Page 64 of Enticed

“We need an ambulance! We’ve lost a pulse!” Another voice shouts as chaos ensues in my office.

“Cooper! Don’t leave me! Please…” I cry and then my entire body jolts.

“Clara…” the soft voice says, attempting to soothe me with the tone.

“No, he’s gone. I’ve lost him!”

“Clara!” The voice gets louder and my body rocks again.

“NO!”

“CLARA!!!”

And then light hits my eyes and I swear I see an angel.

Chapter 22

Cooper

“Clara!”

She whips her head in my direction and those dark brown eyes of hers pop open in a panic. Her breathing is heavy and tears are running down the soft curves of her face.

“Clara, sweetheart… you were having a nightmare,” I stroke her cheek and pull her into my chest from where we fell asleep on the floor.

“Cooper,” she sobs, clawing her hands into my back like she’s afraid to let go of me.

“I’m right here, babe… Shhhhh,” I whisper in her ear while she continues to cry in my arms.

I let her get it out—the anguish she must be feeling after that dream. I heard her mumble Anthony’s name and then mine, so I’m guessing her nightmare was a flashback to her attack.

“You died,” she finally whispers, shuddering a few more times from her turmoil.

“I’m right here, babe. I’m fine. And I didn’t die…”

“You did though. In my dream. It was that night, when you came in and shot Anthony and stopped him from raping me. You got shot and it wasn’t just a graze on your shoulder,” her eyes find the scar on my skin where the bullet flew through my sleeve and nicked me. “He killed you. The deputy in front of me said they lost your pulse…” her eyes fill with tears and it fucking makes me feel helpless.

I thought she was doing better. Hell, I’ve seen it in her eyes, her entire demeanor. The therapy has been helping—I know because she would review with me some nights what she was working through. She’s been opening up to me more and she finally told the girls the truth about what happened. All of that progress seems irrelevant though as I study the horror and sorrow on her face from her dream just now.

“I’m right here, Clara. I’m alive. It was just a dream, and we both know that is not how the night ended.”

“But it could have. It could happen to you any day, Cooper…” she fires back and then pushes herself away from me.

“What are you doing?” I say in a panic as she stands from the floor and walks to the bathroom.

“I need a minute,” she calls out and then I hear the door slam shut and her muffled crying through the wooden barrier.

I rise and sit on the edge of the bed, still fucking naked since we had sex a few more times in front of the fire before we fell asleep on the floor. Reaching for my phone on my nightstand, I light up the screen to check the time.

Fuck. It’s three in the morning. We’ve only been asleep for a few hours. She’s exhausted and emotional and locked herself away from me so I can’t help calm her down.

I’m getting dizzy from this whiplash—the pull and push I get from her anytime something happens to scare her. She never said it out loud, but after the girls ambushed her at her house when I was there, she pushed me away for a while. She didn’t have to say the words for me to know what was happening. She tried to play it off as guilt for not spending time with them—but I knew part of it was her being scared that we were almost caught.

Every time I feel like we’re making progress, something reminds me that we still have stairs to climb. I just wonder if Clara and I will ever be on the same level.

As my head hangs between my head as low as my manhood feels right now, the sound of the door popping open darts my eyes to Clara as I watch her walk back into our room.

“Are you okay?” I reach for her hand and she takes mine in hers. Pulling her into the space between my legs, she stands there in front of me while I sit on the edge of the bed, her beautiful body still stark naked.

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