Page 37 of His Haunted Desire
I’m about to turn back to the couch when she moans and calls out to me.
“Raiden,” she murmurs sleepily. “Don’t… go.”
She’s sleeping, doesn’t even know what she’s saying. If she wakes to find I’ve climbed into bed next to her, she’s probably going to be pissed. Then lightning strikes, and she lets out a gasp.
I can’t leave her like that. She’s clearly terrified.
I gently climb into bed next to her, feeling the mattress sag in my direction. I’m so much heavier than her. She rolls against me and places her hand on my chest. A soft smile touches her lips as she wriggles contentedly next to me.
I glide my fingers through her hair, which she seems to like. Close my eyes and listen to the rain hammering against the window.
Then suddenly, the rain becomes gunfire, and I’m doing my best to fire back, gun thrown over the barricade, blind firing because the last two men who peeked over had their skulls cleaved in two. Terror holds me in a vise, terror like I’ve never felt: terror which, truth be told, I thought I was better than.
I’m like a scared boy. It’s nowhere near as heroic as I always dreamed I’d be.
My buddy, Rocky, bellows in my direction, “A few more minutes and we’ll have backu?—”
A grenade goes off. Gore everywhere.
I stumble through the dusty semidarkness as I struggle to find my bearings, my ears ringing, my knee twinging.
“Ahhhh!” I howl, bolting upright.
“Ahhhh!” Aurora screams.
I rub my eyes, grounding myself in my surroundings, and look down to find Aurora. Sweat is coating both of our bodies, drenching us and sticking our clothes to us.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, reading the fear in her eyes. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Did we just have a nightmare at the same time?” she whispers.
“Seems so.”
“Whoa. It’s like when women synchronize their periods.”
I tilt my head. “Riiiight.”
“Bad analogy?” She says with a tired laugh.
“Nah–I get you.”
Her eyes are clear as she pulls away from me, then stands. “Why are we in bed together?”
“Take that accusation out of your tone,” I growl, standing on the other side of the bed. “I tried to leave you here by yourself, but you were terrified of the storm and asked me to lie down with you.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I’m not lying.”
“I’m not saying you are. I just don’t remember it.”
“You should say thank you,sir,for being there for you,” I snap.
Her dress is rumpled from sleeping, her hair wild, giving her a disheveled, attractive look that has my heart pounding and my thoughts going wild. I could tear the fabric of that dress easily.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she mutters.
“I’ll look at you any damn way I want.”
