I should be the one fucking doing this to her.
"Tristan," she whimpers breathlessly.
My lungs seize. My heart slams against my ribs so hard I can hear blood roaring in my ears. The sound of my real name in her mouth lands like a grenade in the center of my world.
Not Henri.
Not some phantom lover her subconscious invented to survive this nightmare.
Me.
Concrete and rebar and every lie I've ever told myself—about not caring, about this being just an extraction, about her meaning nothing—all of it fractures at once, like a dam giving way in the middle of the night when no one's watching.
She moans again. Her hand drifts down her own body, slipping between her thighs. Like she's remembering the way I used to touch her and trying to recreate it because I'm not there.
Except I am.
I'm right fucking here.
I sink onto the edge of the mattress before I consciously decide to do it. She'd kill me for this, but I'm not about to pretend I have shame or play the hero and give her privacy.
Fuck that. She's dreaming about me, and I'm going to soak up every second of it.
Even with Calder right there—the bastard sleeping like he doesn't have a care in the world while the woman he stole dreams about another man.
That's right, asshole.I'm the one occupying her subconscious.
I hope she dreams about me every single night. I hope she wakes up next to him soaking wet and aching for someone she thinks she can't have. I hope my name is the first thing on her lips and the last thought before she falls asleep. I hope it haunts her the way she's haunted me.
I brush her hair back from her face.
She stirs toward the contact instinctively, chasing my touch even in sleep. Her lips part on a soft exhale that I feel all the way down to my cock.
She's so beautiful it makes me mad.
Not at her, but at myself. At every night I spent convincing myself I didn't care while she was trapped in this cage, carrying my son, belonging to someone who doesn't deserve to breathe the same air as her.
I trace the line of her collarbone with my fingertip. Feel the flutter of her pulse beneath the thin skin of her throat. My touch trails down over the swell of her chest, pulling the shirt up to expose the curve of her breast.
I brush my thumb across her hard nipple.
She gasps, and I'm instantly hard.
Her thighs press together, and she whispers my name again. I have to close my eyes and breathe through my nose because the sound is dismantling me.
Brick by brick. Wall by wall.
Every defense I built after she left. Every cold night I spent telling myself she was dead to me. Every woman I fucked trying to feel something that came close to what Keira made me feel just by walking into a room.
All of it comes crumbling down.
"You're dreaming about me." My lips graze the shell of her ear, my eyes fixed on her body. "Lying right beside him and thinking about me. Moaning my name, getting wet for a man who isn't your husband."
A dark laugh escapes me. "You have no idea what that does to me, Keira. No fucking idea."
Whatever thread was holding me together snapped the moment my name fell from her lips. Now there's just this feral need to reclaim her.
She'smine. She's always been mine. And she's lying here, in hisbed, soaking through her panties while she dreams about my hands on her body.
