“What I’ve learned is that when you expect less, human beings, being the contrary creatures they are, will give you less. When you expect better, more, people tend to step up. I’ve had men and women die beside me, knowing that if they could’ve fought harder, longer, they would have. When you do decide to face whatever it is you’re running from, maybe you should also start requiring more, Lauren.”
“People disappoint; it’s easier to rely on myself.”
“Did you believe in them in the first place, or did you just pretend to?”
She turned away.
“No,” she said, almost too low to hear. “I believed in them. They just didn’t care, and that’s so much worse.”
Derrick promised he’d be over before she went to bed, but he hadn’t been. He didn’t always arrive when promised, but he was here now, his body generating so much heat that she didn’t think twice about pressing more fully against him.
Derrick didn’t like being woken up early, so she was careful when she draped her arm over his hip and began stroking his abs and chest.
It had been months since he’d come over, longer still since he slept at her place. She didn’t know if it was her imagination or not, but it felt like he’d grown a little thicker and a little harder. And this new rain and earth scent, it was intoxicating. She smiled, dragging her nose across the back of his shoulder, grateful that for once he wasn’t wearing a T-shirt to bed. Only a pair of boxers.
She moved her hand over his hip, inside the material of his underwear, dragging her fingers gently over his morning erection. She kissed his shoulder. Not only was his body thicker, but his girth, his length… He was no longer snoring.
She wrapped her hand around him and stroked. She missed him, she missedthem.
It felt like she was in a relationship with herself for far too long, and she wanted them to bemoreconnected than when they started. It felt like they were less, and she didn’t want that before their marriage, didn’t want this growing distance that she didn’t even understand.
Derrick growled.
“This is gonna end in one of two ways,” the deep husky voice said, freezing her hand and her heart because it wasn’t Derrick’s voice, it wasn’t Derrick’s body.
“Holy shit. Oh my God… Holy shit!” she said, snatching her hand away. He grunted as she released him.
She scrambled out of the bed and landed on the cold hard floor, scuttling back; she looked up at Santiago, mortified.
“I thought I was back home, I thought you were my fiancé?—”
“Derrick, yeah I know.” He sat up and swept his fingers through his hair, corralling the strands and putting them in a loose knot at the base of his neck. “You talk in your sleep,” hesaid, standing, his erection making her eyes bulge more, but she couldn’t drag them away.
“What…what did I say?” she asked
“I often find that it’s not what one says that’s important, it’s what one does.”
Her shoulders dropped.
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fondle you, it’s just that, I thought you were him and it had been—” She stopped before telling her enemy that it had been months since she and her fiancé were intimate.
“I don’t care about you grabbing my dick, Lauren,” he said, standing across from her. She averted her gaze from the still present erection stretching his boxers. Couldn’t he put that thing away or something? She didn’t need any reminders about how silky to the touch he felt, didn’t want her mind filling in the spaces around what his dick looked like inside the thin material.
It disturbed her how a lucid dream could change a man from the most dictatorial, humorless person she’d ever met to, well, a full-blooded man with impressive...assets. Suddenly, his features weren’t just hard and unyielding, they were striking. His body wasn’t just a barrier to get around; it was muscular, and warm, and smelled like green earth, frozen water…and it was hard.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, drawing her attention back to his sardonic gaze. He was looking at her like a woman—like a full-blooded woman—and said blood was rushing through her veins. Making her skin hot. “I’d prefer you with a warm hand guiding me awake over your mouth arguing for no fuckinggoodreason. Now unless you’re cooking me breakfast, little wren, I think we’d both agree that it’s time for you to go on home.”
He nodded at her, then walked toward the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
When he’d opened the door to an empty room he sighed in both relief and disappointment. He didn’t want to admit that he liked her touch, liked her passion. He didn’t want to think about how his mind created graphic images of her while he finished what she’d started, so he wouldn’t.
Dressing quickly, he retrieved his gun and badge and headed downstairs. The smell of coffee and biscuits drifted up to meet him. Entering his kitchen, he saw Lauren sitting at the round wooden table he’d built for his grandfather four years before he passed.
There were two homemade breakfast sandwiches on a plate on the counter. He went to the plate and pulled the top half of the biscuit off. She’d used his sausage patties, fried an egg, and drizzled maple syrup over the whole thing.
“It’s in thanks of letting me crash here and my apology for groping you.”
He made himself a cup of coffee and sat across from her.
