Taming Jesse James by RaeAnne Thayne Read Free Book Online Page A

Pushing her advantage, she held out her own hand. “Come on. Give me the gun.”
    For several long moments he stared at her, a dazed look on his face as if he couldn’t quite figure out what he was doing there. Finally, when she began to feel light-headed from fear, he shoved the gun back into his waistband and stood there shaking a little.
    â€œGood. Okay,” she murmured. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get you a glass of water?” And maybe slip out and call the police while I’m at it, she thought.
    â€œI don’t want a glass of water,” he snarled, and without warning he smacked her hard across the face.
    The force and the shock of it sent her to her knees. The next thing she knew, he had gone crazy, striking out at her with anything he could reach—the legs of her wooden chair, the stapler off her desk, the stick she used to point out locations on the map during geography.
    She curled into a protective ball, but still he hit her back, her head, her legs, muttering all the while. “You have to pay. Nobody narcs on Tommy D and gets away with it. You have to pay.”
    A particularly hard hit at her temple from the large, pretty polished stone she used as a paperweight had her head spinning. She almost slipped into blessed unconsciousness. Oblivion hovered just out of reach, like a mirage in the desert. Before she could reach it, his mood changed and she felt the horrible weight of his hands on her breasts, moving up her thighs under her skirt, ripping at her nylons.
    She fought fiercely, kicking out, crying, screaming, but as always, she was helpless to get away.
    This time, before that final, dehumanizing act of brutality, the school bell pealed through the dingy classroom and she was able to claw her way out of sleep.
    The ringing went on and on, echoing in her ears, until she realized it was her alarm clock.
    She fumbled to turn it off, then had to press a hand to her rolling, pitching stomach. The jarring shift between nightmare and reality always left her nauseated. She lurched to her feet and stumbled to the bathroom, where she tossed what was left of her dinner from the night before.
    After she rinsed her mouth, she gazed at herself in the mirror above the sink. She hardly recognized the pale woman who stared back at her with huge, haunted green eyes underlined by dark purplish smears. Who was this stranger? This fearful person who had invaded her skin, her bones, her soul?
    Gazing in the mirror, she saw new lines around her mouth, a bleakness in her eyes. She looked more hungover than anything else, and Sarah despised the stranger inside her all over again.
    She hated the woman she had become.
    For the past eighteen months she had felt as if she were dog-paddling in some frigid, ice-choked sea, unable to go forward, unable to climb out, just stuck there in one place while arctic waters froze the life out of her inch by inch.
    How long? How long would she let a vicious act of violence rule her life? She pictured herself a year from now, five years, ten. Still suffering nightmares, still hiding from the world, burying herself in her work and her garden and her students.
    She had to be stronger. She could be stronger. Hadn’t she proved it to some degree by going to Chief Harte the day before with her concerns about Corey?
    She couldn’t consider it monumental by any stretch of the imagination. Still, she had done something, even if it was only to kick just a little harder in her frozen prison.
    Beginning today, things would be different. She would make them different.
    If she didn’t, she knew it was only a matter of time before she would stop paddling completely and let herself slip quietly into the icy depths.
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    Her resolve lasted until she arrived at school and found Jesse Harte’s police Bronco out front.
    She cringed, remembering how she had fought and kicked at him the day before in the middle of another of those nasty flashbacks. He