AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My companion’s green eyes roamed my body, not shy about how delicious he found me. The way he tensed under his perfectly pressed dress shirt, the strong muscles easily visible under the expensive fabric, was new for me.
Usually, I found overt sexual attention disgusting and a reason to swing my bat. But with Nova, it was different. I wanted him to stare. To trace my body with his gaze until my pulse raged in my ears. Until I went crazy enough to ask him to touch me. To coaxed him into taking his time to explore every inch of my body when he finally put his hands, his lips, and his body on mine. Would he breathe heat like every other hot-blooded man when he kissed me, or would it be ice-cold like the fingers he caressed me with earlier?
Fuck, I’m off my goddamn rocker.
It’d been a few months since I’d satisfied my baser needs. Maybe that was all this was—too long without sex. But I knew better. I’d never struggled so hard to keep my hands to myself. I wasn’t the chick who threw caution to the wind for a good time. Okay, I was, but not when it came to sex. I’d let caution be damned for a little brutal sport, but never for a lustful escape. Even I had standards when it came down to it.
Knowing the gorgeous bad boy type could be the demon we sought only further solidified how dangerous it was to give in. This could all be a cleverly orchestrated attack. But I was looking for reasons to let him have his way.
And that wasn’t like me at all.
Shifting my leg, I ignored how his pointed attention got me all hot and bothered. His eyes danced their way up my body before landing on mine. Nova’s green eyes blazed, and my breath caught for a second.
It wasn’t clear how it happened, but I was suddenly in the middle of a street, standing in the midst of a storm. A loud clap of thunder hit my ears, and I looked up to see dark green clouds moving above me. When I dropped my gaze from the sky, I caught sight of Nova, drenched all the way through by rain. His eyes glowed the same green as before, but they were now mixed with vibrant red. It was a color only demons had, and it put me instantly on guard. But it was the emotion tainting his expression that confused me.
He looked heartbroken.
I inhaled rainwater, the sky rumbling with strobes of lightning taking violent paths across it every few seconds.
I didn’t recognize where we were or what was happening, but Nova was standing directly in front of a building while I was on the curb at the other side of the street, next to some oversized bro on a crotch rocket. It was difficult to fully process anything around me because everything was blurred like a mirage—like something being remembered and not lived.
Nova’s face was the very image of defeat. As if the man had somehow surrendered something he held dear. As if he’d lost all hope. I’d seen the look plenty of times on others, and I imagine it was the same one I wore the night I was pinned under my foster father, painfully aware of what came next, helpless to stop it and resigned to my fate. It was the look of someone who knew nothing they did could stop what was happening.
Wind blew violently at our bodies, the storm raging on, and the gripping cold soaked straight to the bone from the sheets of icy water pouring down over us. But he didn’t move, and I couldn’t either. Instead, we stared at each other like…
We’re in love?
It was an impossible thought. I’d never been in love. I rebuked the word in all its variations. I even refused to say it to Aidan, who’d been the closest thing I’d ever come to it. So why was that the only word that came to mind when I stared at Nova’s gut-wrenching expression, the grip on my heart so painful it made it difficult to stand still? Why were words like fear, loss, hope, and love taking root in my head with every shuddered inhale?
Those were emotions I’d all but convinced myself I was incapable of feeling again. Emotions I knew couldn’t do anything but hold me back from my goal to destroy all bad men. Emotions I was confident would one day kill me should I ever feel them again. So why did it feel like those stupid emotions were the very ones that would set me free?
I could barely breathe for as long as we stared, saying nothing but everything all at once. I wasn’t sure how I knew what was taking place wasn’t a dream or something cleverly constructed by a demon—that it was, in fact, a memory—but I did. I’d lived this moment with Nova. The emotions growing inside my chest, the pain taking violent hold over my heart, it was all something I’d experienced.
This was one of the memories I’d lost.
The thunder was a vicious roar in the air when a blonde-haired woman emerged from the building, the fierce wind nearly stealing her away with it. The despondent look on Nova’s face was gone in a second, replaced instead by a gentle smile, one that felt oddly familiar despite never meeting him before tonight. He tried to shield her from the downpour, and I didn’t move as the two spoke, their words muffled by the thunderous sound of the storm.
But as soon as I closed and opened my eyes again, I was back on the couch with Nova still standing in front of me, back to his seductive self and no longer drenched from head to toe. The pain-filled expression of loss was nowhere on his face, and it was as if nothing happened. Like the earlier lightning, like the voice, like the woman in the crowd, I was the only one who seemed to be impacted by it.
What the fuck was happening?
I sucked in a breath, the pound of my heart a different throb from the one earlier. Fear ate away at my insides, and I nearly didn’t recognize the feeling. I hadn’t been afraid since the night I killed my foster father.
Removing his suit jacket and turning, Nova gave it to the man who swooped into the room with a few drinks. I was still lost inside my head when Nova took a seat and handed me the shot glass with my liquor of choice.
I swallowed around my confusion and drank it down without thinking. It was a serious oversight on my part. I knew better than to drink something I didn’t order myself. But my thoughts were going a mile a minute.
I didn’t catch what Nova said to me when he set down the shot glasses, so he called out to me again, “Lady?”
I lifted my gaze and found the man from the street closer than before. “I’ve met you…” I murmured before I could stop myself.
His eyebrow rose a fraction, the hint of a smile playing across his lips before he cupped my face and ghosted his mouth over mine. “If only, but I think I’d remember a beauty like you if we had.”
My thoughts disappeared the second his tongue pushed past my lips and Nova kissed me like we’d done it a hundred times before.
31
Banging Dream
