Page 66 of The Heart of the King

“You were having a nightmare.”

He pulled his knees up until he could rest his forearms on them. His head hung, his eyes closed, and he tried to remember.

“I think the bomb went off. That can’t be right. If it had gone off, I wouldn’t remember anything. I would have been gone immediately. So would Hazel.”

“Then maybe it was what would have happened if it hadn’t been found.” Her hand rested on his bare back.

When had he taken his shirt off?

“Maybe.” That fit better with what he remembered.

“Are you okay? Do you need me to call someone?” Her arm slid down to his waist then around as she rested her head on his shoulder again.

“No. I’m all right.” At least he thought he was. Maybe.

This time when they laid down, Jasmine laid behind him with her arm wrapped around his torso.

It felt nice, comforting.

But he couldn’t fall back asleep with the vague recollections of the dream swirling too hard around him.

With a sigh, he rolled to face her. He reached out and brushed the hair off her face, his fingers tangling with it as his thumb brushed across her cheek.

Without thinking about what he was doing or what it could mean, David leaned over and kissed her, softly at first then building in intensity.

Her soft hands slipped across the skin of his side and around to his back as she pulled him closer to her. Her hair was already a mess, but as he kissed her even more, he found the cloth holding what was left of the bun in place. After a quick tug, it came loose, her still-damp hair unwinding as it did.

David wound his fingers through it to the base of her neck as he held her closer and kissed her more deeply.

She responded in kind giving him all the answers he needed.

In the dark, in the aftermath of the trauma, David kissed his wife. He ran his fingers through her hair.

And made love to her.

Even as he did, one portion of his trauma- and passion-filled mind, he knew there would be consequences of some sort.

He didn’t love her. Yet.

Neither did she love him.

She still had an emotional trauma to finish healing from.

But when he started to slow things down, to back off, to talk to her about those things, she changed his mind without words.

The next time they lay quiet and still together, something had shifted between them. She slept before he did.

David ran a hand up and down her bare arm as her quiet breathing assured him she slept deeply.

His mind took some time to quiet back down and allow him some rest.

He did his best to clear it out, to focus only on his wife and let her breathing lull him to sleep.

It didn’t work as quickly as he wanted, but it did work.

And for the second time, for the first time he would remember, he fell asleep with his wife in his arms.

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