by Emily Bishop
She screams again, and I have no time to ask permission. I step back and kick my booted foot against her door. It jolts against the weight of my force, but she’s bolted the door.
Shit.
She screams again, and it curdles my blood. If I don’t get in there, it will be too late. Adrenaline pulses through my body, and I step back again and level my shoulder at it before I shove all my weight into that door. With a crack, the bolt detaches from the wall and the entire door flies inward.
I duck behind the doorframe, in case the intruder has a weapon ready to aim at me. When I glance back in, I find the living room empty, but the sounds of Rayne’s sobs still emanate from the building.
“No! Please, no!”
I step inside and walk with quick strides to the bedroom. When I look inside, I don’t see anyone in there but Rayne. She’s still asleep in her bed, apparently dealing with one hell of a night terror. Her body thrashes from side to side. Her hair is slick with sweat, her face scrunched up with horror even as her eyes remain closed.
I don’t remember proper protocol for how to wake someone up in the middle of a night terror, so I rush to her side and place my hands on her arms.
“Rayne. Wake up,” I say in my sternest voice.
She goes limp against the mattress, and her expression changes, like she can hear me from her subconscious but can’t quite follow the order. Her body tenses beneath my grip again, and tears leak from her closed eyes.
“Please, leave me alone.”
I know she’s not talking to me. She’s talking to whoever is haunting her dreams. Out of nowhere, she shrieks again, and my ears ring. I don’t pull away. This time, I give her a little shake.
“Rayne. You need to wake up!” I put as much force into my voice as I can. I don’t want to yell at her. Somehow, I don’t think that will make it better.
She jolts awake, her eyes wide and scared as they scan the room. When they land on me, her eyebrows narrow.
“Lorn?” Her voice shakes and grinds, like she’s been smoking for twelve hours straight. I don’t have time to answer before her face crumbles into despair and she weeps. “Oh, god. Oh, god.”
I pull to her my chest and hold her as she trembles. “It’s all right. You’re not alone. It was a dream.”
I remember how angry I was with her before I went to sleep, how happy I was to toss her from my life and never look back.
I was a fool.
Whatever is plaguing Rayne, it goes deeper than I can possibly imagine. There is something bigger than both of us here, and I need to realize that. Sometimes I forget that trust has to be earned. Just because I gave it to her doesn’t mean that I deserve it, that I have earned it in such a short span of time.
I hold her a little tighter and promise myself I won’t be so selfish again.
Her shivering doesn’t cease, so I shift her in my arms and cradle her a little closer.
“Rayne, you’re fine. Everything is OK. The dream has passed, and you’re awake in your cabin. I’m here. Nothing is going to harm you.”
I try to use my most soothing voice. I’ve never had children. I’ve never had to do this before. Everything in me wants her to be OK, to feel better. She nestles her face against my chest, and her eyes are closed tight against me.
“They’re just… so awful,” she whispers against my shirt.
“I know,” I say. Of course, I don’t know. I have no idea. I couldn’t understand if I tried. I’ve never known fear like this woman is experiencing.
I wish she’d tell me why.
Now isn’t the time for that. If I want her to tell me, she’ll do it in her own time. Until then, I’ve got to protect her.
I deepen my own breathing to produce a soothing rhythm for her. She stops trembling and rests against me, but I can tell she’s not OK yet.
“You can’t be alone,” I declare.
She doesn’t disagree. I take that as acceptance.
“Come on. Let’s get you to safety.”
“You told me I’m safe.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not inclined to keep running through the woods at night to rescue you from your own subconscious. You’re coming with me.”
When she looks up at me, the ghost of a smile traces her lip. “Oh, come now. Running through the woods in the dark must be one of your specialties.”
I caress her cheek as I look down at her and grin. “Good to see your sense of humor stays with you, even in the face of whatever this is.”
