Page 83 of Resilience

He rolled to his side and held her firmly against him. She was so small, he felt like he could fold his whole body around hers.

She struggled at first, still caught in the dream. Thinking of what Hunter had done, he eased up a little, letting her know through the veil of her sleep that she wasn’t trapped, only protected. She settled quickly, her breaths slowing, her face nuzzling against his neck. She was on the wounded side, and his stitches pulled a bit as she nuzzled, but he didn’t care.

Just as he thought she was through the nightmare and back down into restful sleep, he felt her hand slip up his chest, over his jaw, into his hair, where her fingers began to stroke. That sensation was pure serotonin for Sam, and a soft, rolling groan left his body.

Athena leaned back and looked up at him. The room was dim but not fully dark; the lights were still on in the hallway, and the glow around the door, as well as the street lights through the partially open blinds in the window, provided light to see well enough.

When she saw him looking, she smiled and signed, “When we’re close like this, I can feel the sounds you make in your chest. The vibrations. I don’t think I ever noticed that before.”

“We’ve never been this close before,” he pointed out, feeling completely content. He kissed her forehead. “You were having the nightmare.”

She shrugged in his arms. “It’s already fading. No big.”

“That’s your anxiety dream. Are you anxious?”

“Not about you, or this. At all. This is perfect. But I’ve been having it a lot lately.”

She didn’t continue her explanation, but she didn’t need to. “Since Hunter?”

“I guess, but I’m not anxious about that. Just really, really pissed.”

Every time they talked about what Hunter had done, Athena shoved aside any suggestion that she’d been hurt by it more than the bite on her neck. She was not traumatized, she insisted. She was angry. Furious. Full of rage. And every time, Sam had the same thought: anger was an expression of trauma, too. It wasn’t all tears and cowering in corners. People felt and expressed trauma all kinds of ways, and growing up in this family, Athena should know that. The Bulls were pretty much a case study for the full range of ways to process trauma.

Fuck, Uncle Gun’s primary expression of trauma was extremely inappropriate humor. Somebody like Athena, who scarcely allowed herself a tear and was fully devoted to proving herself to be tough, to be fierce? Of course fury would be her way.

He said none of that to her, however. It was important to her not to be traumatized, and it was all too fresh to try to push her on that point. Fresh? Fuck, it was still happening. Until she had the abortion and was recovered from it, it would still be happening.

“Can we make a pact?” Athena asked.

“Sure. About what?”

“When we’re together like this, we never, ever mention Hunter or any other person we were with. When we’re like this, it’s just us. Always.”

“That’s a good pact. Should we seal it with a kiss?”

Her eyes twinkled in the soft light as she grinned. “And maybe more?”

“Are you hitting on me, Frosie?” Never before had being with a woman seemed so easy, so comfortable. So simply right.

He felt her hand slip under the covers, glide down his chest, his belly, and wrap around his cock. He’d been hard since she’d snuggled close against him, since even before that. The feel of her small, soft hand easing over his shaft sent hot bolts of need straight through his gut.

Athena shifted beneath him, enough to convey what she wanted. Grinning, Sam rolled to his back and gave it to her.

At once, she straddled him and sat up—and holy shit! The light from the window slanted across her head and chest, and it finally really hit him. This was Athena. His Athena. His in every way. Never again anyone else’s. She was his, and he was hers. As they’d always been. And so much more.

Jesus, she was beautiful. Her thick, long, dark hair, mussed from sleep and from what they’d done before sleep, spread over her shoulders like a cape of shadow. Her small breasts were round and firm, the nipples tight brown dots. The neatly tended puff of dark hair at the join of her legs hadn’t surprised him last night; Athena was far too invested in not looking like a little girl to shave there.

Her body was slim but sleekly muscled; she worked hard to be stronger than she looked. A few scars, surgically straight or little more than a dot, scattered over her torso. More evidence of her toughness. She’d been beating odds since before she was born.

“I love you,” he told her. Three words shared so many times in their lives, but only now meaning everything.

She smiled. “I love you.”

When he returned his hands to her hips and began to lift her, she rose onto her knees and took hold of his cock again. The sensation of her hand around him while her pussy slipped over him just about turned Sam into an incoherent mass of nerve endings. He groaned—and then opened his eyes to see her bright, happy grin. She’d felt that, too.

As soon as she began to rock and grind on top of him, Sam knew he wouldn’t be able to last in this position the way he’d managed last night. It was like the nerves in his eyeballs had developed connections directly to his cock. The sight of her was almost too much to bear.

Needing to touch her, and also to speed up her own pleasure, Sam put his hands on her tits. When he brushed his thumbs over the nubs of her nipples, she arched, pressing herself into his hands. When he closed thumb and forefinger over each one, her pussy clamped around him so hard his vision went dim.

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