He pulls me out of the room.
As soon as I’m walking, I feel better. It’s like movement helps with the undulating coil of emotions inside. I wish I could walk faster.
I wish I could run.
“Breathe,” he mutters.
I try to focus on that instead of the tightening in my chest. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. It’s hard with the tight dress and all those tiny buttons, one by one locking me into the performance I have to give.
He pulls me into the kitchen. It’s empty, and the doors are open to the kitchen garden outside. “Are you breathing?”
“I’m trying to.” I focus on the collar of his shirt. There’s a V there, where the top two buttons are undone, and a hint of dark chest hair. “This dress, it’s too tight. I can’t… I can’t…”
“Shit,” he mutters, and turns me around. My hands land on the cool marble of the kitchen counter, and I focus on breathing. That’s all I can do. “These are fuckingtiny.”
I focus on the feeling of his cool fingers over my warm skin, and then one button comes free. Another joins it, and soon the vise around my ribs lessens.
“There. That’s better. Are you still breathing for me, Wilde? Don’t you dare stop.”
So bossy, I think, but I do what he says. It’s nearing its peak. I can feel it, the way it builds, and soon I’ll start crying. It always happens.
Another few buttons open up, and his fingers brush my low back. “There. Turn… there we go. Is that better?”
My back is against the cool kitchen counter. Something hot runs down my cheek, and his face swims in front of me.
I’m crying.
“Breathe, Wilde.” His voice is lower this time, deep and reassuring, and a thumb comes to smooth over my cheek. “I’m going to count, and we’ll breathe together. Okay?”
I struggle to do it, but he gives me another try, and then another, and I focus on the deepness of his voice. Sobs break through my breaths every now and then, and we have to start over.
He has a very nice voice.
His accent is American, courtesy of his mother, but there are rounder tints to some of his vowels, and then there are the word choices that hint at a life mostly led abroad. No one sounds quite like him.
I listen to him, and breathe, and cry. There’s no space for anything else. The panic is like a quick-flowing venom, and I know from experience that it’ll pass, even when it feels like it never will.
A door opens. Rafe turns his head and bites out something in Italian. But I keep my eyes locked on his neck. On his Adam’s apple, the top buttons of his collar, the hint of chest hair.
He always wears linen.
I like linen.
“Are you breathing for me?” His hand is tight on my waist, but it’s a good tightness, an anchoring touch.
Like a tree falling, I slowly end up with my forehead on his shoulder. And slowly, like the inevitability of the tides, my breathing comes easier. The roiling nausea gives way to a calm sea.
He strokes my hair, and the shoulder of his shirt quickly turns damp. From me. From my tears.
He’s holding me.
Rafe Montclair is holding me.
“Are you okay?” he asks, like it’s his job to take care of me when I fall apart. And just like that, a wave of shame rushes through me.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Good.”
