Dying for Rain (The Rain Trilog - BB Easton Page 0,69
that I can’t breathe. I can’t even move, except when they shove me in one direction or another. Someone climbs onto my back, trying to get above the crowd, and my knees buckle under the weight. I curl my body around Lily’s car seat, trying to protect her as feet and fists and billy clubs rain down on my head and back.
“Help!” I scream as loud as I can. “Help! I have a baby!”
Then, two hands reach out from the smoky darkness and grip me by the shoulders.
I open my eyes with a gasp to find a shirtless green-eyed man smiling down at me and a sleeping infant in my arms.
“Oh my God,” I cry, clutching Lily to my chest. “Oh, thank God.” My heart is pounding as my brain sluggishly tries to grasp the fact that we’re not going to be trampled to death.
“Another nightmare?” Wes asks, his dark eyebrows pulling together as he crouches down next to me.
I’m sitting in a rocking chair in my old bedroom—Lily’s room now—in the dark. My white nursing gown seems to glow in the moonlight, and my breast is still exposed from her midnight feeding.
I nod and reach a hand out to cup Wes’s concerned face. I thought the nightmares would go away after April 23, but they’re just different now. Instead of demonic horsemen, it’s real monsters. Ones we’ve already defeated whose ghosts now haunt us while we sleep.
But that’s okay. As long as I get to wake up in this beautiful dream, I don’t mind a few nightmares now and then.
“You okay?”
I smile and nod again. “Better than I was a few minutes ago,” I whisper, echoing the flirty response he gave me from inside his jail cell.
Wes smiles and kisses me on the forehead. “Here, I’ll put her down.”
He scoops the sleeping bundle out of my arms, and I watch, awestruck, as he lazily carries her across the room. She’s barely the size of one of his biceps, but he’s so gentle and loving with her. He kisses her fuzzy head before laying her down in the middle of her crib, his back muscles rippling as he leans over. Wes is wearing nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants, and when he turns to face me, his lips curl into a sinister smirk. I follow his gaze down to my chest and laugh silently as I go to pull my nursing gown back up.
“Don’t you dare,” Wes growls, stalking toward me.
He started a construction company, rebuilding houses that had been damaged during Operation April 23, and one of the perks of the job is this body. Good Lord. He was cut before, but now he belongs on the cover of a romance novel.
A really gritty one where the hero has tattoos and drives a motorcycle and cusses a lot.
Wes reaches his hands out, and I take them, letting him pull me to my feet. Then, I let out a surprised yelp as he grabs my fuller than usual ass and lifts me off the ground. My legs wrap around his waist, and my arms wrap around his shoulders as he chuckles softly, smiling against my parted lips.
“How long until she wakes up?” he whispers, carrying me out of the nursery.
I cringe as we walk past Lamar’s room, thankful that his door is shut and lights are off.
“Two or three hours, depending on how long I was asleep.”
“Challenge accepted.” He smirks, kicking the master bedroom door shut behind him.
When we moved back in, we got all new furniture, painted the walls a dark gray, and I even had a pastor from my old church come and say a blessing, just in case. We made it our own, and I love it. It’s not home—Wes is my home—but it’s not scary anymore either. It’s just a house—wood and nails and screws and paint … and bedroom doors that lock.
Holding me up with one arm, Wes turns the silvery latch on the doorknob. The click sends an excited shiver down my spine. I tighten my thighs around his waist and let my longer hair fall around us as I tilt my head down to kiss his parted lips. Wes captures my mouth with an appreciative moan. Squeezing my ass with one hand, he reaches up and hooks a finger into the top edge of my nursing gown, yanking the stretchy, gauzy white fabric down until my other breast is exposed as well.