Page 103 of Wait for Him

My thighs are trembling so hard you'd swear I was freezing instead of burning alive.

And somewhere underneath the wreckage of me, one thought surfaces, clear and extremely fucking inconvenient: There's no box for this one.

Chapter Seven

Jackson

Before I can even catch my breath, the fog clears and I feel my energy plummet.

Rose is boneless on her stomach, arms splayed across the mattress, her chest still rising and falling in heavy breaths. My own lungs are working just as hard, sweat cooling against my skin, my heart still pounding from everything that just happened.

Then it stutters hard enough that I press a hand to my chest.

There's a strange hollow beat beneath my ribs, followed by a rush of cold that rolls through me so fast my skin prickles. My eyes catch on the marks across Rose's back from my nails, the red prints on her ass, my cum splattered across her skin, and all the heat drains out of me at once.

Fuck.

My stomach turns over. My hands start shaking, just a fine tremor at first, but I can't make it stop, and suddenly I'm freezing even though sweat is still running down my spine.

“I'll get you a towel.” My voice sounds wrong to my own ears, thin and too far away, and I'm already moving before I know what the hell I'm trying to get away from. “I'm so sorry.”

Rose says something behind me, but I can't hear her through the roaring in my ears.

The bathroom feels farther away than it is. A wave of dizziness hits when I reach the counter, and I have to brace one hand against it until the floor settles enough for me to grab a towel with fingers that don't quite want to work.

Warm water.

She needs warm water.

Doesn't she?

Or cold. Fuck. Maybe cold.

I stand there staring at the towel under the faucet, completely unable to remember what the fuck I'm doing with it.

Rose.

Right.

I wring it out, grab a bottle of water from the minibar and make myself go back to the bed.

My knees feel weak when I sit beside her, but taking care of her gives me something to focus on, so I start cleaning her skin carefully. One pass of the towel, then another, concentrating way too hard on every movement while the trembling in my hands gets worse and my jaw clenches tight enough to ache.

Then I find another crescent from my nails near her shoulder.

My vision blurs.

Fuck.

I blink hard, but that only knocks the first tear loose. I wipe it away with the back of my wrist before she can see and keep going, because I need my hands doing something. I need to take care of her. Clean her up. Get her water. Do whatever comes next.

Fix it.

Whatever my body has suddenly decided I broke, I need to fucking fix it.

Another tear slips free before I can stop it, and this time my chest pulls tight around a breath that won't go all the way in.

Rose must feel something change because she rolls over, and the second she sees my face, her expression shifts.