Heavy panting flushed my face as he fought for control back from the cruelty of his nightmare, the heat radiating off of him twice the fever it normally was. His hands were practically in a boil, singeing my cheeks as he grabbed both sides of my face hard, holding me as if I was about to evaporate.
At his touch, the prickly vines coiled around the skin of my heart disintegrated and released, and my lungs deflated in relief.
I breathed just as hard as if I’d been the one clutched in the void of a night terror as I wound my fingers around his thick forearms so I could hold him back. Sweat slicked between our foreheads, the confined space between my mouth and his warming the air to pure steam.
“The dream was different,” he rasped, swallowing thickly.
My thumbs swept back and forth against the dark hair decorating his forearms, trying to calm him.
“What’s it usually about?”
A pink flash of his tongue swiped out in an attempt to dampen his lips from all the hot and heavy breathing we were doing.
“Rebecca dying. In my arms.”
The movement of my thumbs stuttered to a stop. My lips failed a few times to form the words, not really wanting to ask the question and definitely not wanting to know the answer.
“What was it about this time?” I spoke quietly.
The most controlled breath James had managed yet streamed through his nose. Gently, he eased back and pulled our heads apart.
He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t have to.
His eyes with a language of their own did all the talking for him…
And I realized with a sinking gut that James and I and our obsessive demons were far past the point of messy.
We’d entered full on clusterfuck.
And it was all my fault.