Page 85 of Dark Verse

She shouts loud enough that I know they can hear us downstairs. Unable to hold back the pleasure anymore, my peak isn’t far behind hers. Bliss floods over my entire system, starbursts appear behind my eyes, and my spine shudders. With my last firing neurons, I collapse onto the side of the bed beside her.

We lay there for a long time, our breathing slowing and our sweat drying. I look down at my softening dick.

“Shit,” I groan a little.

No wonder every moment felt like lightning striking my system.

“Hmm?” Ven’s voice is soft like she’s already half asleep.

In that space before I answer her, a totally different future spreads itself out before me. One filled with late-night feedings and frequent diaper changes, and afternoons soothing scraped knees. Weekends at water parks. Weeknights going over math homework or running to piano concerts, and summer vacations visiting museums and libraries and themed camps. First steps, first school days, first crushes, and the first heartbreaks that follow. Doctor’s appointments, parent-teacher conferences, bike and driving lessons. All of it. What once was a nebulous idea is suddenly in sharp focus before me.

It was never a deep desire of mine, but with Venny, the possibilities seem boundless.

I finally say, “I forgot to grab a condom.”

“I’m on birth control,” she says softly, her body curling towards mine.

Nodding, I allow the idea to become hazy again, although there is now a clear center to the image, the woman lying in my arms now. Satisfied, I pull her body in closer, kissing Ven softly all over her face and neck until we both fall asleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

RAVEN

AS I begin to stir, it doesn’t take me long to realize it’s still dark. And cold. God, it’s almost freezing in here, little puffs of white escaping from my nose as I breathe. I sense more than see Knox beside me, his breath low in sleep. Wondering what woke me, I turn to my side to look towards the clock.

Through the dark without my glasses, I can just make out the numbers, but I’m only processing the meaning when a shadow catches my eye. It shifts closer to me like a dark spotlight.

My tired, sluggish brain doesn’t understand.

The shadow stops beside me.

The shadow speaks in tones too low and grumbling to understand what it says. I open my mouth to respond, wondering at the oddness of this dream. A flash in the dark catches the red light from the clock. I don’t have time to process the flash when the most extraordinary sensation explodes in my left shoulder.

I don’t register the feeling as pain. For one impossible second, it’s only pressure. A horrible, crushing pressure buried somewhere in my shoulder.

Then the blade comes free and something ruptures inside me.

The sensation is so violent my brain cannot keep up. Muscles and tendons wrench apart around the wound, and suddenly wet heat floods down my shoulder and over my chest.

My right hand comes up on instinct, shoving at the shadow in front of me. I don’t even know if I make contact. I only know that the shape recoils, slipping backward into the darkness.

For half a heartbeat, I think it’s over, that my eyes will open once more to a bright morning and nothing more than a sweaty forehead from this horrible dream.

Then it comes back.

The blade flashes red.

Red from the clock’s dim light. Red from my blood.

I see it coming for my face and throw my arm up.

Steel bites into my forearm instead.

A wet, sickening burn travels through me as the blade slices across my flesh. My fingers jerk open. My whole arm goes numb before the pain catches up, bright and savage, shooting all the way through my body.

An awful gurgle crawls out of my throat.

Suddenly my lungs refuse to cooperate. Every breath comes in shallow and ragged, dragging against the panic clawing its way up my chest.