Page 42 of Wicked Heat

I’m in bed with the monster.

Thirteen

Cold panic crashes against me, and I yank my legs up as I scramble backward until I’m scrunched against the headboard. But he’s still there, his lips glistening in some sick perversion of satisfaction, and all I can do is scream and scream and scream until Rory disappears.

Until the hotel room disappears.

Until the entire world seems to disappear around me, shifting and changing until Rory is only a shadow haunting me from the grave.

But I don’t stop. I keep screaming until my throat aches, until my head feels like it will explode.

Panic rises like bile. I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to make it stop!

Bree! Bree!

I feel hands on my shoulders shaking me. Another shake, then another.

Bree! Bree! Bree!

Nothing gets through until I feel a sharp sting across my cheek. Then I fall back, my skull slamming against the headboard. I cry out, then look around, trying to make sense of what’s happening.

Aria is right there. Sitting close, but not touching me. “You’re okay,” she says. “It’s me. It’s Aria. You had a bad dream.”

And just like that, I’m in my bed. My familiar, comfortable bed. I’m in Burbank, not an airport hotel. The storm and the airport hotel happened four months ago.

I never went to Ash’s room. I’d chickened out, and I didn’t see him again after he gave me his key. Not until he showed up beside my car window yesterday.

And Rory…I shudder as I look down at the tangle of sheets that have trapped me. Rory was—and is—long dead.

“It was him,” I tell Aria, my voice gasping. “It was Rory. It started out as Ash, but then it was Rory.”

“Shh. Hush. It’s okay. It was just a bad dream.”

I want to argue. To say it was more than a dream. It was need and want and passion.

And, oh, how I’d liked it. I’d wanted it. I’d so desperately wanted it.

I want to say all that, but I’m ashamed. Because it was Rory touching me. Rory turning me on. It was him, not Ash. Not the man I’d believed was touching me.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay,” Aria continues as I try to breathe through my gasping sobs. “It’s just a dream.”

Except it’s not just a dream, and I can’t tell her the truth. It was Rory. My ex. My kidnapper. It was him.

And I liked it.

Worse, it’s not the first time.

After the kidnapping, my mind had been filled with nightmares of Rory touching me. So many nightmares that I’d finally worked up the courage to tell my therapist. Teresa had told me it was normal. That it was my mind working through fear and grief. My fear of getting close to someone warring with my desire for physical comfort.

Maybe she’s right. Maybe it is normal. But now I can’t help but wonder if my subconscious equates Rory with Ash. If deep down I know that Ash is just as dangerous as Rory, and by asking for his help, I’m walking straight into the lion’s den.

Beside me, Aria strokes my hair the way our moms used to. “Rory is dead. He’s not here. He’ll never, ever hurt you again.”

I take a deep breath, then another. “Ash,” I finally manage to say. “He was Ash. And then he turned into Rory.”

“You were dreaming about Ash?”

I nod, then scrub my hands over my face. “I’ll be right back.”