Tempting Nora (25 page)

"Gideon.
" Nora gasped in horror.

Who would do this to him?
Had Amon done it? With every step she drew closer, the more horrified she became. She could see that his face was covered with sweat and that the stone he was propped up against was smeared with his blood. Strange, writhing bugs that looked like maggots were feeding on his flesh, leaving oozing, pussy sores. When she reached his side, Gideon gazed at her, his once loving eyes bursting with agony.

"What are you doing?"
Gideon groaned. "You shouldn't be down here."

"Neither should you
." Tears streamed down her face before she could stop them.

"
I deserve this," he said.

"Nobody deserves this." She hated
seeing the man she loved in such pain. It broke her heart and then incinerated the pieces that were left. 

"
Believe me, I do." Gideon shook his head, resting fully on the chains. Already bloody rashes marred his wrists where the metal met skin.

"No, you don't
." She seized a chain and started to pull. "I'm going to free you."

"You won't be able to," he said.
"You can't save me from this place."

"Just watch me."
No way was she giving up now.

She didn't care that the chains were metal and that no normal person could hope to break them without
tools. The desperation within her was too strong to make her give up, even in the face of such hardship. She seized a chain and started to pull, using her body weight to try to rip it from the stone. It didn't work. She tried hard not to panic as Gideon watched her with sad, knowing eyes.

"I told you," he said.

"I'll get you out of here," she repeated, this time trying to convince herself as much as him.

As Gideon hung in silence, she seized a rock
on the ground. It burned her palm, making her scream in pain before she dropped it at her feet. While staring at her injured flesh, she gnashed her teeth. Gideon was strapped to a stone that was as hot as the one she'd just seized. Her palm could stand the pain if his back could. Gritting her teeth, she bent down and seized the rock again. She bit her tongue to keep herself from crying out, even though she tasted blood. She turned back toward Gideon and stared at the chains, shaking because of the agony.

"
Stop trying to free me," he said. "Leave this place while you still can."

Ignoring him, she slammed the rock again
st the chain. She might as well have been trying to break through the metal with her fists with how little it helped. Still she didn't give up, even as her joints ached from the pressure of trying to free him.
I don't even see a dent,
she thought, unable to keep herself from panicking any longer. These were chains like she'd never seen before. At that moment, she knew she couldn't break through them, even if she approached the task like a charging bull.

"Who did this to you?" Maybe if she knew who
'd shackled him to the rock, she could force the person to free him. "Was it Amon?"

"No." Gideon
shook his head, causing one of the writhing maggots to fall from his face. "It was me. I did this to myself."

"That's
impossible." His words made her quake. "How could you shackle yourself to a rock? You aren't making any sense."

"It was me,"
he said. "This is the consequence of my actions."

"I don't believe you," she yelled, her voice echoing
throughout the barren wasteland.

Gideon gazed at her with his caramel eyes
dark with melancholy. She found it hard to believe that he was the same man who'd one made her heart thunder due to his mirthful grin. It was as though somebody had sucked the happiness from his eyes, leaving nothing but an empty shell of a man.

"Tell me what really happened." She sunk to her knees in front of him, clutching his arm. "Tell me who did this to you."

"I already did," he said.

When she studied his face, she realized he believed he was telling the truth.
The thought made her sick. She forced the nausea away.

"You should leave," Gideon said once again.

"I'm not going anywhere unless you're with me." She rested her head on his arm. "I'll stay here with you instead."

"No,
you can't do that." He writhed, straining against the chains that imprisoned him. "I made the choices that brought me here. You don't belong in this place."

"I don't care." She was surprised
by how much she meant the words, despite the searing pain in her soul. "I'm not leaving."

A
groan escaped his lips. She met his gaze once more and struggled to her feet.

"I don't want you to stay here with me," he said. "I was the one who did this to myself. You shouldn't be forced to suffer because of my mistakes."

"I don't understand what you mean, but I…" Her fists balled. "I'm going to help you. I don't care how long it takes or what I have to do, I will."

Before he could say anything else, she
embraced him. For the first time, she noticed lash marks on his back. The deep, bleeding crevices were covered with the same squirming maggots that attacked his face. She also noticed the way he smelled. He stank like a sack of rotting meat that had been left in the hot sun for several days. The urge to vomit struck again, but she didn't release him. Instead she searched his face and saw regret and depression. She never wanted to see the man she loved look like that ever again.

At that moment
she knew she was the one who had to save Gideon.

Nora awoke
with a start as pain seared through her entire body. The dream had seemed so real that she was sick to her stomach. She leapt out of bed and rushed to the bathroom. After she fell to her knees in front of the toilet, she emptied her stomach into the basin. When she vomited, all that came up was stomach acid that tasted like hot, unsweetened lemon juice. After she heaved until she was sure she was about to puke up her diaphragm, she reached for toilet paper to wipe her face.

It was only when her fingers curled around the piece of paper that she squeaked in both pain and surprise. She stared down at her hand,
not believing what she was seeing. Her palm was enflamed and covered in large, oozing blisters. She could hardly move her fingers because the pain was so fierce. The blood drained from her face. Yesterday she hadn't burned her hand in the fire. Of that, she was one hundred percent certain. Heck, she'd even been examined by the doctor and he'd seen nothing.