I shouldn’t have brought it up. Any trace of humor evaporates from her face, and she’s pale and clammy. I wrap the blanket around her and lift her into my arms. When I carry her from the room, I can’t help but glance around. Perhaps her strange paranoia is rubbing off on me, but honestly, who could be hiding up here?
I don’t have enough information to justify this behavior. Her front door is destroyed, and cold night air is pouring in.
“I’ll fix this,” I grumble as I step over it and walk outside. For once in her life, Rayne doesn’t protest against what I’m doing, and she’s warm in my arms as I trace my way back through the woods to my cabin—thankfully, it’s not a far walk. My woodstove is still going, and the dark plume of smoke is barely visible against the pitch of night.
Rayne shivers and nestles in closer to me. I shift the blanket to more fully cover her. I didn’t even get a chance to notice if she’s wearing appropriate clothing for the woods. The blanket has encased her this entire time. I reach the front porch and carefully take each step at a time.
My cargo is quite precious, and I’d hate to make things worse by slipping and dropping her on hard wood.
I open the door, and the cabin’s warmth envelops us. Rayne’s eyes are still closed as she clings to me, and I realize how vulnerable she is.
“Here we are, safe and sound.”
I don’t want to set her down. I’m not ready yet. I don’t know if she even has the strength to stand, her nightmares were so powerful. I’ve heard that night terrors can be debilitating, but I don’t want to ask too much. I don’t want her to close me out again.
I need to figure out what’s going on.
I sit on the couch and keep her on my lap. I’m about to check and see if she’s asleep when she tilts her head up to look into my eyes.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
My heart aches for her. Her eyes are filled with sorrow and fear and so many terrible things. I want to make those horrors go away. I want Rayne to feel safe.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
And I mean it. She will find a place here, and she will learn to trust me enough to let me help her.
She has to.
Chapter Thirteen
Rayne
Lorn’s eyes are filled with concern as he searches my gaze. Cuddled in the circle of his arms, I’m safe, but my heart still races.
I am so goddamned tired of being afraid.
Lorn deserves answers. My thoughts flutter back to our big fight yesterday, and in the warmth of this moment, that all feels so irrelevant. I should tell him the truth. I know I should.
I just…can’t. Not yet, anyway. I need to calm down. I need to clear my head.
“Are you tired at all?” he asks.
The thought of sleeping again sends a shudder down my spine, and I shake my head with a little more enthusiasm than necessary.
“No. I’m too wound up.”
Lorn has jumped out of bed in the middle of the night and run through snow and ice to make sure I was OK. I feel like such a burden, even though he’s not the one making me feel this way.
“You can go to sleep though. Please don’t stay awake because of me. You must be exhausted.”
Lorn shrugs, his powerful shoulder rising and falling beneath me. “A brisk run through the woods and an adrenaline rush have me feeling quite perked up. Coffee?”
My heart sings at the fact that he’s willing to stay up with me, and I can’t help but be grateful for a distraction. Without Lorn here, a
ll I have are my thoughts and the cold, dark world outside.
No thanks.
“That would be wonderful. You do excel at making coffee, if nothing else.”
“Hey, now. I think I have many more culinary talents you are unaware of. I can also make Pop Tarts.”
I laugh, and a big chunk of stress falls from my chest. I breathe a little easier as Lorn sets me aside on the couch and moves to go make us coffee. An emptiness opens up in the vacated spot, and I wonder if he’d protest were I to ask to sit on his lap again when he returns.
Being close to Lorn makes everything feel OK. Which is kind of funny, since mere hours ago I determined never to lay eyes on him again.
I need to figure out what I want. I can’t even figure out how to live my life now that my father’s murderer is free. Will this be my life from now on? Nightmares and running and fear?
“You look stressed. I hear it helps to talk about it.”
Lorn’s voice is gentle. He won’t push me, but he really, really wants to. He wants to crack open my shell and see what I’m hiding beneath.
