The tiny sips and smacks of their lips clinging gently to one another was exquisite, her heart doing a pirouette in her chest when Nasa whispered one word against her mouth.
“Perfect.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
With music blaring at four in the morning and sugar racing through his bloodstream, Nasa slipped through another digital backdoor into Rain Bolton's personal life, searching for a reason as to why she lied about calling Dillon.
It could have been one of those gray lies people told when they knew they were in trouble, but Nasa had to be sure.
So far, he'd come up with nothing suspicious, and the lack of glaringly obvious clues to say Bolton was dirty didn't mean anything.
He was in the middle of perusing her social media when an alert popped up on the screen, notifying him the motion sensors in Dillon's room had been triggered.
A quick tap to the keys, and the cameras in her room showed her sitting up in bed, hands knotted in her hair as she braced her elbows on her knees.
Nasa was out of his chair fast enough to send it spinning off behind him, hustling up the stairs, determined to do something this time.
Anything from yesterday could have set her off, and they'd come to a point in their growing relationship where Nasa had enough.
He wasn't going to wait for her to come to him and tell him about her nightmares, and he sure as fuck wasn't going to leave her alone to deal with them by herself anymore.
Rounding the corner, he saw her door open and Elka trot out into the hallway, immediately giving a low woof to let Dillon know they weren't alone.
She poked her head out and saw him heading her way, her tight, uncertain expression softening immediately. From the soft clink he heard, she'd probably just put down a weapon.
“I was going down for a glass of water,” she told him. It made him grit his teeth to hear that weak-ass lie, but he knew she was trying to find her footing after another hellish nightmare.
“You had a bad dream,” he told her, stopping in the open doorway to look down at her.
Her cheeks turned pink with embarrassment, and her teeth scraped nervously across her bottom lip. “Yeah.”
“Were you going to the kitchen?”
“No.” She sighed, reaching out to touch the patch over his heart that proclaimed him treasurer of the club. “I was going to find a dragon.”
He frowned, confused by her answer. “What?”
“Nothing. Just something Dr. White said. I was coming to see if you were up.”
“I'm up. You ready to tell me what you're dreaming about?”
Dillon nodded, stepping back to let him in. She'd put on a loose pair of drawstring pants and a chunky sweater over her tank top, pacing back and forth while Nasa seated himself at the end of her bed.
He watched her burn off the steam she normally soaked away in the tub, understanding she needed time to gather her words but impatient nevertheless.
“Can I run you a bath?”
Dillon stumbled a little on the edge of the carpet at the sound of his voice, like she'd momentarily forgotten he was there.
She shook her head, coming to him when he patted his thigh, settling onto his lap like a little girl. Relief, satisfaction, and arousal pumped through him in a deliciously heady brew.
Teague asked him if he had plans to train Dillon as a submissive, and maybe someday they'd get there. Right now, the only training Nasa had in mind was this: training Dillon to crave his presence when she felt scared, to accept his affection—his protection.
“Talk to me, Tiger Lily. I'm here.” Nasa felt the tremble that worked through her, thrilled when she nuzzled her cheek against his chest and wrapped her arms around him.
“My nightmares always revolve around my interrogation. Sometimes I dream about being strapped down, electrocuted, soaked to the bone in ice water. Other times it’s the interrogation itself or being snatched off the street and thrown into a van.
“Since I got here, I keep dreaming about the same thing, over and over. It always starts the same, with me in the hospital, and John Lewis sitting beside my bed.
“I know it's him, but the sunlight behind him is so bright I can't see his face. I hear him whispering in that same dead, robotic voice, telling me what he'll do to me if I tell anyone he's been there to see me.
"The nurse comes in, and I look over to her, to tell her to run, but he's already behind her and now I see his eyes.
“Just his eyes, and the scalpel he pulls across her neck, her skin opening like a zipper. I can smell the blood, feel it hit my skin, and right before I force myself to wake up, he's bent over me like a freaking demon.
"Only this time, it wasn't the face I remembered from the hospital; it was the guy in the picture.”
Guilt hit him hard, and he felt like the scum of the earth to have contributed to the fear she lived with.
“What picture? The sketch I showed you?”
“No. When I picked around in your files, I found the copy of Andrew Stanfield's driver's license. The faces are the same, but the eyes are different.”
Nasa palmed her hair, rocking slightly with her as he stared at the open door where Elka sat sentinel. “I don't understand.”
“Even in his photo, there's evil in Stanfield's eyes,” she whispered, as though she didn't dare speak any louder.
“They're dark, and I don't mean the color, but there's life in them. Emotion. Arrogance, even. John Lewis had to fake it.
“I watched a personality bleed into his eyes when we were at the hospital. One second there was nothing but soulless black pits, zero emotion whatsoever, and then as soon as the nurse came in, he transformed.
“It took seconds, but he became a human,
