“You had sex with a man? You?” She laughed upon a slapping breeze, her pulse stammering and mind whirling in flux. “How can I possibly believe anything you say?”
“Listen. Hear me. Then decide.” He released her and ran a hand over the top of his head as though it might arrange the order of his thoughts.
“You have five minutes.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“I’ll see your defensive posture and raise you fifteen minutes.”
“Eight.”
“Ten. It’s a complicated story.” A rough finger crooked beneath her chin, forcing her head to turn so he could examine her swollen jaw. “Then I have a man to kill.”
“Just spit it out.” She knocked his hand away.
A crease appeared between his copper brows. He dragged a palm down his face, over his mouth, and stared off in the distance. Then he started talking.
He told her about a woman named Liv Reed, who gave birth to Van’s baby in captivity. Van’s father stole the child to control Liv. She became Van’s accomplice. A captive-turned-captor. From there, the tale spun into the far-fetched land of make-believe, packed full of courageously gruesome misadventures about how Van’s nine slaves escaped then befriended their captors. Afterward, they all banded together with the Colombian cartel to take down other sex traffickers.
Freedom fighters, he called them. As part of this vigilante group, he said they infiltrated the darkest corners of the world and fought evil-doers outside the boundaries of the law.
Seriously.
His story had no merit. Nothing he said sounded sane or credible in the slightest. What kind of fool did he take her for?
He was a liar and criminal. She’d encountered enough of them, so full of their own poison they couldn’t fathom how a woman could resist drinking the Kool-Aid and falling in line.
“This isn’t Gotham City, Batman.” Her head pounded. “I live in reality.”
“Open your mind.” He stepped into her space and, for a moment, the sliver of air between them seemed to lengthen, over-stretched and fragile, like a strand of hair pulled too taut.
She felt vulnerable beneath the masterful demand of his stare, his breath, the way he controlled her time and space. His proximity did terrible things to her heart and the temperature of her skin. Like a hallucinogenic, he altered her senses. A temporary high.
“Your ten minutes expired ten minutes ago.” She stepped back.
“Listen to me, goddammit!”
“I am listening. You sound like a lunatic.”
“You think I’m making this shit up? For what purpose?” He angrily threw his hands in the air. “I’m risking everything—my life, Tomas’ life, our mission, the freedom of every woman here—to tell you the truth.”
“Then you’re a fucking moron.”
“Jesus Christ!” He grabbed at his hair and pulled, growling through clenched teeth. “You are so…”
“What?” She fed on his seething rage and flung it right back, screaming, “What am I?”
“Frustrating beyond words. Stubborn as a mule. The most irritating, hardheaded, quarrelsome creature I’ve ever met.”
“Why are you here, Luke?”
He went still, eyes locked on hers, the anger draining from his posture. “I knew the reason… I thought I knew. Until now.” He blinked, and his eyebrows furrowed. “It seems every path I’ve taken, every decision I’ve made, all of it was meant to lead me here just so I could hear my name pronounced on your tongue.”
Her lungs tightened, requiring a gulp. And another.
He drifted closer and touched her cheek. “Say it again.”
She wet her lips, slipping, spiraling, losing her soul to four letters. “Luke.”
“What are you doing to me?” He sought her with his hands, fingers gliding, fisting in her hair.