Wolf (The Henchmen MC 3)

Then, despite me never being able to do so, I drifted off to sleep.FOURJanieThe nightmares woke me up, as they always did when I finally did manage to pass out. They weren't nightmares though, not in the traditional sense. They were memories I tried to keep buried. It was why many times, tired beyond comprehension, I still fought sleep. I didn't want the memories. I didn't want the sick feeling in my stomach when I woke up. I didn't want the pain. Because they were sharp, jagged things and there were many mornings I arrived in bloody pieces. Then I had to spend half the day trying to patch myself back up.

It was easier to not sleep.

So most of the time, I didn't.

After eight years of practice, I had gotten good at it. My body didn't crave it like it used to. I didn't feel disconnected and spacey like most people did when they lost a night or two. I could go three or four with no adverse reactions at all before I finally needed to crash for a few hours.

I was on night four when I got to Wolf's. That was why I passed out. That mixed with the solitude of the woods and the huge, comfy bed with the warm sheets that smelled like him- like autumn. That was what he smelled like. Like rain and fallen leaves and crisp air. It was all around me, cuddling me in its foreign yet completely familiar comfort.

But it was of no comfort when I bolted up in bed, mouth open on a silent scream. It was silent only after years and years of waking up on a blood-curdling scream that woke everyone else in the barracks. I learned to make them soundless so I didn't have to deal with everyone worrying about me and my chronic nightmares. I reached up to brush the hair that had fallen out of my ponytail out of my face, finding it sticking to my cheek for some reason. Touching my skin, I felt the tacky, gloppy sensation of triple antibiotic cream.

He'd slathered cream onto my cuts when I was sleeping!

Who the hell did things like that?

"You okay?" his sleep-rough voice reached out to me from across the room, sending an unexpected shiver across my skin. My head snapped in his direction of its own mind and he had already kicked in the leg rest. His feet were on the ground, spread wide. His leather cut was gone, leaving him just in jeans and the tight black tee. His elbows were on his knees, his back curled forward, his sleep-puffy eyes on me.

"Fine," I strangled out, fighting the urge to put my hand over where my heart was slamming in my chest.

"Don't lie," he chastened quietly, shaking his head at me. "Don't wanna talk, don't." He paused. "But don't lie."

Well then.

I kind of liked that.

Everyone else wanted to pry. Everyone thought they had the right to demand I spill all my dark secrets. It was really refreshing to come across someone who acknowledged my right to keep my private feelings private.

Also, that was probably the most I had ever heard him speak before.

I nodded tightly at him, pushing the blankets off and climbing out of the bed. "I don't want to talk about it," I explained unnecessarily, but the silence in the room was deafening since he turned the television off. I walked over toward the kitchen. "Go back to sleep. Take the bed even. I'm not going to get back to sleep again now," I confided with a shrug as I pulled the pot out of his coffee maker and took it to the sink to wash it. "Don't worry," I added at his expected silence, "I'm not going to run away. It's dark as hell out. Who knows what is out in these woods."

I figured he had followed my instructions until I got the coffee pot all ready and found the coffee grounds up in a cabinet so high that mere mortals could never reach. I had done a mildly embarrassing jump before I made a grumble, ready to go grab a dining room chair, when I felt his presence behind me. As in... right behind me. His entire front was against my back. I wondered if he was always so blase about the concept of 'personal space'. My head tilted upward, making the top of my skull rest on the lowest part of his chest, my brows drawn together in question as I looked up mostly at his beard.

"Coffee," he explained and my gaze caught the movement of his hand going into the cabinet and pulling down the grounds.

Oh, right. Coffee.

I nodded, letting my head drop away from his chest and forcing my hands to open the coffee and put grounds in the machine.

"Go back to sleep," I said again as the silence dragged on and he still hadn't moved from behind me. There was a weird, completely insane, nonsensical, uncharacteristic urge in me to turn and bury my face in his chest, to wrap my arms around him. To say it was an unsettling desire would be an understatement. I didn't hug people. I certainly never embraced men. That wasn't how I operated. I didn't have that drive like normal women did. Men were never a safe place for me to land. But the tug was there, just under my ribcage, begging me to do it, to surround myself in his strength, to let it settle into my bones. But that was ridiculous. So on an exhale, I forced myself to move to the side and away from him. "What time is it?" I asked, finding myself without a cell, having left it in my bag in the car that I, apparently, wasn't being allowed to go to.

"Four," he said easily, not even having looked for a clock anywhere or anything.

"Jesus." What the hell was I going to do with myself for another couple hours of darkness? "Well thanks for getting the coffee. I'm, ah, going to need it. So... yeah... go on back to bed."