Page 36 of Sweet Nightmares (Wicked Mirrors #2)

Chapter Twenty-Six

J ane yawned and blinked. His warmth surrounded her, and the world was a haze.

Jane ran her hand up something hard, rock-solid yet somehow soft at the same time.

Her head was on that same hard surface, and it wasn’t until a hand stroked up her back that she realized exactly where she was—and who she was with.

Jane stilled.

Nightmare didn’t. He ran a hand into her hair, massaging her scalp.

Jane let out a soft sigh, pinching her eyes tight.

The way he touched was better than magic.

Jane was purring like a cat as he simply continued to run his fingers through her hair.

There was nothing better than someone touching her head.

It was maybe her favorite place to be touched.

Sex was great, for the first time in her life. It was, but this simple touch afterward was almost too much. Intimate in a way she’d never had before. Her body had been used by many men. Over and over and over again, but none of them had cared to just stroke her, to take care of her after.

“You really do love your hair being touched.”

Jane’s only answer was another moan.

“If you don’t want to be thoroughly fucked, then you are going to need to stop that.” For the first time in eight years, his tone was amused, tinged with a smile.

“And what if I do?”

The answer was immediate. He flipped her over onto her back and hovered over her.

His gaze watched hers, and Jane’s chest rose with her quick, anticipatory breaths.

Nightmare leaned all of his weight onto one elbow, and his other large, warm hand ran over her naked breast, down her stomach, and to her folds.

“You’re so wet. Already.” A smirk lifted on his lips. Jane was fairly certain she hadn’t stopped being so since the night before. “Are you ready for me?”

His hard cock pressed against her opening.

“Please.”

He thrust inside her. Hard and unforgiving, Jane whimpered at the sensation.

“You’re so tight.” He moved again and again and again, and it was so good. “You’re mine.” He pounded harder. No softness.

This time he fucked her hard with no restraint. Halfway through, he flipped her over and took her from behind so that he could wrap her hair into his hand, pulling it taut and controlling her completely, letting her know that he owned her. She was fully his. The intensity was almost too much.

The sex was unforgiving and rough, but it wasn’t like the other men. Then, she was as dry as a desert, and the sex was so painful. So rotten. But this? It was as if he were correcting all the other times. Showing her it could be rough and still pleasurable.

Showing her this time, it was different.

When Nightmare flicked a finger over her clitoris, Jane fell apart, having such an intense orgasm that she didn’t know what to do with herself. But she didn’t need to know. He did. He led and controlled.

He was in charge, and in this, she wanted him to be.

The sound of flesh slapping again and again and again was all Jane could focus on other than the pleasure because it was all too much.

Jane went over the edge again, and her pussy tensed around his cock even harder.

He continued to move through her orgasm until he fell with her, coming inside of her and filling her up with his warmth.

Jane never liked it when a man came inside of her before. She thought it was disgusting, but not with him. She wanted all of him.

Always.

He stilled and pulled out, his weight leaving the bed.

Jane leaned down on her elbows before rolling over onto her back and looking up at the ornate wood carvings on the ceiling’s trim.

When he came back, once more, he pulled her into his arms like she was a weightless doll—and given that he was a vampire, she bet she did feel like lifting a doll to him.

Once again, he walked her to the tub and put her in it, cleaning her up again. This time, she didn’t fall asleep. Instead, she watched him show a hint of humanity. A speck of having a soul. And it was fascinating.

“Why do you clean me?”

“You are my bride,” he said simply and then cocked his head like he was lost in thought. “If you wish me to stop, all you need to do is ask.”

But she wouldn’t ask. He knew it. She knew it. Anyone with half a brain would have known it. Nightmare was the villain of the night. But he was also her safety. Jane didn’t know when that changed, but it had. He was still utterly awful. The reason she no longer danced. Yet he protected her.

He owned her. Body, soul, and even parts of her heart. But she liked to believe that she owned a couple of pieces of him, too—the only pieces he’d let anyone have.

Nightmare wasn’t capable of love, and he never would be.

And Jane wasn’t quite sure if she was capable of love, either.

