Page 64 of Adored

While he should be thinking about how good the sex had just been, he wasn’t.

No.

He was hyper fixated on something completely different. Gamble was thinking about where the freaking crypto code could be, and how long until Von Donore went after Poe.

Again.

He knew it was only a matter of time.

How?

Oh, call it a hunch.

Von Donore would regroup, and as soon as he did, he was going to call out the dogs.

On Poe.

All over again.

Chapter Four

Post Nap

Monday

Mid-Afternoon

The sleeping man awoke with a start from what began as the best dream he’d had in a long time. Gamble was in it, and they were together and safe back inNew Orleans.

Only, the dream progressed, and the second Poe let his guard down, the dream began going south.

It got darker, and Poe wasn’t able to find Gamble anymore. For some reason, he was stripped away from him, and gone.

It terrified him.

That was, ultimately, what pulled him from his dream.

When he looked around, Gamble was right beside him, watching the man with his bi-colored eyes. There was concern in them.

“Bad dream?” Gamble asked, rubbing his hand up and down Poe’s leg, reassuringly.

It wasn’t lost on him that it was something he’d done for Gamble each time he’d been scared awake with a bad dream. Honestly, Gamble didn’t mind comforting him. It felt natural to want to do it.

At his question, Poe nodded and moved back into his man’s body to find some solace. As of late, Gamble was the only reason he felt anything but despair.

Unfortunately for him, this week was wearing him down, and it was only Monday.

Thankfully, Gamble showed up, but now, Poe still had a long list of things he had to get through, like having to go claim his parent’s bodies for burial.

As of that moment, he’d yet to see them, and honestly, he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to do that.

Thus, the rough day.

“You’re stressed,” Gamble admitted. He’d been lying there with Poe for the last hour, and the man had whimpered a few times in his dream toward the end. So much so, that even Rufus looked over to see if he was okay.

It was in those moments that Gamble wished he could take that burden away from the man he loved. As he watched over Poe, he’d been carefully studying him. The conclusion he’d come to was that he was so stupid in love, that he’d never be able to be away from Poe.

They were tied together in his trauma, healing, and learning to love again.