Another train this time. Maybe we’ll be on the next one.
Toot. Toot.
I startle awake and bolt to an upright seated position in bed. It takes a moment for me to make out my surroundings—with my breath labored and my heart racing.
Ryker’s.
I’m at Ryker’s place.
Not the mansion in Greenwich.
“Hey, you okay?” Ryker’s sleep-drugged voice rasps through the silence, and his hand rubs lazily up and down the line of my back.
“Yes. Yeah.”
“Bad dream?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“C’mere.” He hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. My immediate reaction is to fight against him for some reason, to keep some distance and gain some space to allow my mind to settle at the memory and the little details of that night I haven’t thought of in years.
But I don’t.
I lie back down and allow Ryker to wrap his arms around me so that the heat of his body seeps into the chill of mine.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Mmm-hmm.” I don’t trust myself to speak.
“I’ll make your bad dreams go away, Vaughn,” he murmurs and presses a kiss against the crown of my head. “All of them. You don’t need to worry anymore. I’ve got you now.”
And with my hand pressed against his heart and his chin resting atop my head, I revel in this foreign feeling as his breath slowly evens out with sleep.
In the comfort.
In the feeling of being safe.
In the notion that I’m not alone.
How could I have wanted to fight this feeling? How could I have thought all this time that being alone was better for me?
Sure, we’re not perfect . . . but this—Ryker and his arms around me, helping to chase away the demons of my past—is something I can’t describe.
And almost as much as it scares me . . . it also feels so very therapeutic.
It makes me realize that this feeling might just make everything worth it.
I’ve got you now.
Every last thing.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ryker
The Red Sox T-shirt is bunched around her waist, and she’s sprawled diagonally across my bed. The sheets are twisted around her legs, when thirty minutes ago those long temptations were tangled around mine as we slept.
I let her sleep. As much as I want to wake her up, I let her sleep. My mind ghosts over her bad dream last night. The trembling of her hand against my chest. The racing of her pulse at her temple beneath my lips.
And I wonder what it was she dreamed about.
She shifts, her shirt lifting a little higher, the curve of her thigh revealed a bit more, and I find it impossible to take my eyes off her.
What is it about this woman that makes me fight to not have sex with her?
Am I fucking crazy to turn those legs and that ass and that goddamn vise-grip pussy down like I did last night?
I button up the rest of my dress shirt as I watch her. The light hair fanned on the dark sheets. The dark lashes on the pale skin of her cheeks. The pink lips that would make any man beg for mercy. I want her in the best way. In the worst way. Hell, in any way.
I’m crazy all right, but now it seems I’m crazy for her.
How’d that fucking happen? When did I become a man who wines and dines without expecting a thing in return?
My phone vibrates on the dresser next to me. A reminder of my court date in two hours and another about my meeting with Stuart at three.
He’d better have something for me. Her stockings at my feet catch my eye, and then the bustier a few feet beyond that. I smile. Her blatant defiance shouldn’t cause that reaction from me, but it does.
She shifts on the bed, and a soft sound of contentment sighs from her lips—the same one she gives when I push into her during sex—as she snuggles back into the comforter.
What if Stuart has dug up information on her that you’re not prepared to hear? What are you going to do with it then?
Is it going to change how you feel about her, Ryk?
How bad would it have to be to make that happen?
Fuck.
I blow out a sigh, and even though I know I need to head into the office, my feet move toward her. To the one person I keep being drawn to over and over despite telling myself that it’s too much work, too much hassle, too much feeling.