I’m almost at the utility closet, I can practically feel the cool metal handle in my grasp. I can feel the iciness shooting through my skin and chilling me. I’m so close. So very, very close. My arm juts out, my fingers outstretched. A few more inches. Now centimeters.
I don’t make it.
From my left, someone barrels into my side like a defensive end in a football game and tackles me. I swat at them and kick, still screaming and struggle to get away. I make it a few feet before they tackle me again. “Let me go!” Their arms tighten around my shoulders and their legs wrap around mine. “Let me go!”
The thundering stops. “Hand her over.” My sobbing is intense so I can barely hear the people surrounding me. But I know the person who said hand her over is Marjorie.
I sob harder, so hard I can’t breathe. There’s an argument going on in front of me and I already know what’s going to happen. It’s like I’m waiting for the jab of the needle. Waiting to feel the drugs that I loathe work their way through my nervous system and cloud my judgment. Waiting for them to subdue my subconscious mind and let me drift off into the darkness.
But there is never a jab from the needle.
There are no drugs swimming in my veins.
Instead, everything goes quiet, then the voices fade away and I’m being lifted off the ground by a pair of arms. The person is carrying me. My eyelids flutter and I tuck my head in between the person’s neck and shoulder blade. Tears blur my vision, but I can make out the profound jawline, and a toasted almond patch of skin. Damien. It has to be.
No one else would rescue me.
Take care of me.
Worry about me.
No one else would follow me across the state, just to be near me.
“You saved me,” I whisper into the curve of his neck.
“Of course I saved you.” His lips press against my forehead. “I will always save you. I love you that much.”
My heart has grown wings. They flutter in my chest cavity, sending gusts of air swirling through my lungs. I try to speak, but my tongue is swollen. I think I might have bit down on it during my midnight flight so I mumble, “I love you too,” instead. I’m not sure if the words come out coherent, but I’m guessing they’re not when I get no response from Damien.
The lights in the hall flicker. An eerie silence sets in. The quiet swallows Damien and I whole and pretty soon the only thing I can hear is his heartbeat. I nuzzle closer and rest my ear against his defined peck. His heart thunders. Pounding. Hammering. It reminds me of that one deadly beat of the drum that an executioner plays before someone is beheaded. Perhaps it’s a sign that I’m thinking this. That maybe
Damien is going to get in trouble for coming to my rescue. Or that maybe my relationship with him has been doomed from the start.
My body goes limp at some point, but I’m still partly lucid. I can feel myself being lowered onto a cot and I can feel Damien as he lies down in bed with me, snuggling up next to me. His hand slips over my waist. His soft breaths sound off rhythmically in my ears as he rests his face into the crook of my neck and breathes into my hair. Finally I completely give myself over to the pull of exhaustion, shutting everything else out.
~ ~ ~
It’s dark in my head.
And out of the blackness comes a vision.
There’s a man whose face is blurry, but just from his presence I can tell there is a gentleness about him. A gentleness that keeps me calm. Keeps me sane. A gentleness that fills me up with hope and love and happiness. His fingers skim my bare skin as he fiddles with my bra strap. His hands are warm. He kisses my shoulder blade, “I’ve missed you beautiful,” he tells me in a deep, soothing voice, his moist lips against my shoulder blade.
I respond with a smile and, “I’ve missed you too.”
He grazes my skin with his teeth and the titillating feeling sends a thousand sparks surging through my nerve endings. Then his lips are everywhere. In my hair. Against my ear. On my collarbone. Every part of me smolders as a passionate feeling embarks on a journey to my heart.
I look down. My clothes are gone. And I can’t remember if I’ve been naked during this entire fantasy-like dream or if at some point the man in front of me ripped them off because he’s naked too. I still can’t see his face, but I reach up and trace his taut jawline before trailing my fingers down his hard, muscled chest. He growls, and I revel in the ravenous and hungry sound that just left his throat. It’s not an angry and menacing growl. It’s a growl of pleasure. A growl of want.
“Come closer,” he beckons and motions with his finger.
I’m on top of something flat. The surface is smooth, slick, and the coolness of it reverberates through my pores and mixes in with the burning desire simmering in my veins and sends jolts of hot and cold plummeting through every nook and cranny of my body. I start to shimmy to the edge of the surface, still unsure of what I’m lying on, but the man at the edge is needy. I’m not moving fast enough for him.
He shoots his arms out with a groan and grips my waist with force. His fingers bite into my flesh as he presses down harder and slides me so close to him that our bodies are almost connected. Then he hovers over me, twirls a strand of my black hair around his finger, pulls my face close to his, and breathes into my ear, “That’s better, gorgeous.” His lips graze my lower earlobe and his warm breath trails down the nape of my neck. There’s a force building up inside of me that I need to let out. My legs tremble. My skin is on fire. I swallow a loud groan stuck in my throat to keeping myself from screaming his name.
But that’s impossible.
I can’t scream his name because his face is still blurred in my vision so I have no idea who he is.