Nightmare wasn’t just a pleasure. She wasn’t able to label what he was.

He was a selfish creature, but Jane fulfilled one of his needs, and until she held no more value for him, he would keep her safe.

But was that it?

Jane didn’t want to think so.

“Nightmare,” Jane said slowly, not fully knowing where she was going with it. She brought her knees up to her chest, splashing the water around her body. “Would you let me go? Would you break our bargain and free me?”

His face paled, and his mouth fell into a flat line, and fear laced the edges of his eyes. “I don’t want to.” There was more he wanted to say, Jane could tell, but he didn’t say it. He pinched his mouth shut and almost stared at her pleadingly.

“But would you?” she asked and stopped breathing for a second too long. But she was met with silence, and a dark sadness swirled in his eyes.

He grunted. “You want to leave me?”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, I don’t.”

His silver eyebrows crinkled together. “I don’t understand.” The words seemed to be hard for him to say.

Jane didn’t know what to say. She had gotten her answer.

He wasn’t willing to let her go. She would forever belong to someone else.

So there wasn’t much left to say. “I should probably get out and get going. It’s my sister’s Mirror Rite tonight, and I have Royalle Ballet auditions this morning. I may not be home until very late.”

He sat back on his heels, examining her. “Have her bargain with me.”

“No, fucking way.” She sat up more, moving the water, her fingers curling around the porcelain.

He winced. “You don’t trust me?”

Jane swallowed past the lump in her throat.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. She did to a degree.

She understood that he would never let her be physically harmed.

But he didn’t have a heart. He didn’t understand emotions, and Jane feared he might accidentally hurt Quinnevere and not mean to, because he so rarely did anything for selfless reasons.

In fact, she’d never seen him do anything for a selfless reason.

The silence dangled between them like a spiderweb. Unsettling yet beautiful in its way.

“You don’t.” He nodded, and a hint of something flashed across his unreadable features. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”

Jane pinched her lips and ripped her gaze from his, instead looking at her bare legs and callousless feet.

Feet that no longer belonged to a ballerina.

“You already have.” Her voice broke. She thought she was over it.

She’d thought it no longer affected her.

But she was wrong. It felt like her ribcage was being pried open with rusty clamps.

He leaned into the bathtub and tipped up her chin with his thumb. “You said that once before, after your husband’s death, but I didn’t care to know what it meant.” He rubbed his thumb along her jaw. “I wish to know now. I think I would like to know you, too.”

He echoed her sentiment from the vampire lair when she had said she wanted to know him.

“I—” he paused and tapped his empty chest. “I remember what it is to care about someone else.” He sighed, frustrated. “While I no longer truly have that ability. I would like to try.” For you . The words lingered in the air between them, unsaid.

Jane’s throat bobbed, and she placed her hand on the surface of the water, feeling it and pondering if she should let him have this—if she should let him see her pain.

Because this pain was the unbearable kind.

She could endure torture and assaults, but showing him how much he’d taken from her felt so much harder.

“You have to command me to tell you,” Jane said.

“Why?” His eyes narrowed.

“Just do it.”

“I command you to tell me how I have hurt you.”

Jane pinched her eyes tight for a moment. “You stole ballet from me.” The words were a breath.

“Ballet hurt you. It caused your bruises,” he said so earnestly.

Jane scoffed. “You can’t truly believe that.”

“I believe the words you tell me are true.”

Jane shook her head. “Then you’re na?ve.”

“And you lied.” His voice was rough, and she thought it was possibly a little hurt.

“The night you killed my husband was not the first night he hit me.” She absentmindedly rubbed the phantom marks of her dead husband’s fingerprints on her neck. “He would hit me daily if he could. It was a sport to him.”

Nightmare snarled. “If I could kill him again, I would do it slower.”

Jane pinched her eyes shut for a moment, her held-back emotions bursting at the seams, stinging and painful. “You took away the one thing that brought me happiness in a sea of brokenness.”

Then she let him see everything. Six years of pain. No, nineteen years of holding in pain—everything from the moment her parents died. She gave him all of it and, strangely, he held it. Quietly and calmly, he gave her room for all of it.