Page 34 of Her Noble Protector

“Answer me. What are you doing?”

He sounded like he was inside her bedroom. She swung her head around, then ran to the window and slammed her palms against the blinds. “Don’t come inside!” she screamed. “It’s none of your fucking business what I do! Get the hell out of here! Leave me the fuck alone!” She kept pounding on the blinds, over and over again. She let out a shriek when the right side came undone and crashed down onto the windowsill, letting in daylight, exposing her, forcing her to see Raiden’s caring and compassionate face.

Her palms smeared down the bare window, slowly sliding downwards as she stared at the man that she so desperately needed, but who scared the hell out of her. He needed to get gone.

“Please leave,” she whispered. “If you care about me, please leave.”

She wanted to turn around and run out of the room, but her eyes couldn’t look away from his—they were stuck. Somehow he was controlling her just with his eyes, forcing her to stay with him.

Then it got worse, because he spoke.

“Lisa, I’m going to stay with you. Remember, I care about you. I care so much about you, and I’m not leaving you. I’m going to help you. I promise you.”

Her hands kept slipping until her fingertips gripped the edge of the windowsill. “I’m broken, you can’t help,” she whispered.

“Cami was broken too,” he whispered back. “Remember? They broke her too.”

Snippets of her being tied up in the jungle. Camilla was on the other end, she was being touched too. Brutalized.

“Do you remember how they hurt Cami?” Raiden asked.

Lisa nodded.

“She wants to talk to you.”

Lisa shook her head. “I don’t want her here.”

“On the phone, baby, just on the phone,” he said gently. “Will you take my phone so she can talk to you?”

Through the window, Lisa could see Raiden holding up his cell phone. Even as scared as she was, she could see that he was calm. Lisa latched onto his calm. She took a breath. And another.

“Is Camilla all right?”

“She is, honey. She’s been surrounded by people who love her, and she’s been talking to someone who’s been helping. She wants to talk to you. She wants to help.”

Acid churned in her stomach. The idea of letting Camilla down hurt. She knew that she would want to help, but there was no helping her.

“Lisa, tell me what you’re thinking,” Raiden coaxed.

Lisa shook her head, her dark hair got into her eyes and now she couldn’t see Raiden anymore. Maybe that was for the best.

“Lisa, please talk to me. What are you thinking?”

“What if Camilla can’t help me and she gets mad at me?”

“Ah, honey, she won’t get mad at you. She cares about you like I do, she wants to help. Would you get mad at Cami if she was hurting?”

Lisa rolled his question around in her head. She remembered Camilla’s whimpers in the Mexican jungle. There was no way she could ever be mad at Camilla.

She lifted one of her hands off the windowsill and pushed back her hair. “All right, I’ll talk to her.”

Raiden’s eyes burned bright as he smiled. “Can you open the window so I can give you the phone?”

She looked behind her and sighed with relief when she realized the guest bedroom was not like the other rooms in her house. She hadn’t been living in it for the last seven weeks so it was okay that Raiden was seeing inside.

Turning back to the window, she unlocked it and opened it just a couple of inches.

“Hold on while I get Cami on the line.”