Page 75 of Meet Me in the Valley
When she lifts the pillow, I’m met with the sexiest sight—I can’t get enough.
Tia naked with her long black hair cascading over her pierced nipples will be an image I add to my spank bank. I look between us, stifling a laugh as my cock grows harder.
“No. Absolutely not. Calm yourself, Lo. I need sustenance.”
“I can’t control him! One look at you and I’m a goner, T. Do you even know how sexy you are? Asking me to calm down around you is like asking a kangaroo not to jump. Nearly impossible.”
“That’s the weirdest fucking analogy.”
“Let me inside you,” I groan, grinding myself on her. She doesn’t look impressed. It only makes me smile wider.
“I. Need. Food. Now.”
She leans down to give me a kiss, but pulls away too quickly before I can do anything about it. She’s off of me the next second, leaving me and my sad boner alone.
“I’m getting room service.” Her voice grows distant as she walks toward the hotel phone across the room. “And I’m ordering the entire menu since you’re buying!”
I huff out an amused laugh, knowing I wouldn’t be able to stop her even if I tried. Not that I would. I’ll give this womananything in the world. She wants to order enough room service for ten grown men? So be it.
“Anything you want, baby. Anything you want.”
I’m running as fast as I can, at least in my head I am. My mind is telling me to go faster, but there’s a dead weight anchoring me into the lush grass below. I’m moving, but not really. The sky is stone gray. Slanted rain angrily pelts down, soaking my t-shirt to my skin and clumping my eyelashes together. I feel the squelch of wet grass between my toes, somehow barefoot and freezing cold.
I don’t hear the rainfall. I don’t hear thunder. The entire world around me is void of sound, other than my rapid breaths and deep grunts as I try to get my fucking feet to move.
All I can see is her. She’s keeled over, as if in pain, screaming at me. Her blonde hair sticks to her face, her eyes gaunt like a corpse bride. I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
Why does she look like that? What happened to her? She used to look like the sun. Bright, warm, full of life and morning. She felt like morning to me. When I would wake up, her bright white smile was the first to greet me. Her hair was gold, like the coins inside my treasure chest toy. We’d play pirates, and I was always Captain Hook. She’d be Red-Handed Jill, always trying to steal my treasure.
I want to go back. I need her to come back so I can pretend to slash her with my hook. She’d lay there dead with her tongue sticking out. I’d push my ear into her chest where her heart lived to make sure I didn’t really kill her. Then she’d scream, ticklingme until I couldn’t breathe because my laughter would take over my body.
If I could open my ears wider, I would, just so I can hear what she’s trying to tell me. I can tell she’s screaming at the top of her lungs by the way her throat hollows and strains, each vein bulging out of her neck. I’m afraid she might hurt herself.
Panic rises from my gut, working its way through my chest. The rain falls harder, sharper, stinging my skin the closer I get to her. I need to help her. I need to get to her.
Her hand reaches out to mine, fingers stretching toward me. I can see the bones protruding under the skin.
She no longer looks like morning. She looks like death.
As soon as the tips of my fingers reach her, sound crashes back into the world, piercing my ears with howling wind, heavy thuds of rain, and the most bloodcurdling scream from the woman before me.
“Logan!” she wails. Her fingers turn into ash, crumbling under my touch as the rest of her body disintegrates in front of me.
“No!” I shout back in a muffled voice, like too much peanut butter is stuck to the roof of my mouth. My head feels as if it’s swimming underwater. I no longer feel the wet mud between my toes. All I see is a pile of ash where her body was. I’m growing faint, swaying back and forth like a tree limb in a violent thunderstorm, when my body slowly turns into ash.
“Logan? Lo, wake up. Wake up.”
There’s a heavy weight on my chest as my eyes struggle to flutter open. It feels like someone took a mallet to my brain and smashed it to mush. Slow to wake, slow to respond. I have no idea where I am or how I got here until I smell her skin and feel her hair brushing across my face.
“Lo? It’s okay. It’s me. Hey, it’s me, babe.”
I come to, locking onto her eyes. It’s not a jack-knife reaction like I usually have when my nightmares come. This is worse. It’s the slow, agonizing way my body chooses to wake me from it, paralyzed into the mattress for what feels like hours before I regain control of my limbs again. Her fingers are brushing through the strands of my hair, easing me back into reality as my rapid breaths begin to slow. I focus on her touch, her smell, the sound of her morning voice. The weight of her on my chest calms me, and it’s then I realize it’s Tia. My Tia.
“Were you having a nightmare?”
I nod, stroking my thumb against her jaw.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Her voice is so soft and sincere that it makes my stomach flip. I’ve never woken up next to anyone during my episodes, but now that I have, I’m grateful it’s her.
