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“No, Eli!”
My forearms prickled, and I turned back toward her bedroom door. Now I was worried. There was no fucking way Eli had somehow broken into our penthouse…was there? I strode toward the guestroom door, then pressed my ear to it. Was it possible he was in there? Maybe she was engaged in a quiet struggle. I didn’t want to be on the wrong side of a bad situation. Fear won out. I turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Darkness filled the room, and the dim hallway was the only source of light spilling in. The bedcovers rustled. Like she was kicking.
“Eli, no!” she called out again.
I searched out the light switches, feeling for the switch that would light up the moody lamp in the corner. The amber lighting revealed the room and the situation.
Eli wasn’t in here. She was only dreaming.
My heart receded from its perch in my throat. As I was about to flip the switch and retreat to my own room, she whimpered again. And then she started to sob.
I swore under my breath; I had no idea what typical protocol was for something like this. Leaving her to cry into her pillow seemed wrong. But it was two a.m. I wasn’t trying to insert myself into her bed when she was unconscious.
I drifted closer. Maybe I could just wake her up. Maybe this was just a nightmare.
“Cora.”
She stilled, sniffling softly. “Axel?”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah. It’s me. I was just checking on you.”
She frowned, half-sitting up. Her cheeks were damp from tears as she ran her palm back and forth across her forehead. “Why did you get up?” Her slurred words told me she wasn’t fully awake. Maybe even still dreaming.
“I was just walking by—”
“Come back to bed,” she mumbled, her head dropping back to the pillow.
“You should go back to sleep,” I told her.
“Please,” she said, an arm flopping out onto the empty space beside her. “I need you, Axel.”
There was no mistaking the emotion in her voice. The gut-wrenching sincerity there. God, it was so hard to walk away from. But I needed to.
Right?
“Cora, I should go back to my own bed,” I croaked, not even half-meaning the words.
“Just hold me,” she whimpered.
I was a strong man, but not strong enough to resist those words. Not fromCora,of all people. I sighed, heading for the door, giving myself the steps between the bed and the light switch to make my decision.
What we’d been doing up until now had been fun and games, born from very real chemistry, shadowed in heartbreak, and bursting with witty resentment. It hurt as much as it was fun. But this? This promised to be so much more than that. So much deeper than that.
If her coming to the penthouse was drowning in honey, this was someone throwing our jar off the side of a cliff.
I rested my forehead against the doorway. Every inch of me wanted to go to her.
Which meant I had to.
There was no choice. Not really.
I flipped off the lights and went to the vacant side of the bed. The bedcovers rustled as I debated how to show up for this unexpected sleepover. Undressing to my boxer briefs, as I normally slept, seemed presumptuous. Or at least shocking if she woke up with no memory of this. I chose to play it safe and crawled into bed as I was: in sweatpants and no shirt.
As soon as I hit the sheets, she was in my arms. Cuddled into me as if not a second had passed without us in each other’s embrace. Her silky hair hit my cheek, and all the night-xieties dissipated. A big sigh rumbled out of me as I cozied up to her. Sleepiness licked at me.
It didn’t matter how complicated things were. How tangled or terrible.
