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My eyes fly open when I feel his fingers delving into the space where his tongue has just been. Carter Easton is kneeling above me, shirtless and glorious and I am completely drunk on him. "Shit, you're incredible," I slur. His broad shoulders and narrow waist are sculpted to perfection and the way he is hovering over me, supporting his weight, makes the muscles in his arms pop out. I reach out, fascinated, tracing a line from his tanned forearm up to his sharply contoured shoulder.
He pulls back and looks me up and down. "Take off
your dress," he orders. "I need to see you."
His bossiness is oddly thrilling. I reach behind me, unzipping the dress, watching his eyes rake over me as I shimmy it downward. "Fuck," he growls, just before he lunges for my breasts.
"Carter?"
"What?" he snarls impatiently, curling his tongue around my nipple.
I am panting, my whole body throbbing, practically delirious with need. "Fuck me. Please." I arch into him, wanting to feel the whole length of his naked body pressing against mine. I bend my neck, exposing my throat to his sucking kisses, aware that he is probably leaving marks all over my skin and not really caring.
"Gladly." He pushes up off of me quickly, dropping his trousers down off of his narrow hips. The sharp 'V" where his abs meet his legs makes me bite my lip. He has a condom ready and I am spreading my legs embarrassingly quickly. He sees me and pauses, then shakes his head. "Sanniyah, you are absolutely gorgeous like this. I hope you know that."
"I do now," I whimper, as he presses himself against my entrance.
We both groan together as he surges upward. He rolls his hips, stretching me, filling me, and I clutch his back. "Ah god, Sanniyah, you feel...." he trails off, his whole attention given over to moving within me. He buries his head in my neck, sucking, and kissing and biting, his moans driving me closer and closer to the edge. In an instant, he has me panting, gasping. I feel like I am standing outside myself somehow. I sink my teeth into the skin of his shoulder, holding on as he pumps into me like a jackhammer. "Carter!" I shriek as I near oblivion.
He looks up from my neck, his face a mask of dark ecstasy. "Say it again," he growls as his hands rake down my body.
"What?" I pant.
His fingers press against my most sensitive place. "Say my name while I touch you," he orders, rubbing in time with his thrusts.
"Unh," I moan, watching him back up, his thrusts shallow and slow, the glisten of sweat starting to collect across his abs. I can barely form words anymore, but something inside wants to obey. "Carter," I gasp.
"Now come for me, Sanniyah. I want to feel you come all around me, can you do that?" He rubs faster, his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. "Do it now, Sanniyah, come right now."
His words travel through my body and every cell wants to obey. My body begins to flutter, my breath coming in short gasps. He watches me with hooded eyes, his lips parted glistening and wet. "I can feel you, do you know that? Holy shit I can feel you getting hotter and tighter. Let go for me Sanniyah. Just let go, I've got you." He is just barely holding on to control, the strangled gasp at the edge of his words is all I need to know he is right there with me.
We come together, exploding, shattering into a million pieces that blow away in the wind. With a roar that fills my ears, he stiffens, and then collapses on top of me even as I am trying to pull him up higher, faster, harder, as I come over and over again.
At last he falls to the side. We are both gasping. I stare up at the ceiling, utterly and completely wrecked. He slides his warm hand over my skin, pulling me closer, forming his body around mine so that I am completely enveloped in his warmth. He yanks the tangled sheet over us both, but I barely need it. He is warm, so incredibly warm, and solid and real that I am asleep in moments.
Chapter Eighteen
Carter
I've been here before. Though it looks all wrong, I know where I am and the fear grips my throat.
It seems like a restaurant, though there is no one else around. A harsh spotlight shines down on me, washing out my features so that I could almost disappear into the whiteness. All around is shadow, but I know something is there.
My parents are seated at the table across from me; smiling, laughing, proud. "You're alive," I whisper.
My mother's eyes sparkle, but she doesn't answer me. She doesn't see the shapes moving in the shadows behind her, but I do. I know the danger. "Mom, we need to go," I tell her, but she is not paying attention. She laughs merrily with my father, so alive it hurts me.
