Fractured Sky (Tattered & Torn #5)(73)

Ramsey’s fingers traced up my thighs, igniting more sparks. All I wanted was for those sparks to catch flame. His hands hooked under my legs, lifting them so nothing shielded me from his view.

His thumb traced closer as his eyes came to mine. I spoke before he had a chance to ask. “Yes.”

Ramsey grinned. A moment later, his tongue was circling that bundle of nerves. I nearly bowed off the bed. The sparks inside me intensified, so many I lost track of where they landed.

A single finger slid inside me, and my hips shifted to meet it. Ramsey’s tongue circled closer to exactly where I wanted him most as his finger moved in and out of me. But I wanted more. Some part of me knew that what I craved was fullness, a completeness—one that would only come with one thing.

Ramsey added a second finger. There was a slight stretch, but I barely noticed it in my search for more. My fingers dug into his shoulders. “Ramsey.”

He seemed to read it all with just his name. His fingers moved faster as his tongue flicked over my clit. Light danced across my vision, and those sparks turned to flames—a wildfire that cascaded over my body in wave after wave. I lost track of everything around me until, finally, I slowly came back to myself.

Ramsey grinned down at me as his fingers slid from my body. “That a good enough distraction for you?”

A laugh bubbled out of me. “I don’t think there’s a single thought in my brain.”

But that wasn’t entirely true. There were words to the warmth that still swirled around me. Ones I was still too scared to give voice to. But I felt them. And I knew they were the forever kind.





I held my hand up to shield my eyes from the sun as I looked across the round pen. “All right, girl. I’m sure you’ve had bad experiences with this kind of thing before, but I promise, I’m not going to hurt you.”

Onyx stared back at me, a look of challenge in her eyes.

We’d made tremendous progress over the past few weeks. She was wearing a halter now. I’d gotten her comfortable with the saddle blanket and the soft brush. But the lead rope was something else altogether. And I needed her good with it before we could move her to the pasture with some of the other horses.

“I want to make sure you have friends. You want that, too, don’t you?”

She only blinked at me.

I sighed, staring down at the rope in my hands. “I bet he was cruel with this.” I took the rope and wrapped it around my shoulders. “See? No pain.”

Onyx shifted her weight from hoof to hoof.

I ran my hands up and down the synthetic fibers, trying to convince her. Nothing about Onyx’s posture changed. In fact, it worsened. She pawed at the ground, making sounds of distress.

I instantly backed up, throwing the lead rope to the side. “Okay, no rope. That’s okay. You’ll let me know when you’re ready.”

“Should’ve known you were a weak-ass little bitch.”

I whirled at the sound of Kenny Chambers’ voice. But he’d already grabbed hold of my hair, yanking hard.

I tried to twist my body so I could use my knee and shoot for his groin.

But the sting of a blade pricked my neck.

“Don’t fuckin’ move. You think you can steal from me? My horses? My boys? And then you get a restraining order on me?!”

My ribs closed tightly around my lungs. I couldn’t suck in air. I tried to think, to come up with a plan, but nothing came to mind.

Kenny gripped my hair tighter. “What? Got nothin’ to say now?”

The bite of pain made my eyes water. “You hurt me, and you’ll never see the outside of a prison cell.”

His hand released my hair and went straight for my neck, squeezing. “You’re a message. I’ll leave your body for that halfwit of a boyfriend to find, and then I’m going to Mexico.”

Darkness played at the corners of my vision as I struggled to breathe. Flashes of the shed and Howard Kemper’s hand around my throat flared to life. I slammed my elbow back into Kenny’s gut. He howled in pain, the knife dropping to the ground.

Onyx reared, letting out a whinny.

I whirled and kicked, landing a solid blow to his ribs. But it wasn’t enough. Kenny was on me in a flash. He knocked me down and then clambered on top of me, his hands closing around my neck again.

There was no air as I thrashed. Flashes of sky caught my vision, but as my world went dark, I knew even they wouldn’t be enough to save me.





36





RAMSEY





Kai whined at me, and I sent him a pointed look. “You’re the one who wanted to come with me.”

Usually, he stuck close to Shiloh, but when he saw me pulling out the fencing gear this afternoon, he’d come straight to my side. He knew it meant that he’d have a chance to run in the woods while I repaired the fence line. But he’d soon gotten bored and had been whining at me to move back in the direction of the barn.

“You can go on your own. You know that, right?”

Kai barked.

He wanted all his people together. I didn’t blame him. “One more rail, and we’ll head back.”

My phone buzzed, and I tugged it from my pocket. The app for my Halo system flashed an alert. I tapped on the screen. It was a motion sensor on one of the cameras. My gut tightened as I pulled up the feed.