she doesn’t think I’m too old for her twenty-seven years, and she looks at me again.
“God, I hope not. It would be very awkward to see you doing a keg stand. It’s much hotter seeing you sip your scotch from a crystal tumbler,” she replies, and her compliment shoots straight to my dick. I manage not to groan when I sink down on the cushion, my long legs sliding out in front of me enough my head now rests on the back of the couch as I let out a long breath of air that puffs out my cheeks. I grab a throw pillow and cover my lap, holding it down against my cock, and she giggles.
She fucking giggles.
Not too old then.
Scout grumbles between us, adjusting his big back end with my new position, but he settles back down, continuing to enjoy his goddamn head rub. The lucky fuck.
She pushes Play once more, and we finally begin watching the show.
Hours later, it’s nearing two in the morning. Needless to say, we’re invested in every single person finding their perfect match, but sometime at the beginning of the episode we’re on now, Astrid had twitched violently beside me, and I looked over to see her sleeping, her head resting on the arm of the couch. Scout had put himself to bed several episodes ago, so her feet had slowly inched closer to me as her legs relaxed in the space the Aussie’s absence had created. I watched her for a few minutes, seeing her eyes move back and forth beneath her lids, her lips turning down in the corners in a little frown before her bottom lip quivered. Just when I was about to wake her from her bad dream, her face relaxed again, and now she’s snoring softly.
I slide the remote from her hand resting on the couch near her stomach and turn the TV off, throwing the living room into darkness. I stand carefully not to wake her and look around, trying to decide whether to cover her with the throw blanket on the other end of the couch so she can sleep here undisturbed, or if I should try to carry her to bed.
I know I chose wrong the moment my arms slide beneath her and lift her against me as I stand. Her body stiffens the second she awakens, and when she opens her eyes to complete darkness, she begins to struggle, finding her voice as it rises in volume from startled whimper to screams of terror. My grip tightens on her so I don’t drop her, and while she fights me like an untranquilized wildcat being put into a crate, I use my long stride to reach the staircase, which alights as soon as I set off the motion sensors. I glance at the top of the stairs to see Scout skid to a stop on the landing.
“It’s okay, boy. I’ve got her,” I tell him, and he sits right where he is, standing guard to make sure I’m not lying, it seems.
“Shhh, goddess, it’s okay. It’s okay,” I try to break through her panic as her nails rip at the skin of my arms. “Astrid, it’s me. It’s Doc.” But she’s in too deep, her eyes squeezed closed with her terror as she yells for me to let her go. I know what to do. I know exactly what to do in order to calm someone from a panic attack. I’m a fucking world-renowned psychologist. But my heart is breaking at the fear twisting Astrid’s face, her beautiful, angelic face that fills my every dream. And all I want to do is make that look go away. I never want her to look at me like this, like she’s terrified of me, of what I might do to her. It kills my soul.
So I do the only thing I can in this moment, with her flailing, stiffening, and wriggling her body as she tries with all her might to make me drop her so she can run.
In one fluid movement—because she’s tiny, so fucking tiny compared to me—her ass meets one of the stairs at the same time my knees do a couple below her, and I twist her around to face me. My body goes between her legs, and I take hold of her wrists as she tries to hit me with the backside of her little fists. I pull them toward me, trapping each one of her arms between my sides and my