Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Tabitha
Everything is black at first. Almost airless. Pressure builds behind my ribs. The quiet hums in my brain. Then a sound. Not footsteps. Not breathing. Just weight.
My body knows before my mind does. Every muscle locks. My pulse beats too loud, too fast, until it’s the only thing I can hear. I try to move, but the dream doesn’t allow it. My hands are heavy, my fingers useless. My throat opens, but no sound comes out.
There’s a door. It shouldn’t be open, but it is. The air that seeps through is cold and brittle. The shape beyond it keeps changing. It gets taller. Closer. Thinner. Closer again.
My skin prickles. I can feel my own heartbeat against the sheets, against my teeth.
I tell myself it isn’t happening again. I tell myself I’m safe. But the dream laughs like it knows I’m lying.
The walls close in and pulse with my fear. The air thickens until breathing burns. A flicker of dim light glints on something smooth. Then it’s gone. I don’t see, but I feel the stare, the weight of it, pressing down, peeling me open from the inside.
I try to scream.
Nothing.
The sound catches in my throat. My chest won’t rise. I’m a panicked statue trapped in a room that’s all memory and no exit.
The air shifts again. Closer. Close enough to smell.
Salt, sweat, and something I can’t name.
Then warmth. But not a comforting warmth. It’s menacing. Demonic. A hand? A shadow? It doesn’t matter. It’s there. Touching without touching. My stomach turns. My mind fractures between then and now. Then and now. Then—
The light snaps white. My heart jerks once, twice. The world flips.
And what’s left isn’t him. It isn’t me. It’s the echo of the moment before rescue. The split second that never ends.
The moment before everything breaks.
I jerk, and my eyes shoot open.
A nightmare.
Always the fucking nightmare.
It doesn’t come clean. My brain wants to replay it all.
I get it now.
Why Henry thought he was so broken.
I curl into him. His breathing evens. Mine pretends to. Moonlight shines across the floorboards and climbs the wall. Zach sighs on the other side of Henry.
The nightmare hangs on me like smoke. It clings to my hair, my tongue, the back of my throat. I hold on to him tighter, until he moves.
“Tabitha?” His voice is sleep-rough but gentle.
I nod because if I try to speak I may burst into tears.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “I’m here.”
Something in me breaks and opens. I climb on top of him with a clumsy urgency that would embarrass me if I weren’t so distraught.
I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to be asked if I’m okay. I want the sound of his heart under my ear. I want the heat of his breath and the rough bristle of his stubble, anything loud enough to drown the echo still ringing inside my skull.
His arms come around me. The world narrows to his hold. I shake once—a full-body shudder—and then go still, inhaling his neck. He smells like soap and cedar and Henry.
“Tell me what you need,” he says.
I tilt my mouth to his jaw. “You. I always need you.”
He goes very still. His pulse thumps once beneath my lips. Then he exhales slowly. When he pulls back enough to see my face, I wonder if he’s reading me. The look in my eyes, the invisible tremors.
I lift my chin. I don’t want his slow and reverent stuff. I want hard and fast. The way he took me in the barn.
The way of us.
I kiss him. It’s not neat.
It’s heat and hunger and the merciless relief of drowning out a siren with a thunderclap.
His hands find my back and my waist. Mine find his shoulders and then his hair.
He breaks the kiss only long enough to rest his forehead against mine. We breathe each other’s air for a few seconds, and he strokes my cheekbone as if he’s smoothing the nightmare away.
His eyes darken with the kind of understanding that makes my chest ache. He kisses me again, slower at first, coaxing, and then deeper. The pace builds the way a storm does, like a distant rumble before the sky breaks open.
He slides his hands under my shirt, his palms hot against my skin. Every inch he touches wakes up, most intensely between my legs.
It’s almost too much, the care and the yearning tangled together. I lean into it and let both undo me.
“I need more,” I whisper.
“Show me,” he says.
I do. I tug his shirt up, and he helps, arms crossed and lifted so I can pull it over his head. God, his corded neck, hard chest, defined abs. I press my hands to him, infuse myself with his warmth and strength.
He cups my face, and I can’t tell if I’m shaking because I’m cold or because all at once I’m burning.
He kisses the corner of my mouth and then my jaw and then lower, a path that makes my breath catch. I tilt my head back, give him full access, while I slide my fingers over his strong shoulders.
“Tabitha,” he says against my skin.
I pull off my shirt.
He looks at me, and even though it’s dark, I see him so clearly.
It hits me then, sudden and bright and terrifying, how much I love him.
It’s crazy.
How did I think I could live without him in my life?
But if he doesn’t feel the same way…
He must, though. He had decided to come to me before the accident. I was the one he wanted when he woke in the hospital.
But those thoughts drift away until only feeling remains.
He stands, lifting me with him, and I wrap my legs around his waist. The room tips. He walks to the couch and lays me down, making sure my head is rested on a pillow.
He leans over me.
“Tell me if you want to stop,” he says, but the way he says it—low and fierce—makes it clear he’s not going to.
