Page 25 of Unhinged Cravings
I sensed her gaze fall to me, but continued to look ahead. “Like you?” she asked so quietly, I almost didn’t hear her.
Snorting, I replied, “I’m far from beautiful and far more deadly.”
“I’m not convinced.”
This time I did turn to her, but she was gone, strolling across the bedroom and jumping into my bed. She crossed her legs and looked at me, a devious smile on her face. My mind screamed that this had been a mistake. That I needed to pick her back up and take her to her room. I could tolerate the sounds of horror that came from her room, ignore the need to rush in and calm her. But I couldn’t do it. I wanted her there, in my bed and in my shirt. Wanted that smile and the wildcat that lived behind it.
“That’s my side of the bed,” I grumbled.
“No, it’s mine. I always sleep on this side. You slept on that side last night and you were fine.”
And just like that, my aggravation returned. “Get on the other side of the bed,” I said, stomping over to her.
“No.” She crawled further into the bed, a move that left my balls throbbing because it was so sexy. Sliding under the sheets, she picked her book up and ignored me.
“You’re not sleeping on my side of the bed, Ava.”
“I am, and nothing you do can make me change sides.”
I clawed my fingers through my hair. She was so frustrating, yet I adored and hated it at the same time.
“What is so important about that side?” I asked, feeling the muscles in my jaw sharpen.
“Why is it so important to you?”
“Because I put my gun and my phone on the nightstand.”
The book lowered and her eyes shifted over to the other side of the bed where a second nightstand stood. Damn it.
“And your reasoning?” I asked, skulking to the other side and knowing she was winning this argument as much as I despised admitting it.
“I don’t like sleeping on the side near a door.” Her voice was low, like she didn’t want to admit the truth.
I looked over at the door. She wanted to be as far from the door as she could while she slept. My fist clenched as I pieced together a reason for that reaction. What had happened to her tocause that fear? I couldn’t help but think it had to do with her nightmares.
Pulling my gun from the back of my pants, I stared at it for a moment, realizing she could have grabbed it while I’d carried her. Could have shot me and run. A stupid, dangerous mistake, but then I seemed to make plenty of mistakes when it came to her.
I placed it on the nightstand along with my phone and got into bed, staying on top of the sheets.
She picked her book back up and returned to reading, and I couldn’t help but consider how comfortable this seemed. We could have been a married couple turning in for the night. But we weren’t. We were hostage and captor. A captor who was quickly falling for the hostage he should have avoided from the moment he saw her.
Chapter Eleven
AVA
Someone moved the book from my hand. I vaguely registered it along with the whispered, “Goodnight, wildcat,” once he repositioned my body so my head was on the pillow. My eyes were too heavy to open, sleep having cast its spell on me, but I knew it was Emerson. A man who continued to pique my curiosity, although I thought it might be more than that now. No matter that two days seemed like too short a time to find the cold, cruel mafia boss everyone feared endearing.
The thought drifted away as I fell further into sleep’s grasp. My dreams were gentle, flickers of blue eyes the color of a clear summer’s day, baritone words that settled too comfortably in my drifting mind, a smirk that left my knees weak. But the calm slowly shifted, and a sense of dread crawled up my spine. Darkness crept in even as I backed away from it. I swiveled to run, but a brick wall faced me. Familiar and constricting. Red bricks the color of dried blood with scrapes across them, the markings of days that passed.
Turning back, the darkness eclipsed me, and I gasped for breath, terror striking like a venomous snake and forcing the scream from my locked lungs. I ran through the blackness, up thestairs. One, two, three…ten and a door. Locked and restricting. I pounded at it, screaming as the dark compressed its heaviness into my skin like an oily substance. Something skittered below the stairs. Pings and creaks my rational mind told me were nothing, but in the pitch, there was only my overactive imagination to create the monsters lurking below. I screamed and scratched, clawing at the door. My nails tore, my skin ripped, and my tears fell.
Something wrapped around my waist, and I bellowed out a cry as that terror hit like the wall tumbling onto me. The stairs collapsed, yet still the surrounding sensation continued.
Safety,my mind whispered, and I relaxed into that pressure.
Streams of light broke through the darkness, my fall cushioned by a gentle tide that swept me to shore. The sun shone down on me, and I blinked my eyes at it. The sensation, that presence that told me I was safe, that nothing would hurt me, continued and I let my tension go, noticing it slide from me, taken away with the tide. I relaxed further into the hold, letting it encompass me and knowing I never wanted to lose it.
The sense that something was missing woke me. I blinked my eyes, adjusting to the sunlight flooding through my window. The window in my prison, not in Emerson’s room. Sitting up, I rubbed my eyes and looked around the room. He had moved me at some point, but I remembered his touch in my nightmare this time. The secure hold he kept on me as I’d fought my way from my memories had been solid enough for me to recognize. I rubbed my hand over my waist, missing his touch. The T-shirt he’d given me was still covering me and I brought it to my nose, smelling his scent that still lingered on it before I dropped it quickly.
