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Luke had the sheets lifted and ready to accept me. As soon as I slid in beside him, he re-covered us with the blankets and scooted close, already positioning us how we’d discovered we liked to sleep together most, his hand on my hip as he lay on his back with me rolled onto my side, using him like a giant body pillow. I settled my cheek on his bare chest, and his other arm folded around my back, tucking me in close.
The different bed was new. As were the sheets. But it was more than that. It was just so…intimate.
Why had it never felt this intimate before?
Ten seconds passed of us lying there tensely, just like that. Then, Luke burst out, “Okay, I can see why you insisted on the shirt now.”
I grinned and sat up to let him free as he tried to rise. “Told you so,” I was gleefully happy to crow.
He muttered to himself all the way through the dark as I listened to him tiptoe across the floor. Then the light came on. He was still complaining as he found his shirt draped over the arm of a side chair and ripped it back on.
After the lights went out and he returned to the bed, I curled up to him and closed my eyes, smiling.
“So much better,” I cooed in delight.
I mean, not reallybetter. But it was definitely less intimate and nerve-wracking.
Against me, Luke muttered a moody, “Shut up,” and the words were such music to my ears that I fell asleep within minutes, grinning uncontrollably.
I didn’t sleep the entire night, though. At some point, before the dawn broke over the horizon, I woke with a full bladder.
Trying not to wake Luke, who was breathing deeply beside me, I inched out of bed and then tiptoed across the floor until I felt my way into the bathroom.
Once I had the door shut behind me, I finally turned on a light and did my business. I was washing my hands and waiting for the toilet to stop running before I was going to open the door again when a panicked shout came from the bedroom.
“Chloe?”
I don’t know if I’d ever heard anyone be that scared before. And knowing it wasLukein distress caused my heart to leap right into my throat.
I threw open the door and burst into the bedroom, ready to physically brawl with whatever was hurting him.
But as soon as I spilled into the room and the bathroom light spread a path across the floor all the way to my bed, I was startled to find no one else with him.
Luke was sitting upright in bed, alone, panting uncontrollably, his eyes wild with fright, and his face sheet white.
“What?” I demanded, looking around anyway. “What’s wrong?”
He blinked at me and stopped breathing for a second. Then he clutched his chest and fell back on the mattress as if trying to recover from his fright.
“Oh, fuck. Holy fuck,” he said, his voice shaky and breaths still coming too fast. He lifted his hands to his head, and gripped his hair, shaken to the core.
Confused, I went to the bed and blinked down at him. “Luke?”
He opened his eyes, blinked at me repeatedly, then tried to explain. “You weren’t here. I woke up, and you weren’t here. I didn’t know… I thought…”
“I just had to go to the bathroom,” I told him, pointing toward the lightened entrance.
He glanced over, heaved out a breath, and looked up at me again. “You weren’t here,” was all he could seem to say.
My lips parted. He’d been truly terrified. Forme. He was still trembling and breathing hard. I slipped my gaze over him to find that his shirt was soaked and his hair was matted to his head with slick perspiration.
“You’re sweating like crazy,” I said. “Let me get a towel.”
After racing back to the bathroom, I snagged the first substantial piece of terrycloth I found and hurried back to him.
He was sitting up again and reached out to take the towel from me, but I ignored his hand and sat on the edge of the bed beside him so I could dab at a wet trail running down the side of his temple.
Luke dropped his hand back into his lap and let me dry him. He closed his eyes in relief as I ran the cloth over his hair and around his neck. When he exhaled his first calm breath, I said, “We need to get this shirt off you. It’s completely soaked through.”
