Page 74 of Savage Guardian

Tyler stiffed, his eyes narrowing. “Did you say…no?”

She didn’t reply.

He chuckled, low and menacing. “You can’t tell me no, girl. For this plan to work, you have to do your part. You’re going to sing for the camera, then we’re going to go somewhere quiet.”

Somewhere quiet…where he could dispose of her body.

Tremors shook her, making the restraints pull tighter. She hissed.

“Now, come on. Sing like the siren you are, my Aoibheal.” He moved to stand behind the camera as if she would fall in line.

“No.”

He halted mid-stride, his shoulders tensing. Slowly, he turned his head to look at her.

“No?” he said, his voice flat.

Terrified but not resigned, she spat, “No. Never. Kill me if you want, but I won’t let you use me to turn what I created into some twisted online video. I would rather Aoibheal go out as a slut and a bitch than a brutalized victim of a psycho stalker.”

He spun on his heel in a flash, his fist connecting with the side of her head, making her reel back with a cry. The next punch landed on her cheek. Then the other cheek. Stars glittered behind her eyes as she blinked away the darkness. Warmth trickled down the side of her face and pooled in her mouth. He’d made her bleed.

“Brutalized? I haven’t even begun being brutal,” he sneered.

Shaking her head, she tried to clear the haze, only making the throbbing ache from the point of contact on her face burst into sharp agony. Her breath caught at the pain.

“Now, you’ll do what I said, or you’ll get another one of those.”

Tears burned her eyes, her saliva turning to dust in her mouth.

Her voice shaking, she spit the blood from her mouth onto the flood near his feet. Then she said, “No.”

This time, he hit her in the stomach, making her double over as the air was forced from her lungs. Curled in on herself, she didn’t see him swing back and then punch her in the side. She hunched over in a flimsy but desperate attempt to protect her organs.

Wheezing, she attempted to suck in air, but the hand now around her throat made her choke.

“You think you’re being noble, that this will somehow make you a martyr or some shit? But all I wanted to do was make Aoibheal the star she deserved to be. The staryoudeserved to be, Fae. From that first moment I heard your voice, I knew it was my mission to raise you up, to bring you into the light, and now my mission is to share you and your music with the world. For as much as you have healed me…I couldn’t be selfish.Don’t be selfish, Fae,” he snapped, tightening his hold on her throat.

Black closed in, her vision blurring.

“You think your filthy biker will come to save you? He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t give a shit that you’re gone. With you out of the way, he can have Carrie, the one he wanted all along. You are nothing to him but a warm, easy pussy. From the minute he met you, he clocked you as the weak, shy, lonely sister, living in her prettier sister’s shadow. You played right into his hands.”

Even as the life was being squeezed from her body, his words hit her harder than his fist had.

He was right.

“Come on, man, if you kill her, she’s no good to you,” Teddy croaked from somewhere in the room.

Tyler grunted, his hand squeezing harder for a moment…before he loosened his hold and dropped his hand from her throat.

She dragged air through her abused throat and coughed at the pain. Panting, she closed her eyes and let the tears fall.

So much for bravery. So much for being a woman of dignity and strength in the end.

All her life she’d been nothing Fae, no one Fae, invisible Fae. Until she’d created Aoibheal, the avatar of what she wanted the world to see but was too chickenshit to show them. And now, she was seen; she was somebody, but that somebody was tied to a chair, at the mercy of a man who saw her…and fixated on her.

He was going to kill her.

I’m going to die.

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