In My Arms You Shall Hide

Chapter 21

Kittie

W hen I open my eyes, I find myself in darkness. In my bedroom, I usually wake up to the glow of nightlights, but tonight, it’s pitch black. It’s hot here, and I feel someone beneath me when I shift. I lift my head, only to wince from the stiffness in my neck.

Dorian lays inclined, a few pillows crammed behind him to keep him elevated. My legs straddle his waist, my chest to his, and my face nestled against the crook of his shoulder. He’s shirtless and in his boxer briefs, and I’m in one of his Tacron Global T-shirts that engulfs me like a dress.

I don’t remember putting it on. I’m disoriented, struggling to collate my memories.

“Can’t sleep?” he guesses, sounding as if he’s been awake.

“What time is it?” I grumble, rubbing an eye.

“A little past three.”

“I hope you haven’t been awake too long,” I say. When he chuckles and tucks a few strands of hair behind my ear, I add, “Were you listening to me snore and watching me drool?”

“You only drool a little bit,” he teases, the low tone of his voice vibrating in his chest beneath my hand.

For a sweet bubble of time, we’re normal. There’s only Dorian, the man who stayed by my hospital bed, and there’s only me, the hopeless fool in love with him.

All too soon, though, the memories of the day before flood back; playing cards and kissing, my mom arriving, my escape attempt.

Sleeping with him, him bathing me…the evening after is fuzzy and too hard to capture, but the highlights are crystal clear.

Nervousness pushes me to sit up on his lap. In doing so, I’m made aware of a dull, exquisite ache in the center of me. Even if I became cozy with the physical feeling, a small prick of fear touches me. I survey his face in the dark; his features are relaxed.

It doesn’t stop me from ducking my head, avoiding his eyes, or burning my face with a blush. “Are you still angry with me?”

“Of course not,” he breathes. He rests a hand on the back of my head. “Don’t you remember our conversation?”

Conversation? I try again to rifle through the memories. Moments like little blips come to me in hazy pieces. Bathwater. An angry phone call. Getting dressed and cuddling up on the couch together. Sporadic, gentle kisses between soft conversations.

But I don’t want to address whatever’s wrong with my head. My body’s humming in joy for the first time since…ever. I don’t want to ruin it.

“Um, yeah,” I stammer, “sorry, just groggy.”

I can’t tell in the dark if he buys my lie. Either way, he says, “I’m not angry with you anymore. I’m hoping that’s behind us.”

Although the tiny voice in my head wants to start proclaiming my vows to never run away again, it’s a moot point. He told me to save my breath.

In the darkness, I feel the weight of his eyes surveying me. “You didn’t seem to have any nightmares tonight.”

“I haven’t for a while,” I insist weakly.

“You have them when the room’s too dark…before we got you those lights. I should have left the bathroom light on; that’s my mistake. But, it seemed you were rather peaceful tonight.”

I shrug. I try to stave off the embarrassment of someone waking me up in the middle of the night to stop another dream of being in the tiny, suffocating closet. “I feel like such a child. I wish I could just grow up.”

“If I recall correctly, it’s thanks to us that such a fear was intensified. I would never mock you for it.”

I sigh a little. I’ve moved past the eaves attic incident and don’t want to broach the subject again, nor the reason for the incident. Not right now.

“I should be over it by now. You and Raney shouldn’t have to—” I cut myself off, chewing my lower lip. “Dorian? Will Raney and Cory be alright?”

“Presumably,” he replies and then cocks his head to one side against the pillow. Amusement laces his mouth. “They should be back in the morning. I assume I would’ve gotten a text if something went awry.”

My mind lingers on Raney’s friendly face before flickering to Cory’s cold, emotionless one.

To some degree, I understand why Raney is in hiding or why she would never divulge to anyone I’m here. But the circumstances around Cory are even more confusing, and I’ll definitely never get answers for him.

I curl my fingers against my palms, only for it to dawn on me that my hands have been splayed against Dorian’s bare skin.

Everything we’ve done keeps coming to me in flashes as if my mind is teasing me about what happened. I shake my head, hoping to send them away, but the movement amuses him.

