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Dropping his clothes, uncaring that they were landing on the floor, he approached the bed slowly, not wanting to scare Eveline if she woke.
“Wh-what do you want?” The words were a tortured whisper.
“Baby, you’re safe.” He squatted by the bed near her head. “You’re safe.”
Her body jolted as if she was hitting the wall again.
“Eveline. You’re not in the alley. You’re safe in my apartment.” Ox raised his voice a little, but she thrashed around the bed. “Dammit,” he muttered and sat on the edge of his bed. Gently he placed his hand on her ankle, just a light one. “Eveline, baby, it’s time to wake up.”
Finally, his voice broke through her dream. “Kyle?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
She sat up, pushing her hair away from her face. Her body was flushed from sleep, and he cursed the fact he was wearing a towel. No way could he hide his body’s reaction to the way his own T-shirt slipped off her shoulder, baring her smooth, lightly tanned flesh.
“Was I dreaming?”
Her question pulled him from the desire-ridden haze he’d fallen into.
“Yeah. Can you remember what it was?”
A shiver coursed through Eveline, and against his better judgment, due to his lack of clothing, he moved closer and pulled her into a hug. She buried her face into his neck, and this time, it was him who shivered in reaction to her closeness.
This was a big mistake, and his body was letting him know that what he should do was push her back down and kiss away the nightmare. Fortunately, he still had a grip on his control, and he resisted the urge.
“My attack. It was so real.” The anguish of reliving it was in Eveline’s tortured whispers. “The pain of my arm being wrenched. The roughness of the building against my cheek. It was like it was happening all over again.”
Ox tightened his hold on her. If anyone knew how real nightmares felt—it was him. “I’m sorry,” he murmured against her hair.
“Why are you sorry? You didn’t attack me.” She pulled away, and he wanted to push her back so she rested against his chest and there was no distance between them.
“I know. I’d take that memory from you if I could. I would pull it out of your brain so that you never had to remember what you’d endured.” Ox couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice.
Eveline tensed in his arms, and he took a deep breath to try and control it.
He was supposed to be comforting her, not frightening her.
“You can’t, and I don’t know that I’d want you to.”
There were plenty of times he’d woken from his own nightmare, wishing there was a way to burn the part of his brain where that memory was stored.
Why would she say that? Let alone feel it?
Ox shifted so his back was against the headboard, with Eveline tucked securely beside him. The position highlighted the fact he was in a towel, and he hoped that she was concentrating on what was going through her mind and not on his lack of clothing. Nor the way the towel still tented a little from his not-quite-as-hard-as-it-was-a-moment-ago erection.
“Why don’t you want to lose it?” he asked softly.
“Because, while it’s an unpleasant memory right now, and I know I’ll have more nightmares and I’ll go talk to someone about it, it’s part of me now. I can’t deny it happened. I can’t re-write history in an attempt to make it more palatable to myself and those around me.”
Her insight was one he hadn’t considered. No, that wasn’t right. Every mission he’d gone on. Every shot he’d had to make. Every fucked-up situation Ox had survived had left a mark on him. Those events had also shaped him into the person he was. They’d sharpened his methods as well.
The scars he bore were the scars of a survivor. Maybe if he accepted the nightmare, it would go away.
Mentally, he scoffed at the thought.
Ox’s problem was he hadn’t faced what had happened. Hadn’t dealt with it. He’d given the impression he had. Had picked up his job the moment he was physically able to.
It’d been over two years since the incident had happened, and yet it felt like yesterday with the way he continually dreamed about it.
