Before I Wake

I nodded, but I felt like there was still blood on my hands, and no matter how hard I scrubbed, they’d never come clean.

Tod’s gaze met mine again, and his irises swirled with a single tight burst of color, then went still as he got control over them. “Do you want me to…?” His focus shifted to my shirt again, and I realized that it would have to come off. “I can step outside if you want.”

“Stay,” I said, and his irises swirled again. “Stay with me, please. I don’t want to be alone.”

Tod’s gaze met mine. “You’ll never be alone again, Kaylee.”

My hands shook as I pushed the first button through the hole, and that burst of color was back in his eyes. The second button slid free and Tod’s gaze never left mine, but he was breathing harder. It took me a moment to realize I was breathing again, too. And that my inhalations had matched the rhythm of his.

His gaze burned into mine, like he could see past my eyes into parts of me no one had ever seen, and I knew I was seeing the same in him. No one else had ever seen him so vulnerable before, like if I pushed him away, he might crumble into pieces that could never be put together again. Yet there was strength, too. He was strong beneath that fragile need, and I knew that I could never fall with him next to me. If I tripped, he would catch me. If I lost my balance, he would find it.

I wanted to be those things for him, too. His strength. His balance.

I found the third button and flinched. It was sticky and cold with drying blood. I didn’t want to touch it.

“Do you want me to get it?” Tod asked, and that complicated mix of strength and vulnerability echoed in his voice, deeper than it should have been, like his question meant more than what his words actually asked.

I nodded. “Take it off. Get rid of it. Please.”

He reached for me, and his gaze held mine until the last possible moment before his focus shifted to his fingers on my shirt. To the button, as he slid it through the hole, then moved on to the next. His fingers brushed my skin as he worked his way lower, and I sucked in a deep breath. My eyes closed again, and I let my head fall back against the shelf above the tank.

I didn’t realize he was finished until he whispered, “Lean forward.” So I did, and his hands slid over my shoulders, pushing the material down slowly until I could pull my arms from the short sleeves.

Then my shirt was gone, and so were his hands. I opened my eyes just as he turned the hot water on again and rinsed the rag beneath it. He wrung the cloth out, then took my hand in his warm, damp one. “Stand up.”

I stood, and he knelt in front of me. The cloth was scratchy on my skin, and each stroke was torturously short and deliciously hot as he worked his way across my stomach. When he was finished, he laid the rag across the tub again and his hands found my hips. He kissed the dimple above my navel, and his hair brushed my stomach, so soft I had to touch it.

His grip on my hips tightened and he exhaled against my stomach. “Every time I see you, I want to touch you, and I’m still a little stunned every time you let me.”

“Why?” I whispered. If anything, I was the lucky one.

“Because this feels too good to be true, so I keep expecting something to ruin it. When I saw you covered in blood, I thought it was happening again, the way it was supposed to last time. I thought Thane got to you.”

“I’m fine.” Physically, anyway.

“Not much scares me anymore, but I’m terrified of losing you, Kaylee.” His lips skimmed my stomach again, and I closed my eyes as my hands curled in his hair. “I don’t want to let you go long enough for that to happen.”

“Then don’t. Nothing else feels right,” I confessed. I couldn’t tell anyone else what I was telling him, because no one else would understand. They were worried enough about me already. “Everything that isn’t us is pain, and blood, and death. Or nothing at all. Everything that doesn’t hurt is just… emptiness. It closes in on me when I’m alone, and I hate it, but I can’t fight it. Food doesn’t taste right. Music sounds flat and tinny. Colors look dull and faded. Why? What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. It won’t be like this forever, Kaylee,” he promised, his lips brushing my skin with each word, his breath hot on my stomach. “Your body and your mind are still adjusting to the afterlife. You have to give your senses time to readjust.”

“You feel good.” I lifted his chin and his gaze met mine again. “Why are you the only thing in the world that feels good right now?”

“I don’t know.” He stood, and his hands trailed slowly up my sides. “But I’m not gonna question it.”

“I know why,” I said as his lips met mine and he reminded me that he tasted as good as he felt. My hands slid beneath his shirt and my mouth fed from his. When he kissed his way along my jaw, I let my head fall back. “It’s because I love you,” I whispered, and I could feel his heartbeat speed up. I’d never actually told him. I’d been scared to, because it was too fast, and too crazy, and…

“I love you, too,” he said, his lips brushing my ear. “Eternity isn’t long enough.”

My heartbeat raced to match his, and I pushed him back just enough that I could see his eyes. “I want to feel something good. Something real. Something that isn’t bitter, or cold, or ugly.” I stood on my toes to whisper the rest in his ear. “I want to feel alive again, Tod. Make me feel alive.”

When I dropped onto my heels, his gaze searched mine, tight spirals of cobalt twisting in and out of the darker blues in his irises. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.” I took his hand and pulled him across the hall into my room, then closed the door behind us and leaned against it.

The heat in his eyes threatened to devour me.

I pulled his shirt off and dropped it on the floor. Then I had to touch him. “You’re beautiful,” I whispered, running my hands over his chest and down his stomach. My heart beat so hard I could almost hear it.

He laughed, and the sound was deep, like it got caught in his throat. “That’s my line.”

“You already said it.” And I could still see it in his eyes. “So why don’t you show me instead?”

Tod groaned. “If you don’t mean that, please tell me now.”

I stepped back and unhooked my bra. “I mean it.” I let the material fall to the floor between us, and his gaze smoldered. “Show me.”

I closed my eyes, and waited for him, my entire body buzzing in anticipation.

His fingers brushed mine first and the sparks started there, then followed his touch as it skimmed slowly over my knuckles and up the back of my arm. I could hardly breathe. How could such little contact—innocent, yet scorchingly intimate—bring my entire world grinding to a halt, like the planet had suddenly stopped spinning?

His hand rested on my shoulder, warm for just an instant, then trailed up my neck to cup the back of my head. He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, and my mouth fell open.

Tod’s mouth met mine and he sucked my lower lip between his. I reached for him and when my hands brushed the hard ridges of his stomach, he moaned into my mouth. His hand tightened behind my head and that kiss deepened until I was glad I didn’t need to breathe.

“You are so beautiful…” he whispered against the corner of my lips, when that kiss finally ended.

My eyes opened, and I started to deny it, but he pulled away just far enough that he could look into my eyes. “No. You are. You are selfless on the inside and beautiful on the outside, and I am the luckiest man who has ever walked this earth, alive or dead.”

I had no idea what to say. I didn’t feel worthy of the things he was saying, yet I felt the same way about him. So would everyone else, if they could see the parts of himself he kept hidden from the rest of the world.

“Kaylee, this means something to me.” His hands trailed down my arms to cup my elbows, and his gaze held mine. “With any luck, we’re going to have millions of moments over the course of eternity, and I plan to love every one of them. But we’ll never have this moment again, and this is very important to me.” The twists of blue in his eyes coiled so tightly the color was almost gone, lost among pale shades of a need so deep it couldn’t possibly be captured in a kiss, or a touch. “I need to know that this is important to you, too. I need to know that this isn’t like last time. That you’re not doing this just so you can say you’ve done it. Because that’s not good enough for me. That’s not good enough for us.”

The ache in his voice echoed throughout every part of me. I hated the doubt in his eyes, but more than that, I hated that I was the one who’d put it there.

I laid my palm on his chest so I could feel his heart beating. “This is nothing like last time.” The last time I’d been down this road, I’d been with Nash, and we’d been traveling for all the wrong reasons. I had no regret that we never finished the trip. “This is important to me, Tod.