Sonata (North Security 3)

It would make him so sad. He would grieve me.

Suddenly I’m moving. Light blinds me. Shivering wracks my body. An explosion of sound like the roar of thunder. No, like a plane. The humming underneath my seat reminds me of where I am. I open my eyes to look directly into an intense green gaze.

“You’re safe now,” he says, his voice rough, as if he’s been yelling.

Maybe he has been.

A nightmare. That’s what it was. A nightmare that I was trapped underneath the Palais Garnier. It wasn’t real, even though I feel chilled to my core. As if he understands that, Liam wraps his arms around me. He pulls me close until it’s hard to know where he ends and I begin. “I’m sorry,” I say, forcing the words out. The feeling of being paralyzed hasn’t fully left.

A stewardess appears holding a blanket. He accepts it without a word, wrapping it around me. The plush warmth enfolds me. The rise and fall of his chest comforts me. His voice comes low and steady this time. “It may take some time for the dreams to stop.”

I remember walking into his room at Kingston…

A form writhes on the bed, large, menacing. A wild sound of rage. Of pain?

“Liam?” I whisper.

My eyes adjust so slowly, revealing a feral animal, revealing a man in sleep. White sheets are tangled around his waist. His shoulders are thick with muscle. He grasps the sheets, the pillows, fighting something. My heart clenches at the realization.

Liam North is having a nightmare.

I put my hand on his shoulder. Tension ripples beneath my palm. He’s facing down, fighting some invisible enemy, sweat a faint gleam across a landscape of strength.

He goes still.

“It’s just a dream,” I say, soothing. Only it doesn’t feel like a dream. There are terrible demons in the room, as living and breathing as I stand here. Maybe more.

A crash of motion, and then I’m pulled, twisted, pinned onto the bed. I land hard on the expanse of cool sheets. Breath leaves me in a rush. A large body cages me from above, an arm pressed across my neck. It’s not hard enough to keep me from breathing, but I definitely can’t move.

“Liam,” I say, gasping. “Liam!”

He trembles above me, around me. He’s become my whole world—and it’s a dark place to live. His breath saws through the air like a serrated blade.

“How dare you,” he says, his voice guttural.

He’s asleep, he’s still asleep, and I don’t know how to wake him up. Only then his hand moves from my neck to my jaw.

His thumb brushes over my cheek. “Samantha,” he mutters.

“I’m sorry,” I say, more for whatever horrors haunted him in the nightmare than for waking him. Someone should be here every night, to pull him back to the land of the living.

“I could have hurt you.” He sounds hoarse but coming awake. “Do you have a goddamn death wish, Samantha? I could have killed you.”

I’m trembling underneath him, still trying to make sense of how I ended up on his bed, how I ended up between his thighs, the heavy weight of something on my stomach. “You wouldn’t hurt me,” I say, the words coming breathless and unsure.

The smell of him—earth and musk and salt. It’s all I can think about, the way he surrounds me. The way he moves over me. This is how it would feel if we made love. Even his arm across my neck… it’s meant to be a violent act, but it feels sensual. My nerves pick apart every sensation: the heat of him, the rasp of hair across his forearm, the throb of his pulse.

This is every erotic dream I’ve ever had, everything I see when I close my eyes, my hands between my legs. It would be perfect—if he wasn’t still trembling from aftershocks. What kind of terrible thing would make Liam so scared he would lash out like an animal? He’s the most controlled person I’ve ever met.

He dips his head, his lips against the curve of my ear. “I would,” he murmurs, but it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. “You aren’t safe with me.”

How far we’ve come from that night. I’m the one with the nightmares now. There’s no one better to comfort me. No one who understands them better than this man.

“Yes,” I whisper with certainty. “I’m safe now.”

He holds me with quiet assurance. There are no words to make the memories go away. Only human touch will do that. The certainty that I’m alive. The knowledge that I’m not alone. “I love you, Samantha Brooks,” he says, giving me the words I asked for on the train, proving that I’m wrong. There are words that make the memories fade away. They’re a beautiful music, infused with truth. Spoken with an instrument as old as my Stradivarius. Written on paper as worn as the parchment from Debussy.

“I love you, too.” It doesn’t matter how many stages I stand on. This is the performance of my life, speaking four simple words while I’m tucked in his arms.