Page 54 of His Haunted Desire

“I can’t… lose… him,” she says in a raspy, urgent voice. “Please. Not now. Don’t take him from me.”

She makes another heartbreaking noise full of pain. Should I gently shake her awake? She’d probably be pissed if she knew I was listening to her talk about me in her sleep.

Or maybe it’s not about me. Perhaps she has a boyfriend. Or maybe her nightmare is about her father.

The boyfriend angle somehow seems impossible. I’m probably a naïve idiot for thinking that, but I can’t imagine her lying to me about not being in a relationship. She doesn’t seem like the cheating type.

She makes my decision for me when she suddenly bolts upright, letting out a cry. “Raiden!” She gasps.

“I’m here,” I tell her softly, bringing her into my arms.

“I had a dream, but it… it was like before, but it was you. The dead man. They didn’t get the wrong person. They got you.” She holds onto me tightly as if to assure herself I’m really here. I inwardly caution myself torelax. When she fully wakes up, she might push me away. “But you’re here.” She lets me go slowly and sits back on her pillows. “Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

“I do,” she says. “Coming on strong. Backing off. Repeat.”

“You’re not the only one guilty of that.”

“Death does funny things to a person,” she murmurs.

“I struggle to think of truer words,” I say. “Don’t worry. I know that not wanting someone to die and wanting to be with them are two different things.”

“Thanks for understanding.”

I wrap my arm around her shoulder, and guide her to my chest. She rests her cheek against my pec. “Your heart is always beating so fast.”

“Only when I’m around you,” I tell her.

“Ha ha, sir,” she says sarcastically.

“I’m not joking,” I tell her. “My body goes nuts when I’m around you, loses all sense of propriety and time and place. A man is dead, and maybe the knife was meant for me. Even now, my body doesn’t know how to calm the fuck down.”

“I’m the same,” she says softly. “Maybe this is what people mean when they talk about chemistry.”

“It must be,” I reply. “Whatever it is, I’ve never felt it before.”

“Really?” she whispers softly.

With the storm raging outside, it feels intimate inside, somehow easier to talk and share. To be vulnerable. I’m not sure how much that has to do with the storm or if it’s just Aurora.

“Really,” I say, kissing the top of her head.

“That’s nice… sir.”

“That’s a good defense mechanism,” I say. “I like it. Anytime things get too heavy, call mesir,and remind me what we are when you strip everything else away.”

“You see right through me,” she murmurs. “But let’s not pretend you don’t like being calledsir. Your heart beats even quicker when I say it.”

We say nothing for a long time.

“One of the things I like about you, Aurora, is the fact that we can just be together and I don’t need to say a word.”

“I like that too,” she admits. “It’s comfortable. Like when we were watching movies. We don’t have to talk to make it about ourselves. We can just… be. Is that part of chemistry too?”

“No idea. But whatever it is, I like it.”

She kisses my chest. “Me too. What are we going to do?”