asked casually folding her fingers and then spreading them out, playing with them. His hands were so much larger than hers that it shocked her.
Jamie shrugged, trying to act casual. Even though she was pretty sure he could feel how much her heart was pounding, Jamie still hoped that he couldn’t tell how nervous she suddenly was.
She swallowed again.
“What is it?” he asked, threading their fingers and then dragging her to the bench press. He sat on the hard leather, and she followed suit, quiet.
“I got sent to therapy for a while, when I was younger,” she started, shrugging again. “I was just thinking about the stuff that...led up to it.”
His arm came around her shoulders tightly, and she leaned into him gratefully. After yesterday, she had no doubt in her mind that he would be there for her when she needed him. It still amazed her, though.
They hadn’t known each other for very long, and they still had an odd connection. She could tell how different he was with her, how much more...caring he was. She loved it, she really did; but sometimes, she felt so...weak. As if she had to depend on him for everything, including emotional stability.
Jamie stared up at him, studying his face. It was still the same face that she had seen the very first time, ragged and strong and completely untamed. He was still the same man, had the same physique, the same strong hands and the same deep voice.
And she was still the weak one in the relationship. She bit on her lip as he met her searching gaze, a concerned look entering his eyes. “Mind elaborating?”
A hint of a smile touched her face. She loved that he didn’t do preliminaries, that he cut straight to the point and be damned with everything else. She wasn’t like that, never had been. God, they were so different.
He was blunt, and, she assumed, merciless when it came to other people. She was the shy worried one that had to keep her head down because she feared they would see bruises that were no longer there.
“Well... I got put into a hospital. No one knew why, really. My mother said that she had been called and rushed to meet me, and that was...it. I woke up for the first time and I felt like I was dying all over again.”
His body tightened, tensed. Jamie looked away, shaking her hair out of her ponytail and then messing with it, hating how nervous she was getting with him.
“After they let me out, I started having these dreams.” God, how stupid did she sound? Jamie swallowed again, more nervously than before. Talon wasn’t saying a thing, and recalling the dream, she realized that Talon and Zyn were...a like.
“What were they about?” he asked finally, breaking the silence.
She hesitated, wondering if she should really tell him.
This was the man that been with her through the most unimaginable situations. He had saved her, provided for her, made love to her, and made her feel like she was a woman. She owed it to him to tell whatever was bothering her, whether it was crazy or not.
Her hands were shaking as she told him about how her mother had given her away, how she had been forced to stay with some man she had never met. Jamie didn’t bother to tell him the name of the man -- it would make her seem even more crazy than she already was. A person with that kind of name, posing as her father?
Yeah...
Except, she wasn’t so sure that he was “posing”. What if the dream had been real? She’d had it enough that it was starting to seem real, but was that just her conscious messing with her?
She swallowed. Talon was staring at her, lips pressed, eyes unreadable. What was he thinking? That she was crazy? She wouldn’t blame him if she did. Often enough she was branded as crazy. Even Vladimir thought she was weird, she thought mildly.
“How long ago did this happen?” he finally asked.
She shrugged. “Ten years or so. I mean, it wasn’t that big of a deal at the time, except that I was in the hospital. Everything after that felt like a dream. Even now, just...talking about it makes me feel like I’m...floating or something.”
At that, he smiled. “Floating? The only time I can remember you floating is when I was so deep in --” He laughed as she slapped him, glaring.
“I’m trying to have a heart-felt moment with