He nodded and leaned close enough for me to feel his breath against my lips. I could almost taste the notes of the champagne from his breath alone. “And I’ll make sure of that,” he whispered against my mouth before taking my lips in a deep, wet kiss, one far deeper than was appropriate.
We ended our kiss to the sound of applause and whooping and hollering from the peanut gallery on the other side of the counter. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter Two
“No! Don’t touch her. Gina! Gina!”
I woke to Wes’s raised voice. He was calling for Gina. I wiped the sleep and way too many glasses of champagne, coupled with martinis-a-plenty, from my eyes and sat up.
Beside me, Wes tossed and turned. The sheets were wrapped around his body, and his forehead was dotted with drops of sweat. Even his chest glistened with slick pools of sweat, which caught the moonlight pouring through the windows. He must have been in the throes of this one for a lot longer than normal. Usually, I was able to place a hand on his arm or chest, and he’d settle, maybe wake up, maybe not. It had been a few days since he’d had a dream. Almost a full week. Things had been going extremely well with the therapy. Since we left Malibu to come to NYC, he missed his last session this past week.
For a second, I cursed myself for being so selfish. Here I wanted him to be with me on assignment in New York when he probably needed the comfort and security of home to continue through the healing process. It had only been five weeks since his captivity. Not nearly enough time to be leaving the one place that made him feel safe. Shit!
I slipped out of bed just as he cried out again.
“Gina…no. No. No, oh my God. Mia! Mia! That’s my wife! Get your filthy hands off her!” He screamed out, his body arching in what looked to be an extremely painful half-moon shape.
Flicking on the lights, I called out to him. “Wes! Please come back to me!” I didn’t want to risk touching him. The one time I did, he shot his arm out and caught me in the rib with his elbow, giving me a nasty bruise that made him feel worse than I did. Since then, I didn’t make a move to wake him physically.
“If you touch Mia…I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you! She’s mine!” he roared.
Grabbing the bottle of water next to my side of the bed, I opened the cap, said a prayer to the big guy upstairs, and poured a line down Wes's chest.
His body shook, and his arms flew out in opposite directions. I was prepared for that and just barely jumped out of the way in time to avoid getting tagged by his automatic fight-or-flight response.
“Mia!” His pupils were fully dilated, and his lips curled in toward his teeth. “Are you okay?” he growled. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was angry with me, still lost in the evil clutches of the dream, or because he genuinely wanted to know.
I licked my lips and pushed my hair off my face. “I’m fine. Do you love me?” I asked this same question every time he had one of these dreams.
“More than anything in the world.” His response was instantaneous.
He moved to get up, but I put a hand out. I still wasn’t sure who this person was. My Wes. Captive Wes. Victim Wes. Dangerous, angry Wes.
“Who am I?” I asked, trying to ensure he wasn’t still locked in his nightmare.
“You’re Mia Saunders, soon to be Mia Channing.” His words were soft though strained, as if it hurt to say them.
I grinned slightly at the use of my name paired with his last name. “That has a really nice ring to it.”
“It sure as hell does. Come here.” His eyes were coming back to the brilliant green I fell in love with all those months ago, but I was still leery.
“Why do you love me?”
He smiled, rubbed his jaw, and let that hand fall to the sheets. “Because I’m not me without you. And I don’t ever want to be a me without you.”
I closed my eyes and crawled over the bed and right into his lap. “Baby”—I cupped his cheeks—“tell me what happened.”
“After,” he whispered before looping an arm around my back and sucking my nipple into his mouth through the silk nightie.
Wes loved me in lingerie. That was a surprise. He’d seemed to be a man who preferred it on the floor since he usually took it off almost as quickly as I’d put it on. Even so, he said he loved seeing me in it. I arched into his searing kiss, loving the way the silk grated against my tip along with the suction. Divine.
With very little prompting, he found the hem of my nightie where it had bunched at my hips and pulled it up and over my head so he could have unfettered access to my breasts. They were swollen and achy with need as he fed my desire with long licks, deep suckling, and playful, heated nibbles. He played with each burning peak until both of them were as red as cherries and just as round.
“I love your breasts.” He swirled his tongue around one.