I’m sure now that I can tell him. The fear in his eyes when I woke from my nightmare, like he was scared for my welfare… well. Lorn is no enemy of mine. Maybe if we work it into the conversation in an organic way…
My dream flashes in my mind again, and as I take the proffered cup from Lorn, I decide to distract myself first. My worries won’t be gone any time soon. We have time to talk of other things.
“Why don’t you tell me a little more about you? What was your childhood like?”
Lorn lifts an eyebrow at me, and I can tell that’s not what he wanted to hear. He wants me to give my fair share of information, but if he has some patience, it will come.
He has to be patient. Why can’t I communicate that to him? What the hell is wrong with me?
He sits on the floor, back against the sofa, and I join him there. The fire is warm before us, and there’s a sense of congeniality between us as we sit side by side, enjoying our hot brew.
“My childhood sucked,” Lorn says. His voice is monotone, like he has detached emotion from the experience and has no intention of feeling one way or the other about it again.
I wish I could do that.
“I find that hard to believe, given your status.”
“You should know better than anyone that money doesn’t equal happiness. I may have grown up rich, but my father was a monster. To this day, I can’t seem to stop myself from hating him.”
“Why?”
Lorn gazes down into the steaming brown coffee. He releases a breath, and steam shoots over the rim of his cup. “My mother died when I was young. Even now, I’ll never understand why she was with him. She was everything he wasn’t. She was kind and generous and loving. She is the only reason I even know what love is. My father never gave that emotion. He simply disapproved of everything I did, no matter how talented or intelligent I was.”
“That sounds awful. I’m so sorry.”
He shakes his head. “Nothing to be sorry about. That’s life. When my dad died, I couldn’t bring myself to attend the funeral. I felt nothing, and that scared me. One would think when a parent dies, you get to feel one emotion—whether it’s happy or sad, it’s something. But I felt hollow.”
My heart aches for him, and I slide my hand over his as I stare ahead, lost in thought. “I can understand that, on some level. I never knew my mother. She left us when I was a baby, when she thought my dad wouldn’t amount to anything. His career took off that next year, but we never heard from her again. Maybe she was ashamed to come back, that we would think she only did it for the money, or maybe she didn’t want a child. I’ll never know. My dad was all I had.”
Lorn squeezes my hand, and we sit in heavy silence for a while.
“My dad was killed right in front of me. That’s what the dreams are about, a lot of the time. The murder.”
Lorn absorbs that fun little piece of information. He doesn’t release my hand, and I’m grateful. My stomach sours at the thought of my dad, and I set my coffee next to the couch so there’s no risk of spilling it. Lorn follows suit and sets his cup down as well.
“I know,” he says. “It was in all the papers. I didn’t remember it until you told me who you are, and of course, when I looked up your paperwork, you used a different last name. I’m sorry, Rayne. That’s a horrible experience for anyone, much less a child.”
“Yeah, well. As you said, that’s life, right? We find a way to get through the horrible things that happen to us and try and come out stronger on the other side.”
“I think you’re quite strong.”
I scoff. “Oh, come on now. You don’t need to lie to make me feel better.”
“Really, I’m not lying. I’ve never met a woman as capable as you.”
I throw a skeptical glance up at him and smirk. “Really? I believe you told me I had the least common sense of anyone you knew, or something along those lines. If you thought so much of me, you would have let me find my own way to my cabin that first day.”
“Fair enough. OK, so I think you’re capable in many, many ways, and have some growth to experience when it comes to surviving out in nature. We’re all trying to grow here, Rayne. I’m sure I have my own faults that I can work on.”
“Would you like me to list them?” I ask, my voice sickly sweet.
Lorn laughs. It’s a deep, rumbling sound, and when he glances back down at me, his gaze is warm and tender.
I could get used to a man looking at me like that.
“Maybe not tonight,” he breathes. He brushes strands of loose blond hair behind my ear, and his gaze dips to my lips.
His fingertips slide down to my shoulder, which is bare except for the thin strap of my nightgown. I’m glad he carried me over in that blanket, because I’m not wearing anything underneath this thin, silky piece of fabric, and that would have been a frigid commute.
