by Meg Jackson
36
I dreamed I was on a ship rocking on a stormy sea. Bumping, painful, the wooden boards of the ship battered me again and again. My eyes winked open, saw bright blue and pink above me, and I felt the hard, dusty floor that I lay on moving. My eyes closed again and I was back on the ship, a slave ship now, and I was chained to the wall, unable to move.
Above me, awful laughter and the sound of heavy footsteps echoed. Was it Jeremy up there? No, no, he died, my dreaming mind said, but the words meant nothing. It was Jeremy, or it was a stranger, it was someone awful. Reign wasn’t there. He’d never be there again. I was being taken to a far away land, where I’d never see anyone I loved ever again. I cried for myself, for him, for the life I could have had. In real life, tears slipped down my cheeks as the truck bumped down the dirt road.
37
Silas leaned forward, looking for the telltale marks of a bike’s tires on the road, but it was getting too dark, and there was too much dust. He checked the rearview; clear. Of course it was clear. Why was he so edgy? No one would be coming. Reign wouldn’t risk his pretty little lover’s neck like that. And if he did, he’d be dead before he could call for reinforcements.
Silas was good at this. There was no reason to worry.
So why was he worrying?
38
Honey kept a distance from Reign. And, when an old pick-up turned onto the otherwise vacant highway from what looked like a road to nowhere, she slowed even further, keeping her distance from it as well. Her heart pounded under her cut. She’d always been comfortable behind the scenes. The gun felt awkward in her waistband. Everything felt just the slightest bit awkward.
But hell, Honey could deal with feeling awkward. It was better than feeling useless.
39
The man smiled as he stepped from the truck. Reign did not return the smile, but stubbed his cigarette out on the ground, planting his heel on it firmly. He looked at the man from head to toe, trying to discern where he was hiding his weapons. He couldn’t see any obvious bulges in his clothing, but he knew damn well this bastard hadn’t come unarmed.
If ever a man looked like sin, it was the man who walked slowly, confidently, towards Reign. A full mustache and beard hid the lower half of his face, and his eyes were black. He wore a Stetson, but Reign could tell the man was balding. The man was skinny as a rail, tall and lean to the point that he looked like he might blow over in the wind. But those eyes told Reign everything he needed to know.
“Where is she?” Reign demanded, and the man stopped his advance. His hands were empty, and he made no move to reach for anything on his body.
“Back of the truck, friend,” the man said, a smile spreading across his face that made Reign’s stomach turn over. His fingers itched to grab the gun he was hiding, but he steeled himself, keeping his emotions in check. If this could be finished with no one getting killed, that would be okay. Reign would love to put a bullet between the man’s eyes, but not if it risked his own life – or Gabriella’s.
“I’m not your fucking friend,” Reign said, extending the hand that held the billfold. “It’s all here.”
“Well, mighty kind of you,” the man said, walking towards Reign once more. The wind picked up; it was almost entirely dark out now, and Reign’s heart thudded with the increased danger that the night held. Less visibility was never a benefit during a scene like this.
He held back the urge to leap forward and beat the man into the ground as he pulled the billfold from Reign’s hand. They were so close now, Reign could smell the stink of the bastard’s unwashed body, could almost taste how vile and cursed the man’s smile was. He kept his eyes fixed on the man’s. No trouble, asshole, don’t you give me any trouble, Reign thought, hoping the stranger knew that Reign wasn’t just some ordinary dick with a soft spot for a pretty girl.
The man opened the billfold, glanced at the contents, and seemed satisfied.
“Looks good, partner,” the man said, looking back up at Reign with that awful smile. The smile seemed to fill his eyes, too, his entire being a vessel for all that was terrible in the heart of man. Somewhere in the distance, Reign thought he heard a motorcycle engine. He pushed the thought away, also pushing away his desire to unload his lucky Smith and Wesson right into the asshole’s smiling face.
“I’ll go get the little Misses, huh?” The man turned. Now would be your chance, Reign thought, his mind still screaming at him to kill the bastard. But he was so close to having her back – and he wasn’t going to fuck this up. He’d promised himself that. He meant to keep that promise.
