“Yeah. I just needed a minute.” I was always fighting. Fighting someone, something, fighting myself. I wasn’t used to being the victim, to being weak and out of control.
I never got to my feet. Before I could stand up, his strong arms were around me and under me and he was cradling me to his chest. Soaking himself and the bathroom floor in the process. I didn’t argue. I just wrapped an arm around his thick neck and let him take me to his bed still dripping wet and teary-eyed.
He had obviously spent the time I was soaking cleaning up his bedroom. There wasn’t a stray shirt or sock in sight and the bed was made with obviously clean sheets and blankets. I rubbed my sore cheek against his pec and sighed against his heartbeat.
“I can’t believe how messy you are. I never would have guessed.”
He grunted and shifted me a little so he could pull the top blanket back and put me in the center of the bed. He stared down at me for a long moment before he started pulling his clothes off. That was a show that would make me millions if I charged other woman to watch it. Too bad I was greedy and wanted the flex and bend of all that hard muscle and tawny skin to be forever for my eyes only.
“The only person that ever sees it is me, so I guess I never really bothered to take very good care of the inside of the place. I’m not here a lot.”
Again it reminded me of the man himself. The only one who ever saw into the darkness where his heart actually lived was Titus. The beast was lonely, and I was the only one he had ever let inside the cage. It needed me. I just hoped he could still see that after I told him the last of my dirty secrets.
Once he was as naked as I was, he reached over, turned off the lights, and climbed into the bed next to me; even though it was early morning and the rest of the world was just starting to wake up, we were going to bed.
He curled an arm around me and drew me tightly to his chest. “It’s tomorrow.”
I knew he wanted to talk, but I wasn’t ready for it yet. “It’ll still be tomorrow when we wake up. Let’s just rest for a minute.” I needed it. Oblivion had never sounded so nice.
I felt his lips brush across the top of my head and his palm skimmed over the battered and raw surface of the arm I wrapped around him.
“Okay. We can rest. By the way, I’m proud of you. You’re one hell of a fighter, Reeve.”
I could only pray he felt that way when I opened my eyes and told him my tale. Between my own emotions being drained and stripped to nothing and his warmth and the security of finally being in his arms after my nightmare, I couldn’t keep my eyelids open anymore. Sleep and a tiny reprieve was one thing I wasn’t going to fight against.
I WAS HAVING THE most amazing dream. It was full of questing hands. Tender kisses. The brush of soft hair against my skin. My name was whispered between lips that I loved and I had never been in a more secure or happy place.
But then it changed and I was being chased. I was running for my life and I woke up with a scream stuck in my throat and tears silently running down my face. I sat up in the bed and looked down at Titus. Bright blue eyes were watching me carefully, full of sympathy and rage. I pushed my hair out of my face and put a hand to my racing heart. He lifted his hand up and brushed his knuckle across my damp cheek. It was an achingly tender gesture and it was so unlike him that it started me shaking all over. Titus had looked at me with a lot of different emotions since I burst back into his life, but I refused to have pity be one of them. I understood the risks . . . all of them . . . and he needed to know that.
I leaned over and gave him a stinging kiss on his frowning mouth. “I’m fine. At least I will be.”
I saw his eyes skim over the cut on my neck and the tender and bruised skin around my eye. “You are not fine.” He sounded like a cop, and not the very naked and very sexy man that could so easily replace all the bad memories with much better ones.
It might not make sense but I wanted his hands on me. I wanted my heart thundering and chasing itself around my chest for him and not because I was scared and shaken up. Everything that was bad, everything that was tragic and senseless, Titus was there to give meaning to. He was the good and I needed all of that in me.
“I will be. Make me fine, Titus.”
He scowled at me in the early morning light but he could never hide the way his eyes shifted, and since we were both naked, there was no missing the way his body reacted. I kissed him again and this time he curled his hand around the back of my neck.
“I’m not sure that’s a very good idea. You had a rough night.”
“You and I together is always a good idea. I need this.” I knew he would never deny me when I told him I needed him. He was too giving to say no.