Page 22 of You Can Make Me

This time…he moved closer, sliding his trembling hands under my shirt to cover my chest.

“Dreaming about that night?” I asked him.

Cooper paused before shaking his head.

“This one’s new. There are lights ahead of me. I’m being dragged through gravel. I manage to look over my shoulder and I see…a carnival. With whimsical tents in faded colors. As I’m being dragged toward it, the carnival keeps getting farther away. The person dragging me growls. He’s angry. It’s not…” He swallowed hard. “It’s not Hunter Holland. It’s someone else. And then I’m being thrown down a dark hole?—”

He gasped and clutched at me, holding me tighter as I stroked his hair, kissed his forehead, and whispered to him that he was safe, I was there, that I wouldn’t let anyone hurt him ever again.

But shit. He wasdreamingabout the carnival? It was the same description Kal and Dee Dee had given us. How…?

“I almost believe I’ll be okay when you hold me.”

I blew out a breath. Would he still feel that way when I told him about our visitors?

“You’re going to be okay. Youareokay. You’re going to keep getting better, I promise. You believe me?”

He stroked his fingertips down my pec and up my sternum. He loved to run his fingers through the hair there. I’d asked him, in the beginning, if he wanted me to shave, and he vehemently forbade me from ever doing so. I wasn’t the hairiest bastard ever, but what I had he seemed to like.

He’d kept his body completely waxed before his assault. It was hot, but he hadn’t had the opportunity for four and a half months, and I knew it annoyed him. I loved him natural, I loved him hairless.

I loved…him.

Acknowledging the depths of my feelings for Cooper, calling it what it was, brought me a momentary sense of calm within the storm we’d been trapped in for months now.

Please don’t let this be a setback.

I held him a little longer and almost wondered if he’d fallen back asleep as his breathing was steady.

Gene laughed at something in the other room, and Cooper stiffened in my arms.

Here we go.

“Why do I think that’snotthe TV?”

I pressed my lips together. He sounded like his snarky self, not like he was panicking. I crossed my fingers behind his back.

“Because it’s not?”

He sighed—and snuggled in even closer. “I knew this would happen sooner or later.”

“You knew that I’d bring your folks and the Ochoas out here?”

He groaned and kissed my throat. “I knew I’d be such a pain in the ass that eventually you’d call for an intervention.”

I barked a laugh, more out of surprise that he’d kissed me than over what he said. I gave him a squeeze. “Does that mean you forgive me?”

He pulled his hands out of my shirt and ran his fingers through my hair, tipping his head back so he could look at me.

“If anyone can make me, you can. I’ll punish you later.”

My breath caught. He was so close, his eyelids heavy from sleep. He ran his fingers over my cheekbone.

“Cooper,” I breathed.

His eyes searched mine, and then he patted my cheek.“I’m not kissing you. That’s your first punishment. Well, actually, it would be a punishment to kiss you with nap breath. But I’m not ready to have you grossed out by my lip?—”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” I said, holding him when he tried to roll away. I’d let go if he insisted, but I was going to take this opportunity to put a few things straight between us.