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Linzey Grey

Safety. The warm arms wrapped around me tipped me off. Another nightmare. I must have been screaming in the night.

For four years, I’d had nightmares, but they’d grown less and less—until recently when I’d started meeting with my legal team. The man who’d murdered my mother was finally going to trial for my kidnapping and assault, and everything was coming back to me in crystal-clear, terrifying detail.

“God, I’m so weak,” I disparaged myself, whispering so I didn’t wake the man holding me. He barely slept as it was.

Adler Fredriksen. My bodyguard by day and night. My comforter since the day he’d rescued me from the hands of the man who’d taken me—albeit during the mission to save my sister who’d been kidnapped just an hour before.

Not me. He’d had me for thirteen days and seventeen hours.

My hand fisted, biting my nails into my palm to keep the memories and emotions from pummeling me again.

Otherwise, I didn’t move. I wanted to enjoy the feel of Adler wrapped around me. His even breaths warmed my neck, and I could feel his pulse beneath me ear as I used his muscular arm for a pillow.

His other hand…

I fought back a moan and steeled myself from pressing my thighs together to alleviate my arousal from the way his hand splayed over my belly, beneath my pajama shirt.

The sensation of his rough calluses against my skin was everything—everything I’d wished for over the past few years.

But Adler… He was all business about being hands off.

Except in sleep, apparently.

He stirred, making a soft snuffling sound as I felt him coming awake. My hand covered his to keep him there just a few moments longer.

“I had another nightmare,” I murmured. It seemed too quiet and still to break the silence with anything more.

“Mmm,” he replied, noncommittal, but I didn’t need him to tell me I’d been having terrors. My body hurt from it, the echoes from it evident in my aching muscles and scratchy throat.

I hated that I was so weak.

“Was I screaming?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” he chided, his face in the hair at the back of my head. Since he’d never do that if he were fully awake, I doubted his brain was fully online yet. “It’s… I’m here for you.”

He was here to protect me, not to hold me in the night when the dreams got out of control. My breath shuddered. “It’s not part of your job.”

“I know.”

“It would be easier if you went to your own place at night.” Easier for him anyway. “I’m sure a big shot security guy like you has his own place that’s just collecting dust. I mean all the who’s who want protection from your company.”

“Hardly,” he scoffed.

“Enough of them do. You probably have a mansion someplace.”

“I don’t. Besides, if I was off in some mythical mansion, I wouldn’t be here for you when you have nightmares.”

I bristled, though it was the truth. “You know I’m an adult. I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Are we going to have this argument again? At…” The muscles under my head flexed as he bent his arm to look at his watch. “Five-twenty in the morning?”

“I’m just saying…”

“Trust me. I’m well aware you’re an adult,” he grumbled.

What? That almost sounded like…

He saw me as a woman? Finally. When he’d rescued me, I’d been seventeen, but that was four years ago. The way he treated me hadn’t changed over the years—except we argued more.

“Adler, do you—”

He was off the bed and on his way to the door before I even finished turning over, leaving me with a view off his bare torso and the way his pajama pants, though loose, clung to his perfect ass.

“I’ll go start coffee,” he said, without looking back, and closed the door behind him.

I groaned, flopping onto my back, hard enough to bounce.

That man frustrated the hell out of me.

Turning my head, I stared out the windows that lined one wall of my bedroom, a balcony on the other side.

This was the city that didn’t sleep, yet…

this time of morning, it was almost as if it were napping.

The streets were quieter, without the incessant sound of cabs honking, and the buildings were all darker than normal, most of the interior lights off or heavy curtains drawn over the windows.

Even the sky was still dark, without even pre-dawn gray seeping into it.

In an hour, maybe a little less, bit by bit, the city would come awake and buzz with the life it was renown for.

Climbing from bed, I walked to the windows and peered out before pulling open the door and stepping outside to let the cool spring air wash over me.

Adler would hate it if he knew I was out here, but what he didn’t know would keep him from annoying me.

And lately, everything annoyed me because…

Well, I wasn’t sure. But I thought it was sexual frustration.

And maybe, that meant I was healing. Or maybe, it meant, I wanted Adler, the one man I wasn’t scared of.

Well, not just him. I wasn’t scared of Connor, the bodyguard who sometimes covered for Adler, and Booker, my brother-in-law.

But Adler. He was the only one I wanted.

My hands closed on the cold iron running the perimeter of the balcony. From twelve floors up, I felt like a princess held captive up in her tower. A movement down below caught my attention, and I turned my gaze toward it. A man stood down on the sidewalk, and I could swear he was staring up at me.

Impossible. He was too far away for me to know that, even in the pool of light from the street lamp. And I didn’t have any lights on, making me an inky blob against the building.

Just my overwrought imagination…more shadows from my dream.

And when I looked back toward the man, he was gone. But no matter what I told myself, I couldn’t shake the foreboding that settled in the pit of my stomach as if it would never go away.