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I run to her, getting on the bed, wrapping my hands around her shoulders, and shaking her slightly.
“Kira, baby, please wake up,” I start softly, but she is too far gone, and I give her a firmer shake.
“Kira! Wake up. Wake up, baby! It’s just a nightmare. This isn’t real. Just a bad nightmare.”
Suddenly, the thrashing seizes as she startles in my hands, her eyes fluttering open. It’s dark in her room, with only faint light from the city down below filtering inside her windows, but I see those beautiful green eyes full of tears and so much pain.
“Vas?” Her voice is coarse, her throat probably sore from all the screaming she put it through.
“Yeah, I’m right here, baby,” I reassure her, swiping the damp strands of her hair off her forehead and gently caressing her face. “You’re okay.” I sit up against the headboard and tug her onto my lap, not caring that we are practically naked, apart from her thin, silky negligee and my boxer briefs.
Kira comes into my arms without hesitation, without a single question or snarky comment. She lays her head on my bare chest, tucking her hands in between us. She feels so small, so fragile like this, it breaks my heart. My strong, cold witch was nowhere to be seen.
I thread my fingers through her hair in a soothing motion as my other hand glider over her thigh, gently caressing her softskin. Kira’s breaths are still chopped and shaky. “It was just a nightmare,” I remind her, thinking it will help her calm down, but the effect is quite the opposite as I hear a chocked cry pass her lips and I start to peel away to look into her eyes, but she clutches onto my arms with her hands, her head pressed tightly into me, and I don’t fight it. I circle my arms around her, cradling her head to my chest as I rock our bodies from side to side.
“I-It wasn’t,” her voice is barely above hushed whispers.
“What?”
“It wasn’t a nightmare. It’s a reality. One I’ve lived through.”
It’s as if hearing herself say these words breaks the little spell she was under. Kira pulls away from me, sliding off my lap as she swipes under her eyes quickly to erase any trace of the tears I have already embedded into my brain.
“Thank you for waking me up. You can go now,” she dismisses me, and that stubborn part of me that is hell-bent on protecting my heart tells me to do just that. To get up and forget what I saw, what I heard, what she told me.
But as seconds tick by, I realize that part is no longer in control because my heart has entered the race, and it will not allow me to leave the woman I love alone.
“No.”
“Vassar, I am too tired to do this right now. Please, just go.” She doesn’t look tired; she’s downright drained.
“I am not here to fight, Kira. Just…just come here, please. Or actually”—I feel the damp sheets bellow my body—“come with me.” Without waiting for her to refuse, I swipe her off the bed and into my arms and carry her out toward my room.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking you to a dry bed. You need to rest.”
“I need to shower and go to work.”
“Kira.” I deposit her onto my bed. “It is three-thirty in the morning; you are not going to work.”
“Well, I’m not going back to bed. So, might as well get something done.”
I let out an exhausted breath. “Come on.” I extend my hand over to her, and she takes it.
“Where to now?”
“Shower.” I lead us into the one attached to my room and turn the water on, then I drop my underwear down, stepping out of it, and when I see Kira not moving but only standing like a statue, gaping at me, I slip her negligee off for her and taking her hand again and step into the black marble, glass shower.
It’s huge and could probably fit the whole kitchen from my old apartment here. Kira gasps as the first jets of scalding hot water hit her shaking body, and she covers herself with her arms, wrapping them around her stomach.
Something I have seen her do before.
I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to pry into the secrets she guards with her life, but I cannot ignore the pain they are causing her. “Kira.” I run my hands over her slender shoulders.
“You are touching me,” she whispers. “Your body. You are letting me touch your body.” Those emerald pools stare into me with understanding. She knows what this means for me. Yet here we are.
“Yeah, I am.” Screw my heart, she’s had it for far longer than I want to admit.
