Persephone, only half awake, lifted her head and started to unbutton her jeans. “Gotta take these off.”
He swallowed a groan. “Maybe it’s better if you –“
“Uncomfortable,” she muttered. She kicked off the jeans and tossed them to the floor, then pressed her face into the pillow.
Her ass looked amazing in jeans and suit pants, but it was fucking fantastic when presented almost bare. Transcendent. A miracle in cute pink panties with hearts all over them. Dodge knew he shouldn’t have stared but he couldn’t take his eyes off the tempting softness of her ass, the swell of her hips, the smooth delicate skin of her thighs. God help him. There was no way he could walk away, not from that.
But he was definitely keepinghispants on. He had to adjust himself as his thoughts ran wild with how it would feel to touch her, to pull her close, to press into her and make her his. Dodge groaned and ran his hands through his hair. Maybe taking a cold shower would get his mind right. He needed to walk away.
Persephone’s arm slid across the sheets, patting and searching, and she cracked an eye open to check the room. Relief filtered across her expression when she saw him standing next to the bed. “Aren’t you going to stay?”
“I shouldn’t.” He swallowed the knot in his throat. He was a damn coward. “Baby, I really, really want to lie there with you, but I don’t know if...”
“I trust you.”
She knew how to gut him, that was for damn sure. He didn’t know what it felt like to have a woman trust him and to trust her in return. He couldn’t remember the last encounter he’d had with a woman that didn’t end abruptly or messily. He didn’t know how or why she trusted him, but it felt like the kind of gift he couldn’t overlook.
She made him want to be a better man, the kind of man a woman like her deserved.
Dodge dragged off his boots and turned off the main light, so only the soft glow of the lamp on the dresser lit the room. He sat on the edge of the bed and steeled himself to behave like a gentleman when all he wanted to do was tear off her clothes and taste every inch of her body. At least she was exhausted to the point of completely passing out.
He lay down next to her and dragged the sheets and comforter up over both of them. Persephone had burrowed into his pillow but he didn’t mind. He turned on his side to face her and rested his head on his arm, gazing at her in the dim light. He didn’t trust the banshee detective a bit, but her words filled him with a lingering unease. Was she right, that maybe Persephone trusted just him and not the rest of the pack?
Dodge had always known to pick the right pack and only stay with one he could trust. He absolutely trusted Evershaw and the rest of his people, even if he didn’t always like all of them. But he’d also had a lifetime to tune his senses to gauge someone’s intent and how they aligned with his view of the world. He’d already learned hard lessons in the military and working with mercenary companies. Persephone was still young, maybe in her mid-twenties, and didn’t have the same kind of life experience.
He was grateful she hadn’t seen much awful stuff, at least that she’d referenced. It meant she could still enjoy the world and find goodness in people and things that he viewed in a far more jaded optic. He liked the potential of seeing the world through her eyes.
Dodge reached out and brushed his knuckles over her cheek, and Persephone smiled in her sleep, turning into the caress. Dodge sighed. “Girl, what am I going to do about you?”
She didn’t respond, which was just as well. Dodge tucked the comforter closer around her so she wouldn’t get cold, and settled as close as he dared. A soft wheeze whistled in her breathing; he smiled at the sound of it, reassured that she still breathed and clearly slept, and closed his eyes. The closest alligator to the boat was still Bridger and whether she’d try to kill either or both of them, though a second alligator was drawing close enough to pose a real problem: what he told Persephone about being mates, or even whether he told her at all.
Chapter 23
Percy
Idozed in Dodge’s arms on the couch and barely noticed when he whispered about going upstairs. I didn’t care what happened as long as I didn’t have to wake up and talk about the awful shit that had happened. Only having Dodge next to me gave me the strength to revisit the body-choppers once more. I hoped it was the last time I had to acknowledge what I’d seen, since no one else in the situation seemed prone to courtroom justice. Even bringing in a detective didn’t make it likely that Bridger would see jail instead of a dark fate in an unmarked location.
I vaguely remembered asking Dodge to stay with me in the room, then drifting back to sleep. I dreamed of being chased, being hunted down, by alligators. Massive, sharp-toothed alligators surrounded me in a tiny boat, rocked by waves. No matter how loudly I screamed, no one came to help. I was alone. The boat began to fall apart, one board at a time, and water seeped up from the bottom. I felt like I was already drowning, even as the alligators circled closer, snapping and thrashing until the water foamed and filled the boat even faster.
My lungs constricted until I couldn’t breathe. Something tangled around my arms and legs until I feared drowning before the alligators tore me to pieces. I couldn’t fight back. I was stuck, confined, completely helpless. I sucked in a breath to scream and only a whimper escaped.
Something wrapped around me and held my arms down, and a weight moved over my legs. I kicked and fought, sobbing for breath, but the weight didn’t budge.
“Persephone.”
The voice tried to drag me out of there, tried to pull me out of the water, but I was too deep. Too stuck. I hardly heard it. And it felt like a cruel tease, a lifesaver tossed negligently into the water too far away to reach.
“Baby, wake up.”
Tears burned my eyes. It was too late. Too late. The alligators were too close, the water too deep. I stopped struggling, ready to give up. I was so tired of fighting.
Then something soft and warm brushed my lips. Some of the panic receded. The touch returned, still gentle but more insistent, and feathered kisses across my mouth and cheek and then behind my ear. I exhaled. Turned toward the reassuring caress. Felt like someone finally bailed water out of the boat and I stood a chance of surviving.
“There we go,” he murmured, and something tight in my chest eased. Dodge.
Dodge would save me. Hehadsaved me.
I dragged myself out of the dream as he kissed me again, and I turned fully toward him. I didn’t open my eyes; it was safer to linger in the darkness of half-awake, half-asleep.