Misreading the pensive look on my face, he pulls my head down to his chest again. “They adore you, Kittie, and I know you care about them. I wouldn’t let them do anything that would hurt them.”

I doubt Cory likes me very much, but I won’t argue with Dorian because he’s right. I don’t want anything bad to happen to them.

Or him. I can’t let anything happen to Dorian, no matter what’s transpired. No matter if I give into that part of my brain that wants to go with the flow, become his possession, or if I fight tooth and nail to escape, I can’t allow him to take the fault.

Because I love him. Nothing can change it.

“Dorian,” I slowly approach the question, wincing all the while. “Why? Why did you do all this?”

Silence. I wait, indulging in the rhythm of his pulse below me.

Dorian lowers his arms to circle my waist and carefully flips me onto my back. I barely process the stinging of the tender skin of my butt as he looms over me, placing his hands on either side of me against the mattress. The faint moonglow from the window ignites his left eye, casting half his face in shadows.

There’s no anger there.

“I’ve already answered that, Kittie,” he murmurs.

“It’s…It’s just that—” I suck in a breath, “—I don’t understand your…devotion?” That seems like a fair enough word. “I’m…you deserve someone so much better than me.”

It might be the best attempt to persuade him, to let him set me free. After my confession—of words he doesn’t seem to want to hear—he knows I can’t turn him in. He has to know how much I love him despite myself. But in the end, it’s not an attempt to convince him.

Astonishingly, it’s insecurity.

Dorian’s face twitches. “Let’s not talk of deserving, kitten. I know I don’t deserve you; I’ve always known that. But I took you anyway. I spit in the face of deserving. ”

“But—” I squirm under him when a smirk breaks across his face, “—I just don’t think I’m worth…all of this. To get in trouble over.”

“Let’s not speak in impossibilities.” I stiffen when his expression turns sinister. He leans down to me, batting my face with his warm breath. “Oh, you just want me to compliment you, don’t you?”

I blink. This is not the direction I was angling for. Sure, I beat around the bush a little bit, but they’re serious questions. Still, I feel a pang of sadness in my chest at the notion that I can’t fathom why he’s done all of this .

“W–Wait,” I begin, face burning. I lift my hands to brace his chest. “That’s not—”

“No, you want me to say pretty words to you,” he teases, leaning closer until his lips brushed against mine. “If you want me to spoil you, all you need to do is ask.”

My face stings. I close my eyes. “N–No.”

“My whole heart,” he calls me, and his lips brush my mouth. “Did I mention how beautiful you are? Distractingly so . Every time I lay my eyes on you, you send me.”

“You…you…” I swallow, trying to concentrate. How has he flipped my questions on their head? His purred words and his proximity make me flustered. I open my eyes, pouting a little.

“What’s the matter?” he asks, amused, backing up a little to survey my face. “Use your words, or I’ll keep teasing you.”

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

I mean to ask if he’s sure he wants to keep me here and risk being arrested.

Dorian chuckles a little, following a different question entirely. “I knew what I wanted the second you opened your eyes and looked at me for the first time, Kittie. And I promise, I have never been more sure of anything than I am of you.”

I gawk up at him. A weight I didn’t even know was there fades from my chest.

“A smile?” he teases, and when I lift a hand to my face to check, confident he’s lying, he laughs. “How long has it been since I’ve gotten one of those?”

“I smile all the time,” I argue. In disbelief, I feel the upturn of my lips. It’s good to truly smile at him and savor the gooey sensation that sends my stomach tumbling.

“Fibbing, are we?” He lowers his face to the crook of my neck, nipping lightly at my skin until I let out a giggle.

I reflexively coil two arms around his neck as if my body craves nothing more than to be pressed to him, long before I can think to stop myself.

Dorian lifts his head and kisses me. He’s wearing his lop-sided smile, but I see the darkness in his eyes. I don’t cower from it.

“Tell me you’re mine,” he commands in a whisper.

“I’m yours,” I say, desperately returning to his lips.

“Again,” he orders before deepening the kiss.

This time, I sigh my response against his mouth, finding myself getting lost in him again, “I’m yours.”

Raney breezes in through the main entrance with Cory on her heels, and when she crosses the threshold into the dining room, her brown eyes fall on me and fill me with warmth.

