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“You okay?” he asked, arms sliding around my middle.
I nodded, resting my head back on his shoulder. “Just ready for the longest sleep ever.”
“I’ll get you there, but this first.”
I yawned. “Why?”
“I don’t want you sore in the morning.” His lips touched the slope of my shoulder. “Was I too rough?”
I tilted my face back to peer at him. “No, I never knew I liked it like that but here we are. I’m as surprised as you are.”
His chuckle warmed my skin. “Oh, I’m not surprised. I knew.”
“You did? How?”
His eyes were endless night skies just on the cusp of dawn when they lifted inches from mine. “It’s in your eyes, kitten. Why do you think I’m so obsessed with looking into them? They tell me everything.”
Well, shit.
I kissed him.
The man was turning me into a hot mess on the last night we would ever be together. I would have yelled at him if I wasn’t living every second of it in high definition.
That night, I slept in his possessive embrace, tucked firmly against his side with his chest as my pillow and his heartbeat my personal lullaby. His breath teased the hairs at the top of my head where his lips and nose nuzzled in time to my lazy strokes of his stubbled jaw with the pad of my thumb. I sprinkled kisses to the skin beneath my cheek before wedging my face into the side of his neck and letting the swaying swing of slumber lull me to that calm, quiet place right before full sleep. I was soothed by the hands tracing my spine, the fingers playing the bumps like a pianist. I was soothed by his gentle murmur of my name.
“Kitten?” I wanted to respond, but I was already too deep. His arms tightened around me. “I’ll figure this out. I promise.”
The choking gasp woke me.
It ripped through the room, sending the figure in my arms tearing upright as if electrocuted. I came awake with my heart in my throat, my mind a wasteland of fog. The room hummed with that eerie, predawn silence that hovered just before the birds started their day. The world beyond the drapes was still and dark; not much time could have passed since climbing into Darius’s bed.
The man himself was a bent silhouette next to me, his ragged gasps echoing through the shadows.
“Darius?” I pushed upright, keeping the sheets around me as I reached for him. “What’s wrong?”
His skin burned with sweat and fever. I felt the moist heat before I even touched the sweaty slope of his spine.
He flinched as if the contact had burned him. I jerked my hand back. Concern warring to try again, to reach him while I knew to give him a minute.
“No,” he breathed, reaching blindly for my fingers. He clasped them too tight in his trembling ones. “Don’t let go.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. It was all the consent I needed.
I went to him.
I crawled into his lap, legs and arms winding around him, closing him up as tight as I could.
He didn’t pull away.
He didn’t tell me to let go.
He locked both arms around me and pulled me closer. His face found its home in my shoulder, nestling deep as he expelled his nightmares into my skin. I felt him shift and he dragged us down to the sheets, keeping me draped over him like a security blanket, fastening me against his very soul as he breathed me in.
“I’m here,” I whispered into the tiny, hammering pulse at his throat. “I won’t let go.”
His exhalation ruffled the hair at my temple. His heart slammed into my chest, erratic and scarred. I stroked his hair, the side of his face. I littered kisses across his throat, his chest. I murmured reassurances until he’d stopped shaking, until his breathing had calmed, and he was no longer suffocating me.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped several minutes later.
