But, of course, it was the bond. I couldn’t hide from my omega. I’d spent twenty years hiding the worst of my trauma from everyone around me, but I couldn’t hide it from Linus.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing another towel from the bed and using it to dry me off from the waist down. “You might as well talk about it, because I can already feel your feels.”
I huffed a short laugh and slowly started drying my top half with the towel he’d given me. “You’re good at this,” I said, giving myself time to come back to myself.
“Good at what?” Linus asked from where he crouched in front of me, drying my calves.
A rush of lust hit me as I looked down at him. His position and the way he stared curiously up at me was as sexual as it got. He was still in heat, and I could still feel my rut because of it, but there was so much more going on. So much more that was ten times as intimate as fucking his face and filling him with my cum.
“Taking care,” I said, pushing the lust to the back of my mind. The moment wasn’t right.
Linus laughed softly and continued drying my feet before standing and using the same towel to dry himself. “I teach six-year-olds,” he said. “I know how to wipe noses and tie shoes and fix boo-boos.”
That made me smile even as it tugged at something in my heart. “Am I a six-year-old, then?” I asked.
Linus made a point of looking straight at my cock, which hadn’t gotten the message about not being aroused. “Um, no,” he said, a twinkle in his eyes.
Fuck, I loved him. It made no sense, but I did. How could you feel a soul like Linus’s, be bound to it intimately, and not fall in love with him?
I let out a breath, trying to release the tension of my flashback with it. My smile vanished. “We were on our way back from vacation,” I said, wanting to exorcise the things that had irrevocably changed me as fast as possible. “There was a storm. The pilots should have diverted or circled until conditions were safer, but they didn’t. I don’t know all the details, but lightning struck the plane, the windshear was bad, and probably a few other things. They lost control and we crashed in a field a quarter of a mile from the runway.”
“I’m sorry,” Linus said, tossing his towel aside and taking my hand to walk me back to the bed.
We sat there together. I still had the towel over my shoulders, and I took his hands in both of mine. “My memories of the crash are patchy. I remember before, the turbulence and the fear. I remember my papa throwing his arm across me to stop me from coming out of my seat. Then I have a blank spot. Nothing I’ve ever been able to do has brought back the memory of impact and of about ten minutes after that.”
“I’m sorry,” Linus said, snuggling closer to me and pulling one hand out of mine to comb his fingers through my wet hair. “What do you remember after the blank bit?”
I swallowed hard, both wanting to embrace that memory and run away from it. “I remember huddling with Fenn, the two of us clutching each other in the wet grass and rain about fifty yards away from the plane. I remember sirens and flashing lights, the smell of smoke and metal. I remember looking for my dad and papa but not finding them.”
“Did you ever…see them again?” Linus asked quietly, still stroking my hair.
I shook my head. “It’s probably for the best. From what I discovered years later, a lot of the bodies were mangled or burned.”
I felt a jolt of horror from Linus that matched a lot of my own feelings. “Did you have someone to take care of you after?” he asked, adjusting so he could hold and soothe me even more.
I drew in a breath, telling myself it was time to let go of those memories, and twisted to face my omega. “Yeah. Fenn and I were taken in by my Aunt Margery. We were raised alongside our cousins, Melinda and Kevin. They all loved us like we were their own and did everything they could to help us heal from the trauma. Fenn was too young to remember much of it and adjusted better than me.” A punch of guilt hit my gut as I said, “I’m still messed up because of it.”
“You’re not messed up,” Linus insisted firmly. “You experienced something far beyond what people should ever be forced to go through and you came out on top.”
I laughed humorlessly. “Funny that you say that, because topping is one thing that helps me keep my emotions under control.”
Linus smirked. “I get it. You’re a Dom so you can feel like you’re still in control of things.”
I blinked at him. “How did you know?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I can feel inside you now. And you said something to that effect before, remember?”
I let out another breath and sagged as even more tension melted away. Usually when I had flashbacks like this, it took me all day, maybe even several days, to overcome the hangover. With Linus beside me, feeling his steadiness and sympathy, I already felt stronger.
I sat up straight as a thought hit me, then I laughed.
“What?” Linus asked, smiling with me. “What’s that all about.”
“You realize that we’ve switched roles, right?” I asked.
“Switched roles?”
I shook my head. “Less than twenty-four hours ago, you were the terrified one who didn’t know what was going on and who needed me to step in and comfort you, let you know everything was okay and that you were safe.”
