11. Wrenley
ELEVEN
WRENLEY
I jolt awake with Saint’s name on my lips, the dream version of him (all heat and hands and forgotten boundaries) fading into the darkness of the guesthouse.
Did I just have a sex dream?
Oh, I absolutely did.
I can still feel his weight as he pressed me into the mattress.
My skin tingles where his dream-hands roamed, where his mouth explored.
It had been vivid, overwhelmingly so. Not just the act itself, though that had been…
thorough. It was the details, the ones my waking mind has apparently cataloged with unsettling precision.
Like the way his dark hair fell across his forehead when he peeled my nightshirt off. The surprising softness of his lips and the rough scrape of his stubble against my inner thigh.
And the tattoos.
In the dream, his chef’s coat had been discarded, his T-shirt joining it on the floor, revealing the full expanse of ink that usually disappeared beneath fabric. Swirls of black and gray covered his chest, wrapping around his ribs, disappearing lower. My dream-fingers had traced those lines.
I suck in a breath when I remember the silk of his tongue and the way he tasted me like I was the finest delicacy, a dish he’d been starving for.
He’d murmured things against my skin in French, words I didn’t understand but felt at the center of my heart, his voice a gravelly scrape against my skin, setting my nerves endings on fire.
“Oh my god.”
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to banish the images and sensations. But they linger, a blush spreading from my chest to my hairline and a desperate, throbbing ache at my core.
I have to take care of it. Otherwise, I’ll be writhing around in this bed for the next few hours until dawn and tangling the sheets around myself more than they already are.
My hand slides down my body and over the cotton of my oversized shirt, the fabric catching on my peaked nipples. Then lower, between my legs, where I find the slick evidence of just how much this dream wrecked me.
His hands replace mine in my head, his day-old scruff, the scrape of his teeth. My hips lift to meet the pressure of my palm and I bite my lip to keep from crying out his name.
“Close your eyes. You heard me. Do it.”
I murmur a reply. “Saint..”
“Now, let it linger. Feel the warmth on your tongue first …. Let it coat your tongue before you even think about swallowing.”
In my head, I scream. SAINT.
He falls to his knees. Palms my ass. Moans into my pussy when he presses his mouth against it…
I’m conjuring images of him so overwhelming and relentless that I come apart, shuddering, his name turning into a whispered gasp on my lips .
Afterward, I lie there, panting.
I’ve known the man for less than a week. He’s my boss. He’s a grieving widower. He’s emotionally unavailable. He’s ... perfect.
No.
Not perfect.
Complicated. Troubled. Tortured in a way that calls to my own scars, my own need for distraction.
I throw an arm over my eyes in an attempt to block out the lingering heat, the sound of his voice when he worships me, and the way my body still hums with want.
Rolling onto my side, I pull the covers higher, a sigh escaping my lips.
It was just a dream. A very, very effective dream. But still.
A low rumble, almost subliminal, vibrates through the floorboards of the guesthouse.
Hair falls into my face when I push up to my elbows, frowning.
It sounded distant, like a truck on a far-off highway.
Before I can process it, an earsplitting CRACK shatters the quiet, so loud and sudden it’s like the sky itself ripped open directly above me.
My body jerks violently, a strangled yelp tearing from my throat. My heart catapults into my windpipe, choking me.
Thunder. That’s all it is.
But this isn’t the rolling city thunder that I found to be pleasant white noise while sleeping in my apartment in Brooklyn. No, this is the kind that announces its arrival with the fury of a vengeful god.
Another flash illuminates the small room in stark, ghostly white, followed by a deafening boom that rattles the windowpanes in their frames. Rain begins to lash against the glass, driven by a wind that howls like a banshee around the eaves of the little house.
The guesthouse, moments ago a cozy sanctuary, now feels like Dorothy’s before she was launched into Oz.
Familiar tendrils of panic start to spread into my chest. The lights flicker once, twice, then plunge the room into absolute blackness.
“No. No, no, no.”
My denial’s swallowed by the roar of the storm. I’m in absolute darkness. It presses in on me, suffocating.
Fingers fly to my scalp, twisting a thick strand of hair until my scalp screams in protest. The small, sharp pain is a pinprick of focus in the overwhelming black.
Another crack of thunder, closer this time, and the floor beneath me seems to tremble.
I scramble out of bed, tangling myself in the sheets, my bare feet hitting the cold wooden floor.