Dorian and I shared breakfast in a new, strangely comfortable silence. After our affairs yesterday and early this morning, there’s a spell, a high, that I can’t shake that renders me docile. So, when she and Cory return, I focus on the fact that I’m glad they made it home in one piece and not what my growing relationship with them means concerning my captivity.

Only once Raney reaches the table do I notice the gray bags under her eyes, not to mention how she drags her feet across the carpeted floor. I wonder if they got any sleep since they left.

“Good to see you, Kittie,” she greets me, hesitating before leaning down and hugging me. When I throw my arms around her from where I sit in my chair and hold her fiercely to me, her body relaxes, and her arms tighten. “I’m glad to be home.”

I reluctantly let her go, ignoring Cory lingering in the doorway. “Will you tell me all about your trip? Is the house ready for the new tenant?”

“As ready as it’ll ever be, I guess,” Raney says, flashing me a grin, and though it contains her signature brightness, the wattage seems lower than usual. “Is the boss in?”

I nod and gesture toward the kitchen. “He’s finishing the dishes. He said he’s got some special dinner tonight, so we shouldn’t expect him back until very late.”

“Yeesh, we have a fancy dishwasher, and he still doesn’t use it,” she grumbles and stomps off into the kitchen before pivoting last minute and leveling a finger at me. “There’s a slasher film marathon on TV tonight, and you’re watching it with me.”

I laugh and nod in agreement, smiling at her long after she trudges into the kitchen.

I return to my crossword puzzle on the table. I’ve been finding it harder and harder to concentrate on word finds and puzzles. Still, this morning, I’m attributing that to replaying the deliciously cruel highlights of sex with Dorian yesterday. That would distract anyone.

Someone clears their throat behind me.

“Hello, Kittie,” Cory says from the hallway. When I lift my confused and widened eyes toward him, he nods in my direction before heading toward the stairs. He, too, looks dead on his feet, but he manages not to drag them as he heads up toward his bedroom on the second floor.

I’m left blinking in his wake. Has he ever spoken to me before?

The day looks beautiful beyond the sunroom windows, but it feels dreary knowing I’ll be deprived of Dorian for the entire day.

It should depress me that I crave his company more than I want to smell the winter air, to touch the fluffy snow that’s begun to layer the ground and cling to the barren tree branches.

It’s a little late in the season to be snowing. If it is February. My memory is still a little fuzzy in places. I try not to think about it and instead, cling desperately to my little pocket of joy.

What keeps my mind distracted is Raney’s commitment to arts and crafts. She’s set up one of the folding card tables in the sunroom, and we’re hard at work folding a variety of paper flowers on a string, a decoration to welcome spring since it’s supposedly right around the corner.

I’m afraid to ask her to clarify the date. I’m afraid of the answer.

A pile of folded roses made of crepe paper is at my feet, and my fingers are sore by the time twilight settles over the estate. Outside, there’s an eerily beautiful calmness. I ignore it and try to give Raney and our project all my attention.

Every now and again, I play with the silver watch on my wrist. Dorian’s watch is a little too big for me, even after he adjusted the clasp. I know he won’t be gone long, but it’s nice to hold onto it while I wait for him to come home.

“Honestly, I’m pretty sure the place is haunted.”

I nod as Raney speaks, watching the hands of the watch move.

So far, she’s filled most of the silence about their trip to the other Ward property, not that I mind. “Cory says all the creaking and stuff is just the building settling, but c’mon. It’s over a hundred years old; it should have settled by now!”

I make a sympathetic face but don’t look up from my work. I finish up another rose from the flamingo pink tissue paper. “Is that why the old tenants left? Because it’s haunted?”

“Maybe!”

I’m so engrossed in my work that I don’t notice Cory enter until he sets a mug of hot cocoa in front of me. I lift my head to find him standing there, a neutral expression on his face as always.

I scrutinize him, wanting to glean anything about his sudden change in disposition. Before, I was sure he hated me, but he’s been strangely thoughtful all day. He even brought us dinner and cleared our plates once Raney and I were finished.

A part of me suspects that maybe he and Raney had a heart-to-heart during their trip. Maybe he’s just gotten used to me.

