Page 16 of A Match Made in Slumber

Elian

Ihad Commander Kill’em in my bed. IN MY ACTUAL BED. He lay right beside me, as real as you please, his arm almost touching my elbow. A sliver of space separated us, yet he felt so distant we might as well have still been on different planes.

From the moment he’d left the washroom with unbound hair, smelling of my lavender soap and dressed only in a pair of low-waisted linen trousers, a chaotic war between arousal and panic had raged in my mind. The reality of our sleeping arrangements hit hard, threatening to undo me.

He remained awake. Quiet, pensive and motionless. And very, very naked from his sculptured waist up.

I knew every single line of his body. Every muscle underneath that smooth skin. I knew the exact location of his scars, and hell, he’d collected a few. In my dreams, I’d traced them multiple times with my fingertips, my palms and my tongue. I’d drawn them multiple times. Now, faced with the genuine, solid specimen, I found myself frozen. My raw nerves vibrated, every sense tuned to his large frame.

He hated me, no doubt.

I didn’t even know where to begin apologising for the extent of the wrongs I’d done to him in a single day. I had dragged him to Everend, forcing him to abandon his life, his career, his war. Perhaps a lover? And why? Because I was an incompetent nitwit who couldn’t keep his sad, pathetic yearnings to himself but instead chose to broadcast them to another universe. Who knew what awaited Kill’em if Verity’s loophole failed? A quarantine cell or worse—being ripped apart in an inter-dimensional explosion. In the best-case scenario, he would end up sharing a bed with his kidnapper, stuck in a suffocating marriage of convenience. Trapped. Abhorring me a little bit more with every passing day.

The pace of my breathing quickened, my fingertips a-tingle, a telltale sign of an impending downward spiral. I gripped the edge of the blanket, desperate to stop myself from making a scene and proving to be an even bigger idiot. He’d already witnessed me losing my shit at the market—one public humiliation marked an absolute limit of the personal fuckery I allowed myself in a single day.

“What’s wrong?”

A calloused hand settled on my chest. The warmth of his palm acted like a soothing balm to a wound, bringing instant relief to my tense body and clarity to my scrambled thoughts. When Morrigen said physical touch would help anchor him, I hadn’t realised the tethering would work both ways.

It felt as though a dam had burst inside me. I grasped his hand in both of mine, shaking, the words spilling out in a breathless, hyperventilating rush. “I’m sorry,” I blurted. “I’m so sorry. I feel awful. Just the worst. Please forgive me. I’d do anything to reverse it—”

“You wish to reverse it?” His deep voice cut through the dark, sounding strained. He shifted, leaning over me until our torsos brushed. “Funny. I wouldn’t.”

I blinked up at him. Was my brain malfunctioning? “You… wouldn’t?”

“No,” he muttered, his thumb tracing a slow, grounding circle over the back of my hand. He gave a short, mirthless laugh. “You know, I missed you every dawn I opened my eyes back in the barracks.”

“You did?” I gaped. My thoughts scattered.

“You were my respite. From war. From loss. You kept me sane.” His voice lost the rough, dry edge it had carried at the market, softening instead into the low, intimate rumble I so longed to hear. “I don’t know if this fated match talk holds water, but the pull between us? It’s unexplained, yet it’s there. I can feel it.”

“So can I,” I whispered.

“They might demote or court-martial me as a deserter upon my return. But dammit, meeting you is a gift I never hoped for. Even if I’m only given a few days here, it’ll be worth it.”

A gasp escaped me, his words leaving me both horrified and elated. My ribcage felt taut, as if it couldn't contain the sudden rush of unexpected emotion. “Knowing that… you still want to go back?” I choked out.

He shook his head in the semi-darkness, a loose strand of his hair sweeping over my arm. “Want isn’t really a concept that exists in the army, Elian. Duty always triumphs over choice. But the situation has changed. Now, my immediate duty is to you. Before anything else, I’ll make sure you’re free and unharmed. If a marriage can keep you safe, then by the gods, we’re going to get married.” He paused, his chest rising and falling against my fingers. “I’ll deal with whatever comes after.”

I lay there baffled—by his words, granted, but also at the delivery. For a man who seemed content with grunts and short phrasing, this marked the longest monologue he’d offered to date.

“What are you thinking about?” Kill'em murmured, dipping his head lower until his breath brushed my lips. It sent a wicked spark of heat straight down to my toes. “I—”

“Wait.” Before I did something ludicrous, like having a funny turn and climbing the man like a market post, I had questions to ask. I aimed a finger at his collarbone and adopted a stern, inquisitorial tone. “You, um, aren’t already married, are you? In your realm?”

“Negative.” He gave a low huff of amusement.

Boldness took over, pushing me to widen the scope of my interrogation. “And… do you have a lover there?”

He hesitated; I could tell by the sudden stillness that overtook his posture.

“I knew it,” I muttered. A sharp slash of irrational pain cut right through me.

“It’s not like you think,” he said quickly, pressing his palm gently over my cheek. “Lovers isn’t the right term, either. We were comrades, friends who passed the time to cheat boredom. And loneliness.” He shifted, as if uncomfortable. “But I haven’t sought him out since the dreams began.”

My fingers found their way into his hair, weaving through the silky strands and playing with them just as I used to do every night before.

“But if we’re having this conversation,” the commander said, “who’s Horacy Fergis?”