And this man, I think he wants to help me too.
“Okay,” I whisper with far too much uncertainty for someone who just agreed to be the next test subject in MK-Ultra.
He turns our hands, his thumb brushing back and forth along my knuckles. He has nice hands. Deep veins line his forearms down to long steady fingers.
I’m seriously attracted to this vampire’s hands now? Okay. The bar for men is set so incredibly low. Show me some sexy hands, and my panties are coming off.
“Close your eyes, Crymson,” he says on a gentle command.
My lashes flutter closed, and I have to be out of my fucking mind, but I want it. I’d choose a mental break from reality over this nightmare I’ve landed in.
“Good girl,” he hums the moment I do it. The shiver that flits through me from his words alone tells me I shouldn’t be as trusting as I am with this man or his magic.
I’m alone in a bedroom with an admitted vampire. And now I’m trusting him with literally everything I have.
I have got to fix my fucked-up life at some point.
“You can trust me. And you should know you can trust me, because I didn’t have to ask your permission to change your reality, Crymson.”
Alarm bells ring out in my mind.
“Wait. What . . .”
But then it’s all washed away. I hear it even. Waves sweep in, and they pull away in a hypnotic rhythm of an ocean and nature and tranquility.
I can’t see anything but darkness. I still feel his touch though. I tighten my hold on him. My hands in his ground me. It’s a coolness that I cling on to. Maybe it’s some of my fear clinging tohim. Because I may want to slip away into whatever magic this is, but I don’t want to do it alone.
The wind picks up violently, my hair slashing across my face. A hurricane of emotions threatens to spill into the tranquil setting he’s giving me, and it terrifies me that I might ruin this before it has even begun.
“Relax,” I hear him whisper.
“I—I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Just breathe.”
I shake my head back and forth with a jagged breath that only makes me more tense.
“I can’t,” I say on a shaking exhale. “I haven’t felt relaxed in ….”Possibly my entire life.
It’s starting to become too much. Everything keeps building up more and more and maybe that was fine when I was a little girl with little girl problems, but everything has just become entirely too out of fucking control now!
“Think of something else. Anything else.”
“Can I kiss you?” I blurt, and the moment I ask it, he fully appears.
The winds calm. The chaotic energy recedes.
His tall stature comes to life out of the darkness like I drew him from the shadows. A shy smile curls Seven’s full lips. He leans in, his head dipping low as the feel of warm sand beneath my feet becomes a sudden reality. Nothing else matters. The most beautifully broken man is holding me. A perfect sunset that I can’t yet see warms my skin. Cold water materializes. It slides up against my ankles before slipping back into an unseen ocean.
I want to fold into his arms and never lift my head again. Most of my life I’ve looked for comfort in someone else. I just haven’t everfeltit until now.
“Close your eyes, Crymson,” he commands confidently when his lips are just over mine, hovering but not quite touching.
Everything is intensified. It’s like my entire life, I’ve been feeling things at a lower vibration, and I’m just now experiencing the world as it truly is. Shivers race up my arms the second his hands slide down my body. My lashes close the moment he commands it. I stand waiting. I’ve never felt so alive. Every nerve in my body tingles with anticipation.
Or maybe that’s his magic.
“I can hear your heartbeat.” Those words kiss across my lips, but that’s all he gives me.
