Overture (North Security 1)

My mind reels from the sudden break of night.

Darkness blankets the bedroom, but not like my dreams. It’s not the lack of light that makes dreams dangerous. It’s the lack of hope.

Breath saws through my throat. Every muscle is pulled tight, ready to strike. Slowly, slowly, the shadows form into the shape of a person. Samantha looks up at me, her eyes wide with fear.

“Christ,” I say, my voice hoarse. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

She blinks at me, her mouth open. That’s when I realize that I still have my arm across her neck. She can’t breathe. I’m hurting her. I swore I’d never hurt her.

I pull back enough to let her breathe, but something strange happens. I can’t stop touching her. I’m clutching her, feeling her, making sure she’s not broken or bruised. My hands are rough. I’m probably making it worse, but I need to feel her solid and warm and alive.

A ragged breath. Another. Her slender body shakes underneath me, her eyes watering. “I’m fine,” she says even though it’s clearly a lie. “Fine.”

“Fine,” I repeat, grim and sick with it. “You’re the furthest fucking thing from fine. I could have killed you, Samantha. Do you understand that? I could have crushed your windpipe in a second.”

A shiver takes her body. She’s scared of me.

As she should be.

It’s not a regular man who got custody of her six years ago. I hide the feral part of me, but it’s inside, waiting to get out. “Don’t ever do that again—Jesus, don’t. Don’t cry.”

Tears slip from her eyes, but she doesn’t make a sound. That hurts almost more than if she’d sobbed in my arms. I learned violence in my childhood. She learned to hide her pain.

“I’m not hurt,” she whispers.

“You are,” I say, insistent. She’s hurt in so many ways she can’t even count them all. She came to me shattered. The bastard of a father had neglected her in a thousand ways for the first twelve years of her life. And then he’d died. My fault. It was my fault he was gone, and the worst part is that I’d never once regretted it. Not when it brought her to me.

Her palm cups my face, rubbing gently. Her skin is so soft, impossibly fragile as it rasps against a day’s growth on my jaw. “What were you dreaming about?”

My entire body reacts to that—a sudden jerk, as if she slapped me instead of caressed me.

What was I dreaming about? I don’t want that near her. Not even the description of it. Not even the thoughts. “It doesn’t matter.”

Her eyebrows draw together. “Was it from when you were overseas?”

From my time as a soldier. Yes, there were some dark moments. Blood and death. That’s probably what I should be having nightmares about. I’ll send my brain a fucking memo, because it can’t seem to get over what happened years before that. “No.”

“You sounded…” She swallows. “Afraid.”

Afraid. Yeah, I’d been afraid. It had buried itself deep in my skin, and all these years later, even knowing that no one can hurt me, it hasn’t left. The irony is that it made me a beast on the battlefield. I wasn’t afraid of a goddamn IED blast. Nothing in that godforsaken desert could scare me. There’d been a time in my life it would have been a blessing.

Another tear rolls down her face, and I realize she isn’t crying because I hurt her. She’s crying because I’m hurt. Something strange tightens in my chest. I basically attacked her like an animal, like a fucking animal, and she’s worried about me.

“It doesn’t matter what I dream about. The important thing is that you never do that again. Why did you come here?” But for some reason I can’t make myself let go of her.

She’s still underneath me, her body warm and quivering.

My cock is hard. The warmth of her, the sweet scent of her. She must feel my erection where I’m straddling her. Does she know what it means? Of course she does, you bastard.

“It does matter,” she says, squirming a little in ways that make my cock flex against her flat little stomach. “It matters what you’re dreaming about.”

My body doesn’t feel like it’s under my control. I want to blame the nightmare, but this isn’t something I ever thought about when I was five years old in a goddamn well. I dip my head to breathe her in. Maybe the scent, one deep breath—it might be enough. It’s not. I need more. I press my face against her neck. The bristles on my jaw rasp against her. My lips follow to soothe away the sting. Her breath catches, and I can’t make myself stop.

“I’ll prove it to you,” I mutter, my voice almost a growl.

Her eyes widen, dark pools that I could drown in, but she doesn’t look afraid.

She looks curious.