His body fit to hers, pieces finding each other, fitting seamlessly…like they’d done this dozens of times before. He moved, rocked, against her. She rocked, moving with him, coming apart in slow, steady increments.
She wasn’t afraid of the free fall. Not when he was there to catch her.
She wasn’t afraid to fall at all.
She came awake all too quickly, gasping for air. Rogue yowled in alarm, running for cover as she sat up. In the light from the parted door of the attached bathroom, she saw herself in the mirror, a wild woman with drenched skin, mussed hair, eyes alive and gleaming, the sheets a tangle around her hips.
The alarm clanged against her eardrums, and she swiped a hand out for her nightstand, desperate to bring the racket to a halt. She jabbed at the screen until the noise stopped. Breathing hard, she stared at the images on her phone until they started to make sense.
It was the grayscale feed from the back of the gallery.
She groaned, realizing that the security system had tripped again. “You’vegotto be kidding me.” This was the final straw. She was going to call the security company and chew someone out until they figured out why it kept waking her in the middle of the night…
A flash of white charged across the screen, too fast for her eyes to track. She fumbled the phone, her already racing heart tripping in her ears. The languid remnants of lust fell away fast as terror took hold.
Something was outside the gallery. Something big.
Or…someone.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, frustrated by the state of her sticky clothes. “This is ridiculous, Haseya,” she lectured herself as she shrugged out of the damp tank top and shimmied out of her pajamas. Quickly, she grabbed a change of clothes off the dresser where she’d folded them but hadn’t yet tucked them into the appropriate drawers. Layering a loose boho blouse underneath a pair of paint-specked overalls, she shoved her feet into her garden boots, ran her hands through the unkempt reams of her hair and stomped out of the bedroom. Rogue followed in a stealth belly glide across the carpet, chasing the loose, frayed cuffs of the overalls.
Moonlight streamed through the windows and transoms of her living room, illuminating the still, dark figure in front of the back door.
Sassy let out an errant scream.
Everything happened at once. The silhouette at the door jumped, yelped and barked, cowering from the door and racing behind the couch, where blankets thrashed, someone shouted and stood. Before Sassy could clap her hand over her heart to stop it from leaping out of her mouth, Rogue joined the fray, releasing a terrified screech and bolting toward the thrashing, blanketed shape. Claws rent fabric as she climbed a leg, a torso, a face into the hair of the figure before leaping for freedom and retreating into the darkness of the kitchen.
Sassy had the sense to flip the light switch, spotlighting the scene. When she saw Nick emerge from the blankets, her jaw dropped. Rogue had left scratches across his cheek, neck and naked chest. What came out of her mouth wasn’t exactly as she’d intended, but all the same, she shrieked, “What are you doinghere?”
He eyed her through a web of pain and incredulity. “What do you mean, what am I doing here? We said good-night not three hours ago.”
“I meant…”Oh, no.The scratches pebbled with blood. They were deeper than she’d thought. She waved wildly at the couch. “I gave you a bed. What are you doing sleeping out here?”
“Icouldn’tsleep,” he said, hissing as he fingered the slice across his pectoral. “Riot kept sniffing at the door.”
Sassy eyed the back door warily. She thought of the darting shape in the camera view of the security feed at the gallery and held up the phone clenched in her hand. “I’m sorry. The alarm tripped at the gallery again and I—”
“What?” he asked, dropping the blanket at his waist to reveal the gym shorts he was sleeping in. They hugged his hips as he closed the gap between them.
Her body was still tingly. She was still warm in places. Too warm. And she could remember every detail of the guilty dream she’d been having of him and them and… He looked good kissed by moonlight.
Riot nosed against her knee and whimpered. She reached down to pet him, glad to divert her attention on someone…anywherebut Nick’s marble slab of a chest. There was definition there. He wasn’t a gym rat, so it wasn’t overdone. But he looked trim and fit and strong and she was…thirsty.
Water.She’d drink a big glass of water.
“Did you see anything?” he asked, toggling the image to replay the footage from the last ten minutes.
“No.” She thought of the quick, white flash of movement and swallowed. “Yes. Maybe.”
“Where’d you put my truck keys?” he asked.
“Why?”
“I’m going to check it out,” he said, taking her phone with him to the guest room.
She made the mistake of following him. By the time she raced through the door after him, he was down to his boxer briefs. She swiftly turned away, hissing through her teeth as her thighs clenched. Gritting her teeth, she said his name.
“Yeah?” he asked distractedly.
