Far from it.
More than anything, he wanted to lift her over him and have her straddle his aching body; to bury himself inside her and lose himself in her tight heat. But he recalled again the weariness in her eyes and the exhausted slump of her slender shoulders. She needed sleep more than he needed sex.
Grateful when she curled on her side, he listened to her breathing grow slower, until finally she was asleep. He blew out a hard breath and flung one arm over his head, staring through the darkness at the ceiling, knowing he wouldn’t find sleep quite so easily.
*
He couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t move. Could barely breathe for the thick dust and grit that filled his nostrils and mouth.
He lay in utter blackness, pinned where he was by the weight of the heavy concrete above him. When he tried to shift, agonizing pain tore through him, as if someone had taken a red-hot poker and driven it through his midsection.
Somewhere, in the darkness, he heard a tortured moan. Someone was dying, and there wasn’t a fucking thing he could do to help. Was it Santos? He tried to call his buddy’s name, but when he opened his mouth, it filled up with dirt until he began to choke.
He was being strangled.
He was dying.
He struggled to free himself, but he couldn’t move.
Someone called his name.
“Jamie. Jamie.”
His lifeline. His only hope.
“Jamie.”
A hand touched his shoulder, and he surged upward on one elbow, disoriented and gasping for breath.
“Jamie, you were dreaming, but you’re safe now.”
He turned his head and realized he was in bed with Rachel. She had turned on the bedside lamp and now she leaned over him on one elbow, her face clouded with concern. He shoved a hand through his hair, trying to dispel the nightmare. Outside the window, the sun had already risen.
“Water,” he managed to croak.
Without hesitation, Rachel jumped out of bed and hurried over to the sink, filling a tall glass with water and carrying it back to him. She knelt on the mattress beside him as he drank it in noisy gulps. He swore he could still feel the grit of the nightmare in his throat.
He handed Rachel the empty glass and fell back against the pillows. He was coated in a fine sheen of sweat, and he felt weak, as if he’d just completed a triathlon.
“Hey.” Rachel smoothed a cool hand over his brow. “Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” he said, his voice a harsh rasp. Reaching out, he pulled her down beside him and wrapped his arms around her, breathing in her soapy-clean scent. She represented everything that was good and pure, and right now he needed that. He wanted to lose himself in that with an urgency that wouldn’t be denied.
Reaching down, he began pushing her boxer shorts down over her hips. “Take these off,” he muttered, too impatient to have any finesse.
She did as he asked, shimmying out of the boxer shorts, and then pulling her T-shirt over her head until she was completely nude. He devoured the sight of her slender curves, her full, high breasts with their dusky tips, and the thatch of dark hair between her legs. Without waiting to be asked, she leaned over him and pulled his shorts down over his hips, easing them over his cast until she could pull them free.
He was already hard, his erection straining against his stomach. He didn’t want to wait; he couldn’t wait. He needed to be inside her now.
“Hurry,” he demanded.
Rachel raised one leg to straddle his hips, and he moistened his fingers with his tongue and swiped them over her cleft in a crude effort to prepare her. Then he grasped her hips in both hands and surged upward, pushing himself into her hot, tight depths with a loud groan of satisfaction.
Rachel gasped, and then she was working with him, rocking her hips and clenching her inner muscles with each forceful thrust. Lust swirled through him and the nightmare receded. He’d been prepared to reach his own climax without her, but watching her as she rode him, he realized she was close. Her face tightened in an expression of pleasure-pain as she neared her climax.
Jamie watched as her orgasm rolled over her, and then he let himself go with a guttural cry of release, surging upward as she tightened around him, pouring himself into her until there was nothing left for him to give.
Chapter Twelve
They didn’t talk about the nightmare or the sex, but the experience left Rachel shaken. Jamie had disappeared into the bathroom immediately after; there had been no cuddling or pillow talk. Rachel lay in bed, listening to the water run, reliving those urgent moments. She had never, ever been used so thoroughly, or enjoyed it so much. She only wished the catalyst for the desperate coupling had been different.