Page 56 of Wicked Little Darling

“Why are you laughing?” he asked, his voice quivering with fear. “I can’t—it won’t?—”

Was I laughing? My face was wet, and I licked the tears from my lips when they started coming faster.

I never cried. What the fuck was happening to me?

I gasped for breath, every inhale a desperate wheeze. My muscles were taut with tension, locking up when I tried to move.

Was I dying? Was this what it felt like to?—

“Dakota,” Reese said. He sounded faraway, like a distant echo. “Dakota!” Two hands framed my face, and I immediately reached up and clung to his wrists as his touch stifled someof the rising panic. “Shit, are you crying?” His thumbs moved across my cheeks, sliding through the tears.

I tried to find his eyes in the dark, to ground myself with green, gold, and brown. I couldn’t, I couldn’t see his face at all, could only feel his hands?—

“Can you touch me,” I panted. My heart was about to explode. “Please. Please, Reese, I don’t know what’s?—”

“Iamtouching you. Are you having an asthma attack?”

“Touch me more.”

Reese actually growled. “If you’re fucking with me, Dakota?—”

“I’m not fucking with you! I don’t know what’s happening but I’m fucking scared.Please, Reese.”

“Alright! Okay,” he said quietly. “Just—hold on, let me get this crap off my back.” There was the sound of cloth sliding together as he took off his backpack and violin, and then he moved closer to me and started awkwardly brushing my hair back. I let out a shaky, relieved exhale.

Better.

He slid one hand down to my chest, and I fumbled around until I found it, squeezing his fingers and focusing on the warmth of his palm and the feel of his other hand as he sifted it through my hair.

So much better.

Little by little, as I focused on Reese, my breathing started to slow along with my heart. The heat from Reese’s body cut through the cold terror that was flowing through my veins, and his hands were the only things that mattered. Those long fingers were so warm in mine, and even though I was squeezing his hand in a death grip, he moved it around my chest, slowly rubbing beneath my collarbone.

“Is this a panic attack?” he asked. His voice was soft and so close to my ear. It burrowed under my skin and slowed thetremors until a sense of calm started billowing gently through me.

“Mm,” I grunted, feeling drugged-out from his nearness.

Was it? Is that what a panic attack felt like? Fuck, they were horrible.

“Are you afraid of the dark? Or claustrophobic?”

“I don’t know. Just…” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Reese’s fingers in my hair were lulling me into an in-between state where all I wanted to do was sit here and let him touch me.

I wanted to touchhim.

There was only the sound of our breathing as he kept rubbing my chest, kept pushing his fingers through my hair. The weight of eyes in the dark was comforting.

Hisattentionwas comforting.

For once in my life, someone was helping me when I’d done something wrong. Instead of yelling at me, dismissing me, or ignoring me, Reese washelpingme.

And god it felt good.

I focused on his slow, quiet breaths and tried matching my breathing to his. The air around us seemed less suffocating, replaced with a reassuring stillness that smothered the fear like a warm blanket.

He smelled so good, too. It was his body wash, I knew that from the way the room would fill up with the scent of him after he took a shower. It was a floral scent, warm and pretty. Every inhale filled me with it, and I wanted to bury my nose in his neck and lick it from his skin.

“Are you better now?”