“By the way,” the man said, stopping in his tracks half-way to the truck and turning. Reign watched the man’s hand slip inside his jacket as his torso twisted; in a moment, Reign had pulled the gun from his waistband, flicking the safety off, finger curled around the trigger.
A brilliant crack whipped through the night, so loud it almost rippled the still waters, and Reign fired; a plume of dust rose from the ground.
The ground seemed too close.
Something wet was crawling down Reign’s stomach.
Why wasn’t the guy on the ground?
Why was the ground so close?
What was that – pain, pain, sudden and sharp and filling him with the sour taste of blood, and the ground got closer and closer until his nose hit the dirt and he realized he’d been too late.
He heard, as he struggled to remain conscious, the crunch of boots against the dust, the sound of a gun being cocked, and soon he saw the boots before his eyes.
He couldn’t lift his head; everything suddenly doubled in his vision. He strained his eyes, trying to look upwards, felt a violent ripping in his chest as a cough rattled him, more blood dampening the earth around him, and above him, in the center of what little vision he had left, the gleam of the barrel of a gun.
He thought, vaguely, as his mind slipped away, that if he kept looking, he might see the bullet slide down that barrel, might watch it close the distance between him and his own death, and wouldn’t that be fitting…
Another sharp blast in the night and Reign shut his eyes tight, looking for the tunnel, the light that was promised at the end of it. But it was all black. Of course it’s all black, his mind said, the thought strangely clear against the fog that had taken reality’s place. You don’t get to go to heaven.
Reign thought he heard a thud. He thought he felt a whoosh of air against his face, dirt spiraling around his fingers. But those were all impossible things, because dead men can’t hear thuds or feel dirt.
Death is strange, Reign thought before it all went black.
Honey let the gun fall to the ground with a strangely substantial clatter. She wanted to fall to her knees, she wanted to throw up. Instead, she walked, unsteady and stumbling, towards Reign’s body, the blood that was beginning to surround him.
Beside him lay another body. She watched the other body’s chest. It didn’t move. She could barely do the same for Reign, but she forced her eyes to focus on Reign’s cut, willing it to rise and fall.
And it did.
It was only when she saw it, when she knew he wasn’t yet dead, that Honey let herself collapse. And it was only for a moment; hands digging into her pocket, she pulled out her phone.
“Endo, I need you and anyone you can gather, right fucking now, and get that fucking doctor out of bed, we got a real fucked situation here…”
Epilogue
His hands? Whose hands? They were pulling, my hair, or everything, pulling me apart like… and then the cage – not the cage again, I couldn’t take the cage, not another second, oh God, not the cage, please, please, not the cage, I was screaming but it didn’t matter, they were just laughing – laughing at me, at my pain, I couldn’t breathe, and they were laughing so hard…
I woke with a gasp. The nightmares – they were persistent, to say the least. Beside me, Reign stirred, rose onto his elbows, reached over and brushed the hair from my sweating brow.
“Baby,” he
murmured, half-sleeping, rolling over to face me.
“It was just…” I started to say, closing my eyes as the terror wilted inside me.
“I know what it was,” he said, and his mouth closed over mine, his hand falling to my mound, parting the lips gently and stroking my clit. I moaned into his lips; he knew this was the one thing that could calm me down, get me back to sleep after one of my nightmares.
And boy, was he ever happy to oblige.
His finger dipped lower, my pussy immediately awakening at his touch. He moaned his own appreciation at my wetness; the dream still had my heart racing, but now it raced from pleasure, as well. Pulling his mouth away from mine, my head dropped back onto the pillow.
His mouth travelled down the length of me, my body naked, nerves sparking with each kiss he planted on my breasts and stomach. My body shuddered, thighs parting for him as his head disappeared under the light sheet.
I felt his fingers move from my clit, down to my open slit, pressing inside me just as his tongue darted out to lick my swollen nub. The adrenaline from the nightmare carried over into real life, made his tongue on my clit feel that much better, my flesh crawling with sensitivity, with pleasure, as he lapped at me.
His fingers inside me pulsed, probed, seeking that place inside me as his tongue circled my clit, then flicked over it. His lips closed them, sucking it between his teeth, my body responding immediately, hips thrusting upward.
