“You tried to rob me!”
I couldn’t tell if that was a statement or a question, so I just remained silent. Plus, my body was still thrumming from his kisses, and he seemed to have just been awakened from a lust filled trance. Did he have split personalities or something? Was one personality the normal Gabe, while the other, Hulk Gabe?
I couldn’t even let my mind think about his strength right now or else I would scream, and maybe I wouldn’t be able to stop.
“Why?” He asked.
I shook my head and looked away from him. I couldn’t take the force of his midnight gaze any longer. This must have angered him, because he closed the gap between us, grabbing my chin, not too hard but with enough strength to get my attention. He turned my head back toward him so that there was nowhere else for me to look but into his dark abyss.
“Why?” He yelled down in my face. I jumped squeezing my eyes shut. It was too much! He was too much! His anger was too much! The lump in my throat was so big, I was now having a problem breathing, so I began to wheeze, or maybe hyperventilate.
I was dying! My air passage seemed to be getting smaller by the second. My chest felt tight and each draw of breath burned.
“Yasmin!” He said as his touch loosened. “Baby calm down, I’m not going to hurt you!”
I heard him speaking but it sounded as if he was talking from a distance. My gasping got more intense as I really began to struggle for the next breath. He reached up over my head and yanked the chain. It came out the wall as if it had been a string and not thick metal. I stared wide eyed as it crashed to the floor bringing some of the ceiling with it.
“Oh God! You’re not human!” I cried in-between gasps. The room began to spin.
“Yas, you’ve got to breathe!”
I was trying to breathe but then he picked up my hands that were still shackled together in the metal cuffs and pulled, breaking them apart. I looked down as it crashed to the floor by my feet. The little air I was getting into my lungs got thinner. I was having a panic attack.
He wasn’t human!
He wasn’t human!
He scooped me up in his arms and began to pace the room, gently bouncing me up and down as if I was a baby.
“Calm down Yasmin! Calm down baby. You know I will never hurt you.”
“How… am… I… suppose… to… know… that?” I asked in between gasp. He stopped pacing and looked down at me.
“Because… I’m telling you.”
What!
He said that as if I was suppose to believe him. I didn’t even know him.
Dear God, please don’t let me die!
I desperately sucked air into my lungs, laying my head between his head and shoulder. I began to just focus on breathing. For a while it was hard, but then, I don’t know if it was the gentle sway of his pacing and bouncing combination, or the fact that God had answered my prayers, but the lump in my throat shrunk enough for me to breathe a little better.
He continued to pace.
“Shhh!” He said in a soothing rhythm. The way he was holding me, reminded me of when my grandfather used to hold me when I was a little girl. I had felt so safe then. I had been protected from this cruel loveless world. I wish so badly that I could go back to that time. I really missed my pa-pa. Tears came to my eyes and suddenly I felt overwhelmed.
Everything came to my mind at once. Me finding my grandfather laying dead in the raspberry grove… the Mayor showing up the night of the funeral and trying to rape me… me hitting him with my grandmother’s porcelain lamp… him falling dead on my floor! Me fleeing the only home I ever knew and being forced to dance in a strip club… getting fired to be faced with homelessness in New York! Being forced to commit robbery! Getting caught! Being frightened by some kind of… beast man! And then being aroused by the beast man, and then being frightened again. It was too much! I burst!
I had no power to stop the weeping that seemed to come from my very soul. Plus, I didn’t even get a chance to really mourn my pa-pa’s death.
* * * * *
Gabriel
I didn’t know what to do, she was bawling in my arms. Mac bursts through the door. Probably thinking I was in here killing her with the way she was crying.
“Whoa!” He said coming to a complete halt as he took in the sight of me cradling the crying woman in my arms. I could see his brain trying to convince his eyes that it was really me standing here doing this. I shrugged, shooting him a help me look! I mean she was really crying. She grabbed the front of my shirt and straight up blew her nose in it! I looked down as she wiped her little nose in my shirt before burying her face back into my neck still wailing.
With a horrified look, my gaze went back to Mac’s. A grin that made me want to kick the sh*t out of him appeared on his face, as he began to back out the room. Desperately, I shook my head. Trying to get him to wait and help me. The bastard stopped, pulled his phone out his pocket and snapped a damn picture. He looked at it and then had the nerve to snap another.
I was going to kill him. He shook his head chuckling as he shut the door. It’s a damn shame what I was going to do to him when I got out of this situation. I continued to pace. I was well out of my element. I had no idea what to do with a crying woman.
“Yas what’s