My hands fly to my shoulder, nails digging through the thin cotton of my shirt, seeking an anchor.
The sound of splintering wood and a door almost swinging off its hinges has me swiveling toward it in time to see a dark shape filling the doorway, silhouetted for a horrifying instant against a flash of lightning.
A scream rips from my lungs, bloody and animalistic. I stumble back, tripping over my own feet, my hands flying up to shield my face.
“Wrenley!”
Saint’s harsh command cuts through the thunder’s rage.
He’s inside in two strides, wind and rain swirling behind him and instantly soaking the floor.
Saint’s bare chest is slick with rain, and that eternal part of me that will always appreciate the male form regardless of circumstance wriggles with glee when she realizes that dream-Saint and real-Saint match up pretty good.
Relief, so potent it makes my knees buckle, washes over me, immediately followed by a fresh wave of adrenaline-fueled terror at his violent entrance.
“Jesus, Saint! You nearly gave me another heart attack!” I gasp out in ragged spurts.
My shoulder throbs where my nails had been.
He’s across the small room in three long strides, reaching for me in the dark.
When his fingers close around my arm, he says, “The power’s out in the main house, too. But it’s much safer there. You’re coming with me.”
“I … okay,” I manage, my teeth chattering.
“Grab something warm. Quickly.”
I fumble around in the dark for the oversized, button-down cardigan I’d left on the sofa chair. But I’m clumsy and shaking too hard to find the sleeves.
Saint makes an impatient sound, then his hands are on mine, guiding my arms into the cardigan.
His fingers brush my skin as he tugs the sleeve into place, and a jolt entirely separate from the storm shoots through me.
It’s a direct echo of my dream, and I have to force myself to swallow.
“You’re trembling,” he states.
“This storm, it’s a bit much,” I reply through clenched teeth to keep them from chattering harder.
He lingers at my neck when he fastens the cardigan’s top button, that small comfort causing me to question even needing clothes during this emergency.
“Better?” His voice is low and almost on par with the building thunder.
I manage a nod.
“Good. We need to move. Now. ”
Saint doesn’t wait for my verbal reply. His hand slides from my shoulder down my arm, his grip firm and reassuring before engulfing my own.
“Stay with me.”
The door groans open again as he pulls it, the wind snatching at it and trying to rip it from his grasp.
Saint steps out into the maelstrom, pulling me with him. The rain is a solid wall of water, instantly plastering my hair to my face, my thin shirt clinging to my upper thighs. The wind howls, tearing at us.
Lightning splits the sky again, illuminating the churning chaos around us, the trees thrashing like tormented spirits.
I stumble on the slick grass, my bare feet searching for purchase, a small cry escaping me. Saint stops, his body a shield against the worst of the wind.
“Can you make it?” he yells over the roar.
“I—I can’t see?—”
Before I can finish, he makes a low sound, something between a growl and a curse. Then, with a swiftness that steals my breath, he releases my hand only to scoop me up into his arms.
My scream is swallowed by the wind as I’m lifted, my body colliding with his hard, wet chest. I instinctively wrap my arms around his neck, clinging to him as he strides through the tempest. I press my face against his shoulder, the scent of rain and his skin filling my senses, his heart thudding a powerful, steady rhythm beneath my ear.
Saint moves over the slick ground with surprising agility, navigating as if he could see in the dark. It’s like I weigh nothing to him, but I’m clinging to him like he’s the only fixed point in a collapsing world.
The back door of the main house bursts open under his shoulder, and then we’re inside, the relative quiet of the kitchen a sudden, shocking contrast to the storm’s fury.
He sets me down. My legs are so embarrassingly unsteady that I lean against the closed door, gulping air. Rain drips from my hair and pools around my feet.
Saint is already moving, grabbing a thick towel from a drawer.
“Here.” He wraps it around my shoulders after I peel off my cardigan, his fingers brushing my neck again, sending another jolt through my system. “Dry off.”
“You’re soaked too,” I manage to say.
I reach for another towel, intending to hand it to him, but he’s already turning away, heading toward the living room.
“Fireplace,” he calls back. “We need light. And warmth.”
I follow, clutching the towel around me, shivering.
The kitchen is dark, but the living room is even blacker, though I can hear him moving around. A clink of metal, then the rasp of a match.
A small flame flickers to life, casting dancing shadows on his face as he kneels before the hearth, coaxing the kindling until the fire catches and pushes back the oppressive darkness.