Chapter Fourteen Blake
Chapter Fourteen
Blake
Someone was in my room.
I woke up with a gasp because someone was in my room. They shifted. I could see their silhouette, sitting in the chair that was in the corner of my room and then, Jesus Christ. I automatically relaxed because I knew that silhouette.
But wait.
I jerked upright.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed, my hands fisted in my blanket because I had half a mind to jump out and lunge for him and the other half was remembering I was only in my sleeping top and underwear.
My very skimpy top. My lacy underwear. Underwear that was sexy and I didn’t think anyone would see because I hadn’t bought these for someone else to see, not yet anyways.
These were just for me. Now I was dying a little of embarrassment because Creighton was in my room at four in the morning.
And I was dying from something else, squirming in bed, but I grabbed tight to my blanket and ignored how I suddenly felt flushed.
He didn’t respond, but I knew it was him.
“Creighton?”
He still didn’t respond. I grew concerned. My voice dropped to a whisper, and I pushed my blanket aside, only focused on him. “Eight?”
He jerked alive at the nickname, but he didn’t move. “They aren’t like me.”
I frowned. “What? Who’s not like you?”
“I thought they’d be like me. That’s what the rumors say. How cruel they are, but they aren’t like me. They’re like you.”
I still didn’t know who he was talking about. “Eight?” I was going to regret this. “Come here.”
He only lifted his head up.
I patted the bed. “Come here.”
He stared at me, and I felt that stare. It was long, intense, but somehow I didn’t feel he was even seeing me.
Creighton was lost, and that was never a good thing on any day, but Eight being lost just hurt my heart. He always knew what to do, where to go, who to maim. I didn’t like this version being in my room, more so because it was confusing in uncomfortable ways too. “Please.”
The please did it.
He got up from the chair, and the bed depressed under his weight.
He kneeled, but waited because I knew the routine.
And I was heating up for those same other reasons because us being in bed together used to not be so uncommon, but that’d been when I was a kid.
When I was sick and he stayed to watch animal shows with me.
Or if I had a nightmare and he was just there, even when he wasn’t in the house anymore, but somehow he always knew when I woke up silently screaming with tears soaking my face.
He was there, and he would sleep next to me, and it worked.
I calmed. His presence and the weight of his body beside me, touching my shoulder, and I fell back asleep.
Grief rose up in me, mixing with this new inferno inside of me as well. I’d missed this time with him. These moments.
But this was different. Time changed us, changed this.
I was suddenly very aware of our close proximity and how muscled, but lean, Creighton was.
The power of his body, every movement he made.
And his smell. God. I’d missed it. A manly pine tree musk.
There were times when I’d wear his hoodie to school and I’d bury my head into his sweatshirt, breathing deep. His smell settled me.
But the routine tonight was making me aware of him, aware of how his gaze lingered on my underwear, and gah. I was hot all over. I liked my beds against the corner so I scooted up against the wall. He was on the side of the bed closest to the door. We lay on our sides, sharing a pillow.
“You’re attracted to me.”
“Creighton!” I was dying. I covered my face with my hands and wanted to shrink farther down in bed.
He said that so clinically, as if he wasn’t affected either. Wait. Was he?
I lowered one of my hands and peeked at him. He was still watching me, that ever-present emptiness in his eyes, but he was tracing over my face.
I wished he was normal. I knew he wasn’t, but in that moment, I wished I could see a little something.
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
He said, “You’re twenty-two. Long past the age of consent now.”
I was back to squirming. “Creighton, please. I’m still .
. .” I grasped at something out of desperation.
I was still mad at him, but all of that was pushed to the back of my head because he was right.
I was attracted to him. Fuck. Fuck! What did I do with this now?
I had enough on my plate dealing with Creighton.
I did not need to add sexual chemistry, and yep.
So squirming. “Can we—uh—why are you here?”
He was silent beside me, and I could feel him studying the side of my face. “You don’t want to talk about this attraction you have for me? Your body is getting hot, and your pulse is spiking. It’s hard to ignore this. I think we should talk about this.”
“Please stop,” I hissed, back to covering my face with both of my hands again.
“I’m fucked in the head enough as it with you and our deal and ugh, everything that’s you.
You’re hot. You know you are. It’s late at night.
I’m straight, and yeah. This is a normal reaction.
Don’t get a big head about this. I’d feel this way about any—” I squeaked because suddenly my hands were ripped away from my face and he was looming over me.
