J.R. Ward - The Shadows

“I didn’t feel upset, though, my Mary. By any of it. I was just fine—”

“Until you had the panic attack in front of the house.”

“I didn’t have a panic attack.”

“You said you couldn’t breathe. That your hands and feet were tingling. That you were having trouble connecting to reality. Sounds like a classic panic attack to me.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think that was it.”

“Okay.”

Rhage took a deep breath and focused on his beloved’s face. “You are the most beautiful female I have ever seen.”

“I’m pretty sure that isn’t—”

He captured her face in his hands, cradling her with care. As his eyes roamed around her familiar features, he couldn’t get enough of them. God, it was never enough. Not a night, a month, a year, a decade . . . not the eternity the Scribe Virgin had miraculously given them both, was ever going to be enough for him.

“You are the most beautiful female I have ever seen.” He brushed her lips with his own. “I don’t know what I did to deserve a destiny with you, but I will never, ever take that for granted.”

The smile he got in response was better than the sunrise he would never see, shaming even that great glowing fireball that was the sustainer of all life, including even those who could not bear its rays.

They were still sitting like that, staring into each other’s eyes, when the doggen came in for dessert.

“You wanna go upstairs,” he said in a dark, deep voice, his beast starting to surge under his skin. “I’m ready for dessert.”

Her scent flared. “Are you.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You want me to get you some ice cream?”

He narrowed his stare on her mouth. “Not even close. I want to lick something else.”

“Well, then,” she whispered, putting her mouth to his. “Let’s get you fed.”

TWENTY-SIX

Cold sweat.

Trez woke up in an absolute cold sweat, every inch of his skin drenched, his core temperature all arctic, his heart going so fast it felt like someone had swapped the thing for a cake mixer. Bursting up off the pillows, he shouted—

Bedroom. Instead of something terrible and shocking . . . all he saw was a whole lot of his bedroom, and everything was on the normal-normal, from the lamp that was glowing next to him, to his clothes draped over the chaise lounge, to his shoes askew from where he’d kicked them off the other dawn.

For a moment, he was confused. Scribe Virgin. Some strange, mystical place. Selena in the grass, in the clinic, frozen, frozen—

A soft moan shattered the straddle between nightmare and reality.

Jerking around, he saw Selena lying in his bed, her naked shoulders showing above the sheets, her dark hair loose over his white pillowcase, her face and body turned away from him.

Closing his eyes, he sagged, and wished it had all just been a bad dream.

But then he refocused and got about his female, pulling the duvet up higher to keep her warm, discreetly leaning over and reassuring himself she was still breathing, wondering if he should go find some food for her.

As if she sensed his presence, she rolled over, her face tightening in her sleep like it hurt her to move.

Fuck. The sex had been out of control, raw, rough. Right after her body had been through so much.

Damn him, he thought as he dragged a palm down his face. How could he have done that to her? He should have jerked himself off until his cock had lost all sensation.

Worse? He wasn’t sure they had actually worked things out between them. Shit knew, he still felt like an asshole.

Reaching across to the bedside table, he got his phone and checked the time. Five forty-four a.m.

There was going to be no more sleep for him. Sliding free of the sheets, he padded into the bathroom, shut the door, used the facilities, and took a quick shower. Then he was back out, picking up his pair of earbuds from the bedside table’s drawer and putting them in place before he did a bed reinsertion.

Moving slowly, he was just as careful getting back in as he had been on his evac, maneuvering his nearly three-hundred-pound weight onto the pillow-top mattress without displacing her like she was on a trampoline.

When he was resettled, he pulled a quick check of his female and was relieved to find she was still sleeping. Which kind of terrified him. What if she were in a coma or—

As if she were searching for him, she patted around on the duvet.

“I’m right here,” he whispered.

Instantly, she stilled her searching, and as he took her hand, her palm was warm, vital, just as it always had been.

He took a moment to study her fingers, bending them one by one, measuring the movement, checking for resistance. Which wasn’t right, he thought.

It was unfair to try to solicit information from her body without her knowledge and awareness—and by way of apology, he stopped himself and smoothed the pink nail beds and the short white semi-circles she trimmed regularly.

As sleep reclaimed her, he felt . . . paralyzingly alone. Even though they were side by side, him propped up against the headboard, her nestled in close to his body, he couldn’t seem to connect with her. He told himself it was simply a matter of asleep and awake. That was the divide—nothing scarier than the fact that her brain waves would read differently than his on a CAT scan.

It was bullshit, of course. And the harder he tried to force himself to believe the lie, the more trapped he felt—so to derail the internal fight, he turned on SiriusXM radio on his phone, jacked the plug of his earphones into the ass of his handset, and tried to get comfortable. Or somewhat comfortable.

Or . . . at least not consumed by the need to jump out of his own skin.

Naturally, because his luck sucked, the first thing he heard on the radio was more bad news.

“Are you kidding me?” he blurted out loud as Howard Stern’s voice piped into his skull. “Eric the Actor is d—”

Selena’s brows tightened like she was considering waking up and he closed his piehole. But he couldn’t believe another wack packer had been lost. It just seemed cruel in light of everything he was going through.

Shit, it was as if bad news was making a concerted effort to come out of the shadows and find him.

* * *

Selena woke up slowly, and the scent of Trez’s body was the first thing she noticed. The sound of his voice the next. The feel of his hand in hers the third.

Opening her lids, she found him sitting up next to her in his bed, his black eyes rapt on his phone, his brows down as if he’d received upsetting news through a text or—

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

When he didn’t answer her, she saw that he had wires running from the phone to his ears like he was listening to something.

The instant she squeezed his hand, he jumped so high he popped the ear thingies free.

“Oh, my God! You’re awake.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t meant to—”

“Shit, no, don’t be—are you all right? Do you need Doc Jane—”

“No, no . . .” She tried to get her brain working. “I’m fine. I just . . . you seem upset?”

As he looked at her, the only sound in the room was the hiss coming from what had been in his ears.

She pulled the covers up higher. “Is there something wrong with me?”

“Oh, God, no. I, ah, no—it’s nothing.” He glanced at his phone. “Just, someone who was on the Stern Show d—”

When he stopped, his eyes got wide, as if he had almost said something unforgivable.

“Died?” she finished for him.

“I, ah . . .”

“You can still say the word.” She squeezed his hand again. “Honestly.”

Trez cleared his throat and put the phone aside. “Are you hungry?”