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“It’s three in the morning,” he said, voice soft. Way too soft. And a part of me was responding to it.
“I don’t sleep much,” I said, shrugging.
His head ducked, catching my gaze, holding it, searching, maybe seeing more than I wanted him to. But whatever he saw had him moving just enough out of my way that I could pass.
He said nothing.
Neither did I.
And in that silence, I felt whatever door had been opened slamming shut. With each of us on a different side.
It was for the best, I tried to convince myself as I went to the coffee machine, putting in the grounds he picked up, grabbing the creamer he must have ordered at some point while I’d been working.
I would have forgotten to get it, leaving me to angrily drink black coffee until the next time I took the girls for a walk, and I could dip into a store real quick.
It didn’t escape me, either, that he also knew exactly how I liked my coffee. Medium roast, so it wasn’t bitter, with a decent splash of cream and a little extra sugar.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever known anyone who remembered how I liked my drinks or food. Not even my father. He always asked what I wanted from Chinese even if my order had always been the same. Lo mein and a couple of egg rolls.
I guess, to an extent, I’d just attributed it to a strange quirk of the male sex. Apparently, that wasn’t true. If this guy who’d known me for almost no time remembered the small details.
Sway moved wordlessly into the living room, flicking the TV back on since it had gone to the sleep screen, then climbed back under his blanket, but sat upright.
It wasn’t long before Miranda, clearly half in love with the man already, jumped up next to him and rested her head in his lap.
Samantha, my loyal girl, followed me to the office, and plopped herself down outside of the door, eventually drifting off to sleep.
I worked.
Or, rather, tried to.
But for the first time, my focus was shoddy, my mind wandering back to the bed, to the feel of him pressing me into the mattress, his big hand cupping my breast, his lips on mine, his hard cock grinding against where I needed him most.
“Ugh,” I growled a few hours later, cradling my pounding head in my hands as I stared down at the lack of progress I’d made.
“Hey,” Sway’s voice called, making me start, nearly falling off of my chair in the process. “How about we take the dogs for a walk then get some breakfast?” he suggested, making me realize he’d already showered and changed into a fresh black tee and jeans.
Without intending to let my mind go there, visions of him naked in my shower flashed across my vision, making my sex clench hard, aching to finish what we’d started in bed earlier.
But we couldn’t do that, damnit.
“Okay,” I agreed, exhaling hard.
“You’ll feel better after some fresh air,” he assured me.
“You were right,” I said a while later as we sat on benches, the girls at our feet, our food wrappers in the to-go bag between us.
“And yet you sound annoyed by that,” he said, shooting a boyish smirk in my direction.
“I mean, isn’t it always annoying when a man is right?” I asked, making that smile stretch wider.
“I’ll try to be wronger moving forward,” he said, making a small laugh escape me. And, at that moment, it was like all the stress slipped from my shoulders.
Not just the stress from the nightmares, from the lack of sleep, from the sexual frustration of the past few days.
All of it.
The stress that sent me fleeing to the woods once again, the stress from months and years before that.
It was all gone.
For a few brief, glorious moments.
Until we got up from the bench and headed back toward my condo.
“Wait,” I hissed, grabbing his arm hard with my free hand, my nails digging in, leaving little crescents.
“What?” Sway asked, tensing as he came to a stop. “What’s the matter?” he asked as the anxiety sprang free through my system, making my heart pound and my stomach twist. I immediately regretted putting any food in it as it sloshed around ominously as I looked at the car on the street.
“We have to go,” I hissed, reaching down for his hand, grabbing it, and turning to rush off in the other direction, dipping down the next street, then taking us down an alley between buildings as I tried to think of how to get out of this, how to get away when my car was behind the building.
“Baby, what the fuck?” Sway asked, yanking my arm until I stopped moving and faced him.
I watched him look down at me, and I knew how I looked, knew my eyes were wide, full of fear.