“You don’t talk about another man when I’m in bed with you,” he growled. Savagely.
Oh, god. That was even hotter.
I whispered, “Creighton.”
He continued to stare down at me, his eyes now flaring and growing dark. Molten.
Holy shit. Holy shit! He wanted me too.
No way. I mean . . .
Did he?
I began panting, my chest heaving, and that inferno spread through my entire body because he was letting himself look at me.
All of me. From my eyes, and he moved the blanket aside so he could see the rest of me, my breasts, my waist, where my underwear rested on my hips, my thighs, all the way down to my toes and back up again.
He shifted so he was holding himself up next to me and he grazed the side of my thigh with his hand.
Tingles trailed his touch, and I sucked in my breath.
I could see him, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to see his face, see if he really was reacting the same as me. My hand trembled as I reached for the lamp above my bed.
He caught my hand, knowing what I was doing. “Don’t.”
“I want to see you.”
“I don’t want you to see me right now.”
That hurt. “Oh.”
“Not because I don’t want you—”
Seriously! Creighton.
He continued, “That’s not why I’m here tonight. I . . .”
He drew in an audible breath and lowered himself all the way to my side.
He reached out, his hand rested on my stomach.
He moved a finger, smoothing back and forth, and more tingles shot through me.
But this touch was comforting as well as exciting.
I wasn’t sure what he intended here, but okay.
I meant what I said. My mind was truly too fucked to deal with this new development between us, and gah.
I was fully admitting to this development.
That was insane. Attraction. Me and Creighton.
What had I done in a past life to have all this craziness with someone like Creighton? I must’ve been a jail attendant for babies or something. But I laced our fingers and held our hands to my chest.
I reminded myself that he sought me out.
He came here. That meant he needed me, and Creighton wouldn’t have done this to hit on me.
No. He’d do that when I was awake and could face him squarely on my own two feet.
He’d probably make it some form of challenge to me, because he loved that sort of shit.
So messed up.
But, man. I cherished moments like this from the past. I shoved that away. I focused on the here and now, and right now, I didn’t have someone scary and dangerous in my bed. The outside world didn’t exist beyond this room. It was just the two of us.
I traced his fingers with my own, and asked, “What happened tonight?”
“They love like you do.”
“Who? What?”
He sounded disappointed and perplexed at the same time. Who . . .
It hit me. Was he talking about the heads of the West and Walden families?
But why?
I sucked in some oxygen, held it, repressing all the other bad feelings that swept into my body when we referenced that world. No. I didn’t want those feelings or thoughts in here. Not right now. Not this time.
I’d missed Eight. Weird attraction aside, I missed this version of him.
The image of him touching my neck flashed in my mind, how I could arch my neck for him. To give him better access—Really, Blake? I chided myself.
Creighton came to me. He was never vulnerable. He could be raw, but I hadn’t realized how hungry I’d been for him.
I really had missed him.
I kept tracing his hand.
I shouldn’t love that he was here. I knew I shouldn’t, because of what he could do in my name. My heart pounded.
I didn’t want him to leave.
I stifled a groan, lying here next to him because he wasn’t even only in my heart. He was behind my heart. He got in there at some point when I was eight years old, and I don’t think he’d ever left. This connection—whatever it was, I wouldn’t have it with anyone else.
I didn’t know if that was a beautiful thing or just bleak.
“Were you hoping they’d be like you?” Did that mean he was lonely somehow? Looking for others like him? But that wasn’t how it worked for someone who had his affliction. Was it? Maybe it wasn’t so black and white? Perhaps there was some gray in someone like Creighton.
I began tracing my fingers over the back of his hand.
“No.” He sighed. “I just thought maybe they were.”
“No one’s like you, Eight. No one understands you.”
“You do.”
I lifted my head. He was watching me intently. “You understand me.”
I don’t think I did understand him.
I looked away because I didn’t want to see if he was looking at me with those dead eyes or if they had an emotion, because sometimes, when he looked at me, there was emotion there.
I thought I saw it tonight, but maybe I hadn’t.
Maybe I just saw what I wanted to see, and that’s why he stopped me from turning the light on.
That was probably it.
I could think and think and think to infinity and still never have him figured out, so tonight, I wasn’t going to do anything. I wasn’t going to get mad he was here. I wasn’t going to be embarrassed either. Scooting down in the bed, I rolled to the other side.
He didn’t say anything more, one of his hands resting on my hip as he settled in behind me.
I didn’t let go of his other hand. I should’ve, but I didn’t.