"We need to go," I repeat. I stand up. The noise of the chair scraping across the floor is so loud that I cringe. If they didn't know where we were before, they do now. I'm too loud, I've caught their attention.
The first black lens snakes around the corner, shining and metallic, but also strangely plastic, melding into the shape of a hand reaching for me. I stare at it, dumbfounded, and then I suddenly understand.
This is a dream, a nightmare. I've been here a thousand times before, and nothing can prevent what happens next.
My parents are going to die.
With I cry, I leap forward, ready to fight. Maybe this time I can save them. Maybe this time things won't end the way I know they're going to end.
The flashes start going off. Blinding, harsh. I stagger backwards, and my heel catches on something, sending me sprawling to the ground. The metallic black glare of the cameras closes in on me. They are ready to devour me and move on to my parents. I have just one last hope...
I swing upward, wrapping my arms around the shifting black monstrosity and I yank it away. I've done this before as well. I know that what I see next will ruin the rest of my waking hours. The faces of the men who stalked my parents, running them off the road. Richard Senna, Gil Hastings and Howard Blair, their faces the same grim masks they wore in their mugshots. But in the dream they will snarl at me like wild animals, baring teeth too sharp to make sense. And then I will wake up sweating.
But I have to protect my parents. They don't know the danger they are in. And so I wrestle with the cameras that are now the size of giants. "No," I shout, straining against them. "You won't win. I won't let you in. You can't find me anymore. I won't let you in."
I heave the camera away from my attacker and hurl it to the floor where it shatters into a million pieces. Shielding my eyes from the rain of glass, I wait to wake up. I wait for it to be over.
But this dream is different. From out of the shadows, my attacker steps into the light. Sanniyah's gorgeous face smiles up at me. "You already let me in," she smiles, radiant and contented.
"No," I groan, as the shadows close in. "You're not like them. You can't be like them."
Dream-Sanniyah's face begins to melt and contort, the beautiful color melting away into the sallow, yellowed face of Howard Blair. "You already let me in," she tells me again, just as I'm falling, falling away into the black.
My whole body jerks on impact and suddenly I am wide awake, safe in my own bed. I am covered in a fine sheen of sweat.
Sanniyah makes a small, soft sighing noise in my arm, nestling against me with a little squeak.
I stiffen and count to ten, reminding myself that it was a dream. Sanniyah isn't working for the tabloids. She has nothing to do with my parents.
I know that.
I know that.
I clench my whole body, every muscle, as tight as I can. Then one by one, I release the tension, starting at my toes and working my way up. The last thing to unclench is my fist, and I open my palm wide before resting it lightly on the curve of Sanniyah's hip.
I could be different with her, I tell myself as I smooth my hand upward. She mutters something in her sleep and pulls away irritably and I have to suppress a laugh. Yes I could definitely be different with her. I want to. I am ready to stop mistrusting the world. I am tired of grief and mourning, of shock and hatred. I am ready to feel good again.
With a shudder, I forcibly banish the nightmare from my mind and pull her closer, pressing my lips to the soft place where her neck meets her shoulder. She mutters again, rolling onto her back and brushing her hand up to my face. I catch it and kiss her fingers, one by one, watching the smile curve around her lips.
"Let me be different for this one," I silently beg the universe. "Let me be whole again...for her." I stare at her, watching her sleep, the rise and fall of her chest hypnotizing the badness away until my own eyelids droop closed again and I am sleeping without the bother of dreams.
Chapter Nineteen
Sanniyah
I jerk awake. For a moment, panic grips me as I my bleary eyes resolve my unfamiliar surroundings. There is something heavy weighing me down and I fight the urge to fling it off me before understanding finally takes hold.
I am in Carter's bed.
His arm is slung over me.
And he is fast asleep.
I shift a little, trying not to disturb him as I roll over and regard his sleeping face. It shouldn't be possible, but he is even more beautiful in the soft light of dawn. There is a faint golden stubble along his jaw, and it glints in the sunlight like he has been polished to a bright sheen.