“Reign,” I whimpered as his fingers plunged downward, finding their target and pressing hard, a dam breaking in my pussy as his tongue enveloped my clit in a warm bathe of ecstasy. He knew everything that made me squirm, could make me come in seconds, but he would always draw it out, keep me on the edge, perched on a cliff of pleasure, begging to be released.
He liked me to beg.
Now, he kept his fingers pressed lightly against that sacred spot inside me as his tongue circled my clit, over and over again. My hands found his hair, fingers digging in to his scalp, pressing him forward, needing him to give me the satisfaction I knew was waiting for me.
“Please, Reign,” I begged, pleading into the pillow, my thighs shaking as they clenched around his head. He pressed harder with his fingers inside me, taking my clit between his teeth once more, only just slightly grazing it, and with a cry in the night I came, rolling waves of bliss washing over my addled mind, calming me even as it brought my soul back to life.
This is real, I thought, this is real, nightmares are not, this is real.
I panted, still shuddering, as I came down from my climax. I let my thighs fall to the side, releasing Reign’s head. He licked tenderly at my juices, his tongue lapping up from my slit, before crawling up to lay beside me.
“Baby,” I moaned, grabbing him tight to me. “Do you…?”
“Mm-mm,” he said, and I knew that he’d already fallen asleep again. I smiled, nuzzling my head into his chest, eyes closing, the last wisps of horror from the dream blowing away like strands of a spider’s web. I could sleep again, now.
They didn’t happen every night, the dreams. A few times a week. They were horrible, they felt like they ripped me to shreds each time. But I’d wake up, and Reign would wake up, too, as though he could sense my dreams. Lord knows little else wakes him up. He can sleep through an earthquake. But when I jolt out of a nightmare, shaking and sweating, he’s up in seconds, and pressing me back down to the bed, touching me in every perfect place, washing away the dream with pleasure I could never have imagined before I met him.
I wondered, as I listened to his heartbeat, felt the rise and fall of his chest, when they would end for good. When would I be free of the terrors? It had been a year already…
It had taken long enough to quit jumping at the sight of my own shadow. Hell, it had taken long enough to find the courage to leave Reign’s apartment. It wasn’t just the aftershock of being beaten and captured. Jeremy was dead, the man was dead, and both their bodies had been disposed of somewhere in the desert – where and how was never disclosed to me. Not that I really wanted to know.
So if I wasn’t messed up enough from my personal ordeal, I was in a constant panic about someone coming to look for Jeremy, or for coming to finish that man’s dirty business. But months had helped to heal that wound: when half a year had gone by with no queries into my ex-husband’s whereabouts, I finally had to calm down and realize that I might actually be free. Free from him, free from worry, free.
My hand found the scar on Reign’s torso. I traced it with my index finger, thanking God for the millionth time that he was still alive. My man, I thought, and the words were like a lullaby. I let my mind drift, holding him tight, willing him to be safe for the rest of our days. I had come so close to losing him once…
He snored softly. The sound was music to my ears. You should be freaking out about your paper, my mind told me, wanting to occupy itself with something other than my worries about Reign’s safety and my desire to be rid of the nightmares.
I should have been worrying about my paper, after all. After enrolling in an online Master’s program, I’d found myself happily absorbed in the old routine, the old comforting feeling of research and reading. It had been Honey’s suggestion, actually, and it had been the best thing anyone could have suggested. I nuzzled closer to Reign, re-thinking the premise of my paper, letting the thoughts swirl and collide in my brain, percolating the ideas that would emerge fully-formed once I started writing.
But my mind kept drifting back to him, as always. His chest under my cheek rose and fell, rose and fell. The wind shifted outside, blew in through the open window, the desert winter still warm.
Beyond the window, I knew without looking, you could see the jagged mountains in the distance, the Rockies that I’d driven down so many months ago with nothing but the clothes on my back and a bag full of cash. They were constant, the landscape never shifting, a reminder of where I’d come from, how different everything was now. I loved them for that. But I preferred the landscape of Reign’s muscled chest, the slope of his chin, the peaks of his ears, the river of his hair. He was my mountain. He was my home. And I wasn’t goin’ nowhere.
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