The Taken

But she could see he wasn’t. His heart raced beneath her palm, and his fists were clenched and sweaty. He squeezed his eyes shut, but still they moved beneath his lids like minnows caught in a drying puddle.

“God,” she said, pulling him close and wrapping her arms around him. “What happened?”

“It was only a dream, just a dream…” But he was talking to himself and rocking and still unable to catch his breath. Kit pulled him closer, and this time he clung to her, fingers digging into her back.

“Shh,” she said. “Sit. Just be right here, right now. It’s over…”

She continued to make soothing noises, coupled with reassuring platitudes until his trembling lessened and his grip relaxed. She soothed him as best she could, but fell short of telling him it was all right. She’d never seen anyone wake from a dream so violently before.

“It was only a dream,” he said again, and this time he sounded like himself. Kit pulled away and stared at his stricken face.

“You’re exhausted,” she said, and guilt flooded her because she knew it was mostly due to her. “Let me get you some water.”

“I’m fine.”

No one this drained of color was fine, Kit thought, but stayed close, still touching him, trying to stroke the nightmare away. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t even want to think about it.”

She nodded, and waited. Finally he breathed in deeply. “Sorry, I just… it was a flashback. It was a bad time.”

“I understand. The good thing about flashbacks is that they’re confined to the past. Dead and gone. They can’t really hurt you.”

More platitudes, she thought, and could see that Grif thought so, too. “You weren’t there.”

“I’m here now,” she said softly. And even with all her reservations and questions about his appearance in her life, she wanted to be here for him. Just as he’d been there, and stayed, when she needed him most.

But he wasn’t going to make it easy. “It’s not that simple, Kit.”

“No, I know that. But it can be.” Some things, she thought, stroking his neck, should be simple.

He froze under her touch, but this time she didn’t let it dissuade her. Her fingers tensed on his neck, neither demanding nor soft, but testing. Grif was trying to catch his breath again, and if she was right, it had nothing to do with his nightmare.

“It’s okay, Grif,” she whispered, letting her fingertips loosen, stroke, play. “You’re safe with me.”

He closed his hand atop hers and they both stilled. Tilting his head, he studied her face. “It doesn’t hurt as much when you’re around.”

“What doesn’t?”

He didn’t seem to hear. “I can actually feel your skin beneath my fingertips.”

And he touched her like that was novel, hands moving along her arms, firing nerve endings, and quickening her pulse.

“I can smell you, too. It’s been years…” And his gaze landed on her mouth.

Pulling her head low, he pressed a kiss to her lips, so that it sat there sweetly, like a gift. Like gratitude and acceptance all at once. He gave a full-body shudder, then slowly pulled away. “Thank you.”

But Kit wasn’t done. She found that her curves fit nicely to his ridges, and her skin still burned where his hand had found her waist. Her nipples brushed his chest as her mouth hovered over his, just long enough for her to know his breathing had stopped altogether.

Then she pressed with the whole of her body, mouth immediately widening for a deeper taste. Her chin brushed against his stubble as she sought and found soft places on the hard man, causing a needy hum to move in her throat and thread between them. She would have moved in closer if he didn’t pull away.

“No.”

“Why?” Kit’s voice was different, throatier than she’d ever heard it. Needier, too. She swallowed hard, but it was still there, desire rising up so thick in her throat she could choke.

“There’s… someone else.”

She shook her head immediately. “No. You haven’t mentioned anyone. There was a wife, I know, but you said that was long ago.”

Yet doubt edged in. Could she have missed the signs of another woman? She was normally good about such things. Maybe, she thought, she wanted to miss it.

“Don’t make me feel stupid about this, Grif,” she said, because irritation was better than injury. “Or… or like I’m crazy. There’s something between us. You know it. You kissed me back.”

“It doesn’t matter-”

“It does!” Her voice was a shock, a slap, and it surprised her as much as Grif. But she was exhausted, too. Tired of lukewarm relationships, tired of feeling hope only to be let down. She wanted to feel good. She wanted to feel desired and cherished and loved.

“It always matters,” she told Grif. “At least to me.”

“I know that,” Grif said, hoping to soothe her. “And it’s not that I’m not attracted to you.”

“Oh, I know that,” she shot back, pushing away. Maybe Bridget had it wrong. Maybe Grif didn’t have an ounce of thrust in him.

Grif swallowed hard and rose, and she realized it was the first time she’d seen him back away from a fight. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Kit’s heart dropped like a sinking anchor. Grif almost looked as spooked as he had before she’d tasted those mind-numbing lips. “I’m not a rockabilly guy, Kit.”

She sat back on her heels, on the couch, and inclined her head. “I guess I knew that.”

“How?”

“You haven’t got a bit of ink on you.” She’d looked for it, too. She didn’t know one man in this lifestyle who didn’t, yet Grif was as clean-cut as a Boy Scout. Staring, she asked. “So… why?”

“Why what?” he asked, pacing.

“Why pretend? Why… me? Info for your case? Something only a reporter could get? Or money? Something only the future editor-in-chief might have?”

Suddenly the danger was back and he halted and pointed at her. “Don’t compare me to that knob you were married to!”

Kit threw her hands up in the air. “Well, what would you think if someone just showed up out of nowhere, pretending to like the things you like and-”

“I’m not pretending anything!” he said, suddenly as wild-eyed as she’d found him. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

Kit just crossed her arms and waited.

He pointed to his fedora, knocked off during his fall. “That is my hat.” He pulled at his suit. “This is really the way I dress. I was murdered in the fall of 1960. I was thirty-three years old… nine years older than the man whose house we’re in now.”

Kit blinked, then frowned. Had he hit his head when he fell to the floor? Maybe when he was flailing?

“And that’s how you know Tony? Because you were contemporaries back in 1960?” She spoke slowly, wanting to give him a chance to think about what he was saying.

But Grif just inclined his head, seemingly relieved. Then he said, “There’s more.”

“More than his being a time traveler from the fifties?”

“I’m also a… I’m a…” He looked up at the ceiling, cringing like a dog that expected to be swatted.

“A?” she prompted, looking up at him.

“A… sort of… angel.” It rushed out of him and he stood stiffly in place, glancing around the room as if waiting for something to happen.

Kit waited, too, but that was it. She tilted her head. “A sort-of angel?”

He gave her a double-take, like she’d said something crazy. “No, a real angel. A… you know. Angel angel.”

Kit’s recalled the way he’d rushed from the corner in her bedroom, shadows built up around him like wings. It was a good memory to hang on to now that she knew he was out of his mind. “I understand. You saved me from Schmidt and his buddy. You’ve stayed by my side and even though I’m being chased and I talk too much for your