And yet the
fact she'd been burned in a dream was inconceivable. Yeah, she'd just been sick, but that was different than injuring her hand. Still she couldn't ignore the evidence written right on her palm. At that moment, panic struck. If she'd been hurt, then Gideon must have been too.

Even though
she knew it was ridiculous, she raced to the bedroom and leapt onto the bed at Gideon's side. The man was still asleep, surrounded once again by those strange black feathers that she was starting to feel unnerved about. She unceremoniously rolled him over and yanked up his shirt, trying to spot any lash marks covered in unsightly maggots. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw no wounds.

Unfortunately, her relief was short lived. She'd woken Gideon up and could tell by his groaning that he wasn't happy.

"It's the middle of the night, Nora." Gideon rolled onto his back again. "What the heck are you doing?"

Now that she saw his untarnished body, she
was embarrassed that she'd thought for even a second that her dream had been real.

"Um, I, ugh…
" She felt like her tongue weighed ten thousand pounds.

"Don't tell me
that this was an ill-conceived attempt at seduction." He sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"Good grief, you even think about things like that when you're
only half awake," she muttered.

"Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, gutter queen." He wrinkled his nose. "And you still haven't answered my question. What happened?"

"It's hard to explain." She glanced at her hand.

For the first time, Gideon
inspected her face and all annoyance disappeared from his eyes.

"I have a better question," he said. "Are you okay?"

"I think so." Well, she was okay besides the fact that her hand hurt like the dickens.

He cupped her cheek.

"Do you throw up?" he asked.

"How did you know?" She
hadn't puked on herself, had she?

"I can smell it." If h
e thought she was disgusting, his face didn't show it. Instead he smoothed the hair from her forehead, his eyes burning with concern. "Please tell me what's going on."

"I had a nightmare
." She was embarrassed to even admit it.

"A nightmare?" His eyes widened.
"Was it about the fire?"

"It wasn't about the
fire." She hesitated. "It was about, well, you."

"About me?"
He was about to smooth more hair from her face but froze.

"You were
shackled to a rock and I was trying to free you," she said. "I couldn't loosen the chains, no matter what I did."

"
I was chained up?" His eyes widened.

"Yeah." She
wondered why he looked so startled. "It was awful. I kept trying to set you free, but the chains wouldn't give. Somehow I knew that I was the only one who could save you."

"Well, I'm right beside you
now." His shock dissipated and he gave her a gentle smile. "Nothing happened to me."

"I know it was wrong of me to come running in here like a maniac," she
said. "But the thing is…"

She glanced down at her hand again.

"What is it?" Gideon searched her face. "You can tell me anything. You know that."

"In my dream, I burned my hand trying to set you free." A shaky sigh escaped her lips.

"Okay?" He raised an eyebrow.

"I woke up with this." Trying not to flinch, she held up her blistered hand.

At the sight of the injury, Gideon sucked in air. If an onlooker were to see his horrified expression, they would surely believe he was the one who'd had a nightmare and not her.

"We
need to bandage this." He took her hand in his. "It's a bad burn."

"Yeah,
I'm aware of that," she said, noting how much it hurt. "But what's worse than the injury itself is not knowing how I got it."

For a moment Gideon didn't say anything.

"What?" She chewed her bottom lip.

"Maybe you got the burn in the fire yesterday." He sounded like he
didn't believe the words, even as he said them.

"How could I have been burned and not noticed?" She was flabbergasted. "I was examined by the EMTs and the d
octor. They didn't see anything."

"
You think you were burned in the dream?" Gideon didn't sound skeptical, despite the fact that he should have.

"No." She
wasn't that delusional. At least, not now that she wasn't half-asleep. "I don't know what to think. Amon couldn't have come here and burned me, could he?"

"Not without me knowing." A vein pulsed in Gideon's jaw.

"Then I don't know. There has to be a logical reason." She refused to believe the burn had happened because of a dream. "And what the heck is with all of these feathers? You're dropping them on purpose just to drive me crazy, aren't you?"

"What?" He raised an eyebrow.

"The feathers." She scooped up a pile of black feathers with her uninjured hand and tossed them at him. "They're only around you."

"What do they have to do with your hand?" Gideon suddenly couldn't meet her eyes.

"I don't know." Her head was spinning, making her worry she might be sick again. "It's all so darn confusing. I don't know why any of this is happening to me."

Somewhere
along the line she'd started to yell. She guessed she was more panicked than she thought. Already, an overwhelming tidal wave of emotions hit her heart. It was amazing how a single dream and a couple of black feathers could push her over the edge. Gideon must have sensed the ambush of emotions because he pulled her into his arms and held her close. His touch didn't fix everything, but the warmth that seeped into her via his embrace made her less likely to hurl the first thing she laid her hands on.

As she buried her face in his shoulder, she inhaled his sweet smell. His
scent calmed her almost as much as his touch did. During that moment, logic did battle with her emotions. Gideon was healthy. If the dream had burned her hand, then Gideon should have been affected too. The nightmare hadn't been some message from the other side. No, it had merely been an aftereffect of almost being burned alive. Probably she was so afraid of losing Gideon to Amon that she'd had a nightmare. And as for the feathers, maybe Gideon happened to have a unique coat she'd never seen made from black bird feathers. It didn't make a heck of a lot of sense, but why should she start freaking out over a couple of feathers anyway? She should have been more frightened by the psychopath who was trying to kill her.