Chapter Two – Trust Me Again

Theme song:

The Rolling Stones- Gimme Shelter

Rumlow looked across at Jemma as she stirred. "Hey," he said softly.

Hazel eyes blinked open, looked across at him blearily. The way she stiffened and shrank away from him tore at his heart.

"Jemma. You're safe. We're out of the facility, no one is following us."

"You – what did you do?" She was suddenly terrified of him, this dark, muscled man with the rough stubble and the intense eyes. What did she really know about him, after all?

You know he could have raped you and no one would have lifted a finger to stop him, a cool, collected part of her brain pointed out, even as she started to panic, reaching for the door handle.

"Jemma, don't!" he saw her hand move from the corner of his eye, realised what she planned, slammed the brakes on. "Don't, you'll hurt yourself!" he lunged across the car, grabbing her wrists. "Look at me. Look at me."

She was fighting not to hyperventilate. It had all been just too much, too much to cope with, terror and panic at first, only made worse when she thought he was going to rape and kill her, then a wild, desperate hope when she realised he was her soulmate and he promised to get her out – the crazy, adrenaline-fuelled arousal as he touched her – and she could still remember the sick feeling of betrayal as his hand went to her throat in the knockout grip.

She couldn't see anything but him as he leaned over her, his dark eyes boring into hers.

"I had to knock you out, Jemma, because if you'd looked even remotely alive I'd have been forced to share you around the other men."

Oh well that really helped, finding out that she'd narrowly escaped a HYDRA gang-rape. Her breathing sped up again, and he leaned down and grasped her wrists, firm but not brutal.

"Jemma, you need to stay calm. I'm going to get us somewhere safe but you need to trust me."

"I want to go home," was all she could manage to get out. She wanted her friends, wanted Skye's warm embrace, Fitz's gentle worry, Coulson's steady calm and May's aloof but fierce protectiveness. Bobbi's deadly calm and Hunter's smartass remarks. Even Mack's quiet wariness.

"I know, but if I rock up with you looking as you do now – and before I've contacted Fury – I'll be shot on sight." It was a slightly rueful grin. "I might not be Enemy Number One but I'm definitely on their shit list."

Jemma looked down at herself. Her own clothes were long gone, of course: she was wearing a black T-shirt that had to be Rumlow's, too big on her small frame, it really only fell to just below her groin, and she had nothing on beneath it. The blood and bruises on her legs stood out sharply against her pale skin. One of the marks was very clearly a bite mark. Her cheeks flushed as she remembered telling him to bite harder, unable to suppress the moan of pleasure as his strong white teeth sank into the tender flesh of her inner thigh.

From the way he was looking at her, she suspected Brock was remembering too. His firm lips parted and she heard him suck in a quick breath of air.

"How do I know I can trust you?" she gasped out, suspecting that if she didn't speak he was probably going to be kissing her again in a moment. And she very much doubted that she had the will to even try and stop him.

That beautiful, firm mouth twisted. "Because I just killed over eighty people to get you out alive."

"What!" her eyes flew wide.

Rumlow let go of her wrists, reached across and opened the car door. "Look." He gestured back, behind the car.

She twisted, peered out of the door back along the road. Saw the huge black smoke cloud, probably only a couple of miles distant, the flames still belching sootily beneath it.

"Oh my God. We should go back, see if anyone needs help…"

"Jemma!" he grabbed her arm, yanked her back into the car as she tried to scramble out and slammed the door. "If we go back we'll both die! I was caught on surveillance cameras – which are live-streamed to other facilities – carrying out your 'dead body' to dispose of, two minutes before the first explosion went off. It won't take HYDRA long to figure out I didn't get caught in the blast radius and there's no sign of your body. We probably have less than twenty minutes to get clear before choppers full of very angry men with lots of guns turn up and start looking for us both."

He stared at her until she stilled, unable to deny the truth of his words. And then he let go of her arm and reached for her seatbelt, pulling it across her body and clicking it into the socket.

"Don't grieve for them, Jemma," Rumlow said quietly, sitting back down in the driver's seat and starting the engine. "Every man – and woman – in that facility was responsible for dozens of deaths, if not hundreds. They'd have killed you without a second thought. Do you know what was supposed to happen there?"

She shook her head numbly, staring at his profile. He had very deep-set eyes, a nose that had clearly been broken at least once. A hard jaw shadowed with dark stubble. He didn't look at her, staring instead intently at the deserted road as he mashed his foot to the gas pedal, getting them out of there at maximum speed.

"I only found out this morning, but there was a kidnap set up to take your friend Daisy."

"Skye," Jemma corrected instinctively.

"Whatever you want to call her. The girl who makes the ground shake. She was to be brought in for experimental treatments. I very much doubt I'd have been able to get her out alive, they certainly wouldn't have thrown her to me like a bone to a faithful dog as they did you when Dr. Gunther realised you were the wrong woman."

"I said I'd do the grocery run instead of Skye today because I wanted to pick up some special things," Jemma realised. "It was her turn…"

"And how did they know that, eh? You lot have got complacent, got into a routine. You shouldn't even be shopping in the same damn town on a regular basis, never mind in the same grocery store on a fucking roster system!"

"I think I'm going to be sick," Jemma said in a small voice, and he swore, slammed on the brakes again and swerved the car off the road into a small thicket of trees. She managed to stagger out of the car and fell to her knees, retching helplessly. After a moment she felt a surprisingly gentle touch at the back of her neck and realised he was gathering her hair back, holding it off her face.

"Sshh," Rumlow knelt behind his soulmate, holding her hair with one hand, the other slipping around her middle, bracing against her ribs. She leaned against him and he could feel that she was fighting not to break into hysterical sobs.

"Sshh now. You've been real brave, Jemma, but it's not over…" the thrumming of rotor blades made him look up, and he let out a hiss of breath as a black helicopter passed directly overhead.

"Fuck!" he looked at his watch. They were faster than he'd hoped; indeed counted on. He'd hoped to get to the next town and lose themselves among the populace. "In the car, Jemma, now!" They had maybe five minutes before the chopper returned, or more came, sweeping the countryside.

Jemma obeyed, white-faced and shaking, coming to the sudden realisation that both their lives depended on his skills now. No matter what she thought of him, no matter how much he frightened her – she had no choice now but to trust him with her life.

Again.