Page 6 of Falling for Famine
He crouched next to me, his red eyes at eye level. “You’re the soul I’m meant to protect, so no.”
I blinked. He blinked. It’d become our thing.
My eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I’m dreaming.”
“You’re not,” his deep husk dismissed quickly.
His curious gaze went to the cuties who’d taken to snuggling under my chin, making their weirdly wet home in the crook of my neck. So when he reached out, I refused to move too much because I didn’t want to hurt them, but I had a perfectly good voice to use.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, already protective over my colorful cuties.
His expressionless face was a soft glow in the dark, but those ensnaring red eyes lifted to mine and they were all I could see. “They’re getting your pillow wet.”
It was such an unexpected comment that I opened my mouth, unable to argue. Water was dripping down my throat, but the idea of him taking them made me upset.
“It’s fine.”
I might’ve imagined it, but I almost thought his expression softened at my response. It was tough to read him in the dark. My skill was reading people, not night vision.
“You prefer to be wet?” he asked in such a serious way that a sneaky smile tugged at my lips.
Did he not hear the sexual innuendo in his question, or was I just that much of a perv? Okay, so I was a perv, but come on, that was a prime-time comedy set up.
“I mean, sometimes being wet is fun,” I couldn’t help but say.
A crease formed between his brows, but it was gone so quickly I couldn’t be sure I saw it. He withdrew his arm but stayed crouched next to me.
This was by far the weirdest dream I’d ever had.
Ghost didn’t fit the usual guy I pined over in my fictional stories. Those guys were sex beasts who demanded a girl take off her panties and let him feast on her. Or he’d chase her down in the middle of the forest, proclaiming she was his mate and forever bound to him no matter where she ran. This guy was quiet and almost too innocent for a bedroom burglar who might moonlight as a ghost.
A part of me really wished my brain had gone the sexier route. I mean, the guy was gorgeous and it’d been a long time since my snatch had seen any action that wasn’t battery-operated. I could’ve used the extra fantasy fun.
Instead, my brain, the cock-blocking bitch, came up with this—a weird guy with weird wisps crouched weirdly next to my bed and not tearing off my clothes or diving his face between my legs. But if I wasn’t going to wake up any time soon, might as well humor him.
“Why do you need to protect me?”
As if he hadn’t expected the question, his head canted again. “Because both angels and demons will want to kill you and ensure your soul can’t be used to start the apocalypse.”
“Oh, of course,” I replied sarcastically.
He stared at me, neither elaborating nor pulling away. His face didn’t portray fascination, but it was there in the way he stared at me. Something about me made him curious, and it wasan odd feeling to be studied. Guess this was what Felix always complained about when I read his moods.
“So, why’s it your job to protect me from angels and demons?”
The question sounded crazy when I asked it out loud, mainly because no story I’d ever heard painted angels as the bad guys. But this was also a dream my mind pieced together from hordes of fan fiction I’d consumed since I was eighteen. It made sense it was feral and cooky.
His eyes strayed to the wisps still under my chin. “Because I’m one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
I gave a very slight shift of my head to serve as a nod. “Yeah, that makes sense. Although, wouldn’t it be your job to take my soul if it’s meant to start the apocalypse? Aren’t you guys the harbingers or whatever?”
Was this how Alice felt in Wonderland when she wandered around asking weird questions as if they were perfectly normal?
Nomi in Dreamland.
Rising, he stared down at me. “It is.” Offering him an eyebrow, he went on without me asking the question. “But my priorities are different than the others.”
“And what are those priorities?” He seemed hesitant for the first time since I started interrogating him, so I cut in quickly. “You don’t have to tell me if it makes you uncomfortable to talk about”—and also because this was a dream and none of it mattered come morning when I’d either forget or spend a day dissecting it.