“Do you two need anything?” he asks.

“Nah, it’s getting dark, so we’re probably finishing up here soon,” Raney replies.

Sure enough, when I look back, I realize night has set over the estate. The glass becomes a darkened mirror, casting our reflections back at us.

“Do you think that property’s haunted?” she asks him. “Do you think this place is haunted?”

“I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” is his measured response. “I imagine you get your superstition from Aunt Annette.”

Raney nods in agreement. “Yeah, Mom was always throwing salt over her shoulder and avoiding cracks in the pavement.”

Her use of the word Mom after Cory mentioned his aunt makes me pause in my work. All that I know about Raney’s mother is that she’d been killed and Raney is a suspect in the woman’s murder. When Dorian introduced Cory as his cousin, I assumed they were related, but it dawns on me that I don’t have a firm grasp of the Ward family tree.

“How are you two related, exactly?”

The answer comes easily from Raney, more than any other question I’ve ever asked her. “Cory’s my cousin on my mom’s side,” she explains as she begins cutting another piece of crinkling tissue paper.

“Oh, so…she was a Ward?”

“Nah,” Raney replies, unbothered. “She and Cory are Jones’s. My biological dad kicked bricks when I was a toddler, and my mom married into this family,” she says, waving the scissors around the sunroom as if referencing the estate.

“Oh.” I say and dare to peer up into Cory’s face. “Dorian called you his cousin before. You’re not…related?”

“No,” he says. He lifts his brown eyes to the line of windows, but his entire body is rigid, like a statue. “I’d never been close with my family, including my aunt Annette. After her death, my family became estranged from one another. I decided to get some closure and searched for Raney…at the time, the police were looking for her.”

I listen to Cory intently, but when Raney lets her scissors clatter noisily to the table, I glance over to her. She’s frowning, staring at her ruined craft paper.

“I tried my luck with a few other family members and some distant Wards, along with other places in the state she might’ve been hiding,” Cory continues. Strangely, a warmth touches his otherwise stoic face as he stares down at her. “When I came here, I saw her in the window while I spoke with Dorian at the front door. I barged right in to confront her…and couldn’t.”

“Because she didn’t do it.”

My words draw Raney’s gaze from the paper in her hands.

“Yes,” Cory replies simply, and a hint of a smile traces his mouth. “I knew it immediately when I saw her face. Dorian told me that her existence here must be kept a secret.”

“But you didn’t have anywhere to go,” Raney chimes in. The fog of grief lifts from her, allowing her to perk up. She grins up at her cousin. “I remember that day. Dorian said, ‘Well, you have your pick of rooms if you want.’ From that point on, I think he considered you family.”

Cory scoffs. “For the first few months, I think he kept a close watch on me. He wanted to be sure my presence here wouldn’t compromise you.”

Raney scrunches her face. “Okay, maybe at first, but you’re definitely family now. Just like Kittie. We all are.”

We fall into a loaded silence. Raney’s warmth and adoration are evident, but it’s clear that Cory and I have entirely different opinions on the matter. He and I exchange looks, and even though his neutral expression is impossible to read, the silence is more telling.

It’s enough to fan the flame of annoyance in my chest. If Cory had not spent so many weeks disliking me from afar, I would’ve learned earlier that he might have been the most sympathetic to my cause—if his reluctance now is anything to go by.

Yet now, seeing this, I’m not sure I even want to angle for an escape. My heart is too ensnared by Dorian.

Before Raney can say anything to soothe the painful quiet, the light overhead vanishes. I shriek at the sudden blackness. Terror immediately unfurls in my chest, but before I can dissolve into a panic attack, Raney’s hand clutches mine across the table.

“It’s okay, Kittie. It’s just a power outage. It’ll come back in a minute.”

Except we sit for a solid sixty seconds, and the darkness persists. In the corner, the security system chirps instead of blaring its typical alarm. It flashes orange instead of red or green.

“That’s not good,” Raney grumbles.

My breathing begins to pick up. My heart pounds in my ears. I’m afraid I’m about to run further into the house to seek some form of light.

But a crashing somewhere out in the hall paralyzes me.