Now all sense of cold evaporates, replaced by the heat in Lorn’s eyes as he glides the blanket off my shoulders and reveals the sea-green fabric of my slinky nightdress.
He dips his head and plants a delicate kiss on my shoulder. “Highly inappropriate nightwear for the cold mountains,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t seem too upset about my outfit choice.
He grips the corners of the blanket and pulls them apart, revealing my dress entirely. It’s slid way up my thighs, to the point where my nether regions peek out at him. The hunger in his eyes is enough to get my juices flowing, and my own eyelids grow heavy with lust.
“Simply beautiful,” he breathes, and he slides his hand along my shoulder. His fingers stroke the silk fabric of my dress, and my nipples harden through the thin fabric. Seeing this, Lorn grins and lowers his head again to kiss my neck.
I tilt my head back and allow my mind to think of nothing but this moment, this sensation. Lorn makes me feel things I never thought possible, and my pussy tingles at the promise of what is to come.
Besides me, I mean.
His lips and beard tickle my neck, and his hand slides down from my shoulder to my breast. He rubs my nipple through the fabric, the sensation delectable. My nipple reaches out to him as if begging for more, but his hand continues its path downward. I think he enjoys the feel of the silk, because he runs his fingers over my stomach in a zigzag pattern until he reaches the lacy end.
When his fingertips skim the sensitive skin of my thigh, I gasp, and he lifts his head from my neck. His other hand cradles the back of my head, and he gazes into my eyes before he lowers his lips to mine and captures them in a cherishing kiss.
Then his finger slides lower. I moan into his mouth as he slides his index finger up and down the length of my slit. When he reaches the bottom, he slides the tip of his finger in before he glides back up my soaking wet center. When he reaches the top, his fingertip circles my clit before it dances its way back down. I spread my legs to give him better access, and he spreads my vaginal lips to give himself even more.
; With my box wide open, he explores every inch with his finger, tantalizingly gliding over every nook and cranny. He slaps my clit, and I gasp against his lips. He smiles against mine. He rubs his flat fingertips against my clit in a circle, massaging me, and my hips circle as they naturally sync up to his rhythm.
My legs tremble as he continues to work my clit, the pressure mounting for what promises to be a glorious orgasm. He pulls away and sits back, staring at me with a critical eye.
What?
“We’re going to need to get that off you, now,” he says.
He reaches down and slides my nightie over my head, and I sit before him naked and aching for more.
Chapter Fourteen
Lorn
This sight of Rayne’s body in the flickering firelight of the woodstove is enough to set my soul on fire. A wave of protectiveness and lust washes over me like a tsunami, and I can’t tell if I want to hold her in my arms forever, ravage her within an inch of sanity, or both.
Yes. Quite possibly both.
Her knees are spread, her juicy center exposed before me, her expression heated and eager. I remind myself of what she’s been through, and I promise myself I won’t get lost in the sensations. I’ll make this as good for her as possible.
No matter what, I win. She’s a beautiful woman with lust in her eyes, and that lust is aimed directly at me.
My dick isn’t the only body part tingling. My heart is, as well. I brush that thought aside as I cup her face in my palms and press her lush lips against mine. I’m not as gentle this time, though I don’t go nuts on her as much as I want to. I can do this. I can hold back.
Who am I kidding?
My tongue delves into her mouth of its own volition, and she meets me right where I am, her hands roving over my shoulders and back. I want to feel her fingertips against my bare skin, so I tug the base of my shirt over my head and toss it aside. My cock is pitching a nice tent in my pajama bottoms, and as Rayne kisses me, her hands wander further south until her palm slides along the length of my shaft.
I inhale at the sensation. Not to brag, but her hand, small as it is, makes my dick feel enormous. She slides her palm up and down my penis through my pants as I continue to kiss her. I allow her to play, to explore. Her eager fingers tug at my waistline, and I grin.