I’m good with that.
This is the Henry I know and love, the one who takes, and when he takes, he gives me what I need.
“I won’t,” I whisper. “Don’t stop.”
Our clothes disappear. I’m not sure how. I don’t care.
All I want is Henry. His mouth on me. His body on top of me, freeing me from the nightmares, the demons.
When I arch into him, he catches me with his body, with his hands, with his groans that unravel something stubborn and knotted inside me.
He’s all tension and heat, and when I push, he gives with a restraint that feels like power offered, not taken.
He kisses me like he wants to memorize me. I kiss him like I want to reverse every terrible thing my body ever learned about fear.
The room falls away. The house, the night, the past… All gone. There is only us together, the way he speeds up when I gasp, the way I pull him closer when I need more. It’s frantic and tender at the same time, and I can’t get enough.
When I grasp his erection in my fist, he inhales sharply.
“Fuck, Tabitha.”
“I want you in my mouth.”
“I’d be an idiot to say no.” He moves up, sitting, and I kneel between his legs.
His cock is big and beautiful, jutting out from his dark-blond bush and marbled with two purple veins. I slide my thumb over the head, massaging it lightly, swirling the pre-come over him.
“Damn,” he grits out.
“Good?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
His voice is ragged, breathless. He thrusts a hand through his hair, eyes wild and focused intently on me.
I grin up at him, teasing. “Then I guess I should keep going.”
The words are barely out of my mouth before I’m leaning forward and sliding my tongue over the head of his cock. His sharp intake of breath is music to my ears.
I take my time, exploring him with my mouth and tongue.
He grabs my head, urging me to go faster, but I don’t.
I want to enjoy him, to savor him. Every gasp and moan, every twitch of his muscles, every shudder that travels through him.
I take every reaction as a reward, each one spurring me to tease him further, to taste and touch until he’s a writhing mess beneath me.
His pleasure is my pleasure, and I revel in it, savoring the intoxicating mix of power and intimacy.
“Tabitha,” he growls.
It’s a plea. A plea for release, but I ignore it. I’m not ready for this to end yet.
He bucks his hips, trying to set the pace, but I pull back, denying him.
“Jesus fuck,” he grits out.
I only smile, holding his gaze as I lick slowly up the underside of his cock. His eyes roll back, and a guttural sound tears from his throat.
I continue the teasing, the licking, every few strokes taking him deep into my throat.
He groans, grunts, pleads.
Until—
“Fuck, Tabitha, I’m going to… You’ve got to stop. I don’t want—”
“Shh,” I soothe him, lifting my gaze to meet his. “Just let go.”
And he does.
He tenses, releases, and pulses inside my mouth. I swallow every drop of him.
Every single drop.
And I feel…ecstatic.
I release him slowly.
He’s a beautiful mess, hair tousled, breath ragged, a satisfied glow radiating from him. His eyes are filled with warmth and gratitude and something deeper. Something darker.
“Quid pro quo,” he says.
In a flash, we’ve traded places, and his face is between my legs.
A warmth fills me, and not just because of what he’s doing to me. Most men are done once they’ve finished. Not so with Henry. Not so with a generous, sweet, flawed man like Henry.
His mouth is hot and demanding, his tongue exploring me in ways that send shivers of pleasure rippling through my body. He digs his fingers into my thighs and holds me steady as he devours me with an intensity that leaves me breathless.
I gasp at the feel of his lips against me, at the way he teases and tastes with a hunger that matches my own. Every move he makes, every flick of his tongue, every nip of his teeth sends a new wave of pleasure crashing over me.
“Henry…” I moan, tangling my fingers in his hair, pulling him closer.
He responds with a low growl, his movements becoming more frenzied.
Every sensation is heightened, every touch amplified. It’s too much and not enough all at once. I’m lost in him, in us, in this moment of mutual pleasure and desire. Time is suspended as we move together, adrift in our own world.
When the coil tightens, I snap.
The climax rips through me, and words, so many words, leave my mouth.
I’m not sure what they are, only that I have no control over them.
Everything is a colorful kaleidoscope, a whirl of pleasure.
And when he shoves two fingers into my heat, I unravel once more.
“Henry, Henry, Henry…”
He lifts his head, fucks me with his fingers, meets my gaze, his chin glistening.
When my orgasm begins to subside, his mouth is on mine, tongues tangling as I taste my own juices.
It’s raw, feral, and perfect.
The perfect kiss.
The raw and primal wanting of the man I love.
Does he love me back?
Can he love me back?
I stop the thought, revel in the kiss, the longing.
He feels it too. He must.
He wanted me at the hospital. He—
No more thoughts. Only feelings. Only this kiss, his hands on my breasts, fingers tweaking a nipple.
Time slips around its axis. We move in it and outside it. I pull him tighter. He says my name again and I say his, and the names become a rhythm, a promise, a place we’re both allowed to exist without anything else crowding in.
Our bodies are no longer our own.
And I love every bit of it.