Now he was inside the garage of his childhood home. And Julia had become his mother. He was four years old, standing at the door leading into the house, clutching his security blanket and staring at his mother’s long, blond hair pressed against the rolled-up window of her car. Her face looked blue. And puffy.
He had always thought her a beautiful angel, but she didn’t look beautiful now. She looked scary with her mouth open and her eyes bulging. She seemed to be accusing him of something. Of spilling the paint on the rug. Of scaring the cat and making it scratch her. Of not being a good boy.
He held his blankie to his mouth and started to cry, unable to look away.
And then, once again, the scene changed. His mother’s face was replaced by others. Others wearing looks of pity or affection or indifference or seduction. Familiar faces. Dozens of faces. Flashing in front of his eyes like a skipping movie reel.
Then the reel stopped, and there was Samantha. She stood before him, ethereal and wavering. An image reflected in water. She smiled that sweet gap-toothed smile as she waved good-bye, turning from him. Walking away. Not looking back.
He thought he knew pain. But nothing compared to the feel of his heart exploding inside his chest.
“Ozzie! Ozzie!”
He came awake with a start, blinking at the sight of Samantha hovering over him. Moonlight still streamed in through the window, showing the alarm in her chocolate eyes and glinting off the curling curtain of her dark hair.
“You were having a nightmare,” she whispered, her brow knit with concern.
Yes, he was. A familiar one. And it didn’t take Freud to figure out what it all meant. The two women who had died on his watch—and all the others who hadn’t seen enough in him to want to stick around—they were his failures. Proof that he…
But Samantha, she was a new addition.
He rubbed his chest where his heart still ached and wanted to spill his guts when she said, “Was it the accident? Do you…” She scooted down until she was stretched beside him. Her head on his shoulder, her arm tight around his waist. “Do you want to talk about it?”
The cold specter of the dream slowly subsided, leaving nothing but pain, guilt, and recrimination behind.
In his heart of hearts, he knew there was nothing he could have done to save his mother or Julia. But that didn’t stop the string of what-ifs that plagued him. What if he had only done this. Or what if he hadn’t done that. What if—
“Ozzie?” Samantha’s cool fingers smoothed the lines from his forehead and gently cupped his jaw.
“Like you said,” he told her, grabbing her hand and kissing her fingertips, “it was just a bad dream.”
She nuzzled his neck, tossing a leg over his waist. The feel of her silky skin, the decadent heat of her snuggled against him, chased away the last of his chills, warming his body, his soul.
She would leave him just as his nightmare foretold. And yes, it was bound to break his heart when she did, but in the meantime…
“Want to help take my mind off it?”
She pushed up on her elbow, a shadowed grin flashing down at him. “What did you have in mind, cowboy?”
He trailed his hand over the small of her back, past the tattoo he had kissed and licked earlier, until he palmed her plump, delicious ass. “Cowboy, huh? Well, cowgirl, you fancy taking a ride?”
“Thought you’d never ask.” She giggled and claimed his lips in a hot kiss that scorched away any lingering memory of the dream.
* * *
There was a new sort of desperation in the way Ozzie held her, in the needy, guttural noises he made.
The nightmare had shaken him.
It had shaken her.
To feel him jerking beside her, to hear him moaning like his heart was breaking, had scared her to death. She wished he had told her what it had been about, wished she knew if it was the wreck or those thirteen months as a Navy SEAL or the reason he sometimes got that sad, faraway look in his eyes. But she satisfied herself that whatever the dream had been about, she was the one to make him forget it.
She straddled his hips, her slick channel cradling the evidence of his desire.
“God, that feels good,” he moaned, humping upward to drag himself against her.
“Mmm,” she hummed against his lips. “Keep doing that.”
