Page 39 of A Shot in the Dark
It’s over dinner in our room that I mention the dream. “I think I dreamed about you once.”
“That good, am I?” he chuckles, though the sound is tinny in my ears. He’s trying to return to himself, but every once in a while I catch his eyes on my neck, and feel the shame burning a pit in both of us.
“No—I mean, yes, but no.”
He peers at me a moment, equal parts amused and confused, before dropping his gaze and picking up a hashbrown.
“Before I ever met you.”
His chewing slows and he slides his eyes towards me. His lips flatten briefly, then he refocuses on his breakfast. “Before you met me?”
“Yes. Weird, right? Like, I just realized now.”
He swallows. Nods. Then he says dryly: “You’re a fabulous fuck, Sylva, but you say some weird shit.”
Hearing him quote me, I laugh in spite of myself. And yet… There’s an undercurrent to what he says, and even more so to what he doesn’t, that leaves me wondering what he’s withholding from me now.
We take a catnap and while I doze another dream flows into view… It’s as if an alternate world has rippled open and I see past everything that has previously blinded me—beyond wealth and power and skyscrapers and cityscapes to a different world in which I ride a rearing horse before a distant castle, decoratedwith flapping banners bearing the bloody crown of a queen. A voice in my head suggests, “Time stretches differently here—a membrane to puncture—a world with a war yet to be won.” Knights fall in behind me and we ready for rescue, because although our target lies on a cold stone floor, beaten and bloody and barely alive, I will destroy everything to save him, and set him back on his feet—in the shiny black boots he wears. How strange…
How disturbing.
I wake with a gasp to find Boots packing up. “Oh, don’t bother. I got us another night.”
“What?” He looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “How did you do that?” he rumbles softly, his tone vacillating between excitement and fear.
“I called down to the office and got the room.”
“When?”
“While you were out or sleeping yesterday.”
“While I wassleeping. My god, woman, are you trying to guarantee I never get a solid six hours again between the frequent fucking and you trotting off to pay the desk? Thank god I marked you…”
“I didn’t have to trot off anywhere.” I roll my eyes. “I used my card.”
“You what?” His eyes narrow and he storms across the space between us to grab my wrist. “You used your card?” He blinks. “What did you do, Sylva?” He begins to pack faster. “We need to go and we need to gonow.”
“I was trying to do something nice… It’s been so good being here—safe with you—getting to know you.”
“You don’t fucking know me and I don’t know you,” he growls, panic edging into his voice as he shoves me out the door and into the car, throwing the few possessions we had in the room into the car’s truck. “Fuck-fuck-FUCK. That’s why theychanged the schedule. They know what I’ve done. They know who you are, that you’re alive, and that I’m concealing and protecting you. I’ve been so fucking stupid…”
“Who isthey?” I ask, my throat burning with tears.
“Everyone, Sylva. Damn near everyone. I’m going to be fucking skinned alive…”
And the bond screaming in my gut tells me that no matter how hyperbolic it sounds, something in his words rings horribly true.
We are vaulting across the miles, Boots working his jaw soundlessly as he adjusts his grip on the steering wheel. “We have to shift course, drop south for a while… Attempt evasive maneuvers… Any chance I thought I had of making up time? Gone. Like this mission is even salvageable… I’m going to have to grovel before leadership like no man has ever groveled before…”
For the next two days we remain on the run, heading south and west, not stopping any longer than it takes to grab food and gas for the car. The fierce need in me tempers, evens, and begins to cool, but the stress in Boots only intensifies. I find myself asking him to pull over, summoning him to the roadside more and more frequently, so I can feel the way his breathing and racing heartbeat calm after each time he comes.
He looks at me oddly after checking my forehead once, saying, “You don’t need me right now…”
Yet the words “I do,” come easily. The truth is Idoneed himbecausehe needs me and we are bound at the deepest and most intimate level. When he relaxes, I relax. When he worries, I fillwith fear. I reach out to him again and again while we race away from danger, seeking to soothe him, calm him.
Desperate to calm him. To ease the stress hammering away at him.
Boots deserves better than what he’s been dragged into unwittingly by me. So I touch him, soothe him, tempt him and take him as often as I can. We sleep in the car, tangled awkwardly together, his “rules of the road” long ago forgotten. Sex in the car happens regularly, eating and drinking? It’s the only way we can manage and we both recognize we are barely managing.
