I tried not to allow my mind to get away from me, and instead once again focused on the movie.
“This movie is fucked up,” he rumbled.
I agreed wholeheartedly.
Minutes later, in the movie, the kids were playing a clap game.
The game was simple. The mom had a blindfold on, and the kids clapped from various places in the house as she tried to find them with her blindfold on.
“That’s cute,” I said.
He grunted something unintelligible.
“What was that?” I snickered.
“This is going to come back and bite her in the ass,” he said. “I just know it.”
I had a feeling he was right.
And that was proved correct a while later when, late at night, the mother heard clapping.
Thinking that it was the kids playing, she followed the sound to the basement.
“My kids were down there,” he said. “I’d call for them to stop fucking around and go to their rooms. No way in hell would I go down there.”
I snickered at his comment.
“You’re telling me you wouldn’t go down there?” I teased, knocking into him playfully with my shoulder.
His face turned so that he could study me.
I quit breathing.
“I’m telling you that I would’ve gotten the fuck out of that house at the first sign of something fucked up being there,” he told me. “Her going down into that basement would’ve never been a possibility. I protect what’s mine.”
I protect what’s mine.
Oh, boy.
He tapped my nose with his finger, then turned back to the screen.
“See,” he said. “I’d lock their asses in, too.”
I watched as the mom on the screen threatened to lock whoever was in the basement in, then gasped and jumped as the door slammed in her face.
Seconds later she was tumbling down the stairs.
The big man next to me tensed.
“Fucking hell,” he said when she finally landed.
A ball came rolling across the floor after that, and I moved closer to Dax.
He pulled up his arm and tucked me in tighter to his chest, his hand going to my shoulder and squeezing it lightly.
Comforted in his arms, I nearly missed the next thing that happened as the mom ran up the stairs.
Seconds later the light burst and the screen was plunged into darkness.
“Fuck,” I breathed, legs tensing.
Dax was still fairly relaxed next to me.
That was until a few scenes later when she lit up a match and started shining it around.
“She’s gonna see a fucking face,” he said.
The match went out.
She lit another one.
That match went out.
She lit yet another one.
That’s when there was a loud clap that nearly sent me straight off of the couch.
I screamed and covered my face, completely missing the rest of the scene as I covered my head and prayed for it to end.
“It’s over,” Dax whispered.
I lifted the blanket from my head where it was tucked into Dax’s shoulder, then looked at the screen.
“I’m going to have nightmares,” I informed him.
He chuckled then.
“If you do, I’ll come sleep with you and make sure nothing touches your foot that’s hanging off the—” I slapped my hand over his mouth so he couldn’t finish that sentence.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I growled.
His lips turned up into a smile against my hand.
I pulled it away before I could allow my fingers to explore his lips, then turned my face back to the screen.
I didn’t move out of his hold, though.
I stayed exactly where I was, head on his chest.
He’d moved the laptop to the outside of his thigh so he could see but didn’t make a move to dislodge me in any way.
I felt things inside of me start to flutter with excitement at how close I was.
The movie played away, and each time that I got scared, his arm would squeeze around me tighter.
It was at the point that the end was near that I realized that his hand was resting perilously close to my goods.
Not that he knew that since the blanket was wrapped around me still.
But I could feel the heat of his hand as it pressed against my mons.
I licked my lips and tried not to breathe. Because if I breathed, it might dislodge his hand, and I really wanted his hand where it was.
Any moment he was going to move it because the movie was over.
Any minute…
“Hey,” I croaked. “There’s a Conjuring Two!”
Why did I sound so excited to get the shit scared out of me again?
Because anything, even being scared out of my mind, was preferable to leaving his arms.
Anything.
By the end of the movie, I was so scared that I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I wouldn’t be getting a wink of sleep.
Dax, being the sweet man that he was, walked me over to my door and waited until I walked inside.
When I had the door open, I turned in the opening and surveyed him.
His eyes were sleepy again. But his hair was no longer a mess. At some point during our night, he’d gone into the bathroom and had come back out with it combed into a semblance of control.