Page 21 of Stoker's Serenity

Oh, my God. He was staying the night. I just invited him to a sleepover on the first fucking date. How desperate do I look?

“Shush,” he said. “Stop overthinking things. Just going to hold you, just going to sleep, just going to kiss you if you’ll let me. It’s all on you how far things go. Always.”

“Wh-why would you do that for me?” I asked.

He traced a fingertip along my hairline, starting at the part, running the gentle caress toward where my braid hung over my shoulder, tucking my errant hair behind my ear. His deep dark gaze roved my face, taking me in as if I were a work of art, and my heart wept with the beauty of it. With its desire for more.

Enjoy it while it lasts…my mind whispered.The past will catch up with you eventually,it always does.

I thrust the thoughts away when he began to speak.

“I get the impression you need a soft touch and a steady hand. I don’t think you’ve been treated very fairly.”

Oh, my God… does he already know?

I flicked my tongue over suddenly dry lips.

“Why do you say that?”

His eyes met mine, solemn, steady, an unspoken promise in their depths.

“Just a hunch,” he said, and there was no trace of deception.

He didn’t know.I was just worsening, the cracks in my veneer getting too large to hide. I needed help but I didn’t have the money nor the resources to get it, and so the hurt, the sorrow, and the fear, it got out. People saw it. People like Stoker. Only he wasn’t like the rest. He didn’t appear to want to leverage it at all. He simply saw it and didn’t pick or pry at it.

“I’ll just go change,” I whispered.

“Be out here waiting. Take your time.”

I went to my dresser and pulled open a drawer, extracting the tee he’d given me, then went into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly, letting out a shuddering breath as emotion welled painfully in the center of my chest.

I took deep and even breaths, attempting to regain control of myself. My heart and my mind were at dreadful odds with each other.

God, I was such a basket case.The story of my life.

I took a full minute, then a minute more, before I pushed off from the back of my bathroom door and went to the sink. I set the shirt over the towel bar and braced my hands against the porcelain pedestal sink, staring at myself in the mirror above it.

What are you doing, Ren?I silently asked myself, but I had no answer for the woman in the mirror. She wasn’t a girl anymore, but she might as well have been.

I turned on the tap and splashed cool water on my face. It helped. After a couple heartbeats, I dried myself and pulled the tie at the back of my dress to loosen it so I could pull it off over my head.

I put it straight into the wash and ditched my bra in there too. I threaded my arms through the sleeves of the tee and dumped the rest of it over my head, tugging it down past where the dress had fallen on me.

I didn’t own pajamas, preferring to sleep in the nude, so it was fortuitous I had this to fall back on.

I switched out the light and opened the door after a fortifying breath and froze to take him in. He was already right at home in my bed, shirtless and delicious, the blankets bunched at his waist, his face illuminated by his phone as he held it above him tapping out a text or something. I pressed my lips together and padded around to what I supposed was going to be my side of the bed tonight.

“Nice,” he said, with a grin when he saw the tee.

I lifted the blankets and slid between the crisp sheets that were already growing warm from his body’s heat.

He lifted his arm closest to me inviting me to get close and I took the invitation, cuddling into his side, laying my head on his shoulder.

“This is going to be so nice,” he murmured, bending his head at an awkward angle just so he could kiss my temple.

“Yeah?” I whispered as he put his phone on the bedside table.

“I get more than two hours of extra sleep with a beautiful woman, so, hell, yeah,” he said and I had to laugh.

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