Page 64 of Damaged

A smile flitted across Silver’s mouth. It was the kind of smile that would live in my memories for a lifetime. In all the time we’d been together, he’d never blessed me with a smile or laugh that was truly his.

When he opened his eyes, they shone bright and clear. There was no pain, no fear, no hurt, no anger.

I had no clue what time it was, but it didn’t matter.

“I’ve been dreaming about this,” I admitted.

“You’ve been dreaming of touching me while I was pretending to be asleep?” Silver asked with feigned innocence.

I chuckled. “Well, that too, I guess.”

“That’s what I’ve been dreaming of.”

I leaned down to brush my lips over his cheek. “Well, then I’ll just have to make sure that happens.”

“Who says it hasn’t already?” Silver asked with a cheeky grin.

The warmth that filled my belly and spread out to every part of my body was a thousand times better than any drug or drink.

“When?” I asked. The knowledge that he’d explored my face while I’d truly been asleep carved out another place in my heart that was just for him.

“Pretty much all night,” he said. “I couldn’t stop looking at you. I was afraid if I fell asleep, I would wake up to find it had all been a dream.” Silver pulled my free hand to his lips and kissed my palm. “I did fall asleep eventually, but I woke up when Jace came to check on us a little while ago.” He toyed with my fingers, kissing the tip of each one but taking his time doing it. “What was your dream?”

“Huh?” I asked. My body was fully awake now. Every part of my body.

“You said you’d been dreaming about this,” Silver reminded me. The gorgeous young man knew exactly what he was doing to me because those luscious lips of his were wreaking havoc on my hand. He was incredibly careful not to disturb the IV in the back of it, but he took his time kissing his way around the bandage that held the thing in place.

“Dalton,” Silver murmured.

“Yeah?” I responded. My brain had gone stupid because one-syllable responses were all I seemed capable of.

“Your dream,” Silver prodded. He stopped caressing my hand with his lips, but he let them hover over a particularly sensitive spot between my fingers. He shifted his eyes to meet mine.

“My dream,” I parroted. I was both glad and disappointed that he’d stopped what he’d been doing. A few of my brain cells began to work as I remembered what we’d been talking about before Silver had sidelined the conversation with his unique and very welcome brand of torture.

“I dreamed of waking up like this every morning. With you in my arms just like this,” I managed to say.

Silver held still for a moment, his eyes bright with some unnamed emotion, and then he was lifting his head and closing his lips over mine. I wasn’t sure if he’d meant the kiss to be sweet and quick or not, but that sure as hell wasn’t what I wanted. I opened my mouth and slanted my lips over his. One stroke of my tongue over the seam of his lips was all it took for him to open for me. With his head no longer resting on my arm, I now had both free to do whatever I wanted.

I started by sliding my right hand down the length of his body, pushing the blanket that had been covering our lower bodies out of the way. I palmed his ass so I could press his groin against mine. The scrub bottoms he was wearing were too snug for me to slip my hand between them and his skin, but it didn’t matter. Silver got the message loud and clear.

My other hand gripped the back of his head so he couldn’t escape my torrid kiss. Holding him in place proved to be unnecessary because he had taken control of the kiss. The weight of his upper body shifted until he was lying nearly on top of me.

A discreet cough had us jumping apart. I winced when my back hit the bed rail behind me.

“He’s fine,” I heard Ronan call through the sliding glass door. “He just lost a lead. I’ll take care of it.”

It took me a moment to realize he was talking to a nurse or doctor or both through a small gap in the sliding door of my hospital room. Thankfully, there were curtains that covered the entire glass wall, so no one would have been able to see what Silver and I had been doing.

“You really are trying to kill me, aren’t you?” Jace grumbled as he dropped into one of the chairs in the corner of the room. I figured he’d been the one who’d coughed to get our attention.

“Oh God,” Silver said and then he was struggling to escape my hold.

“Nope, you’re not going anywhere,” I declared as I tightened one arm around him so he couldn’t get out of the bed.

“Is that an alarm?” Silver asked, completely horrified. I wasn’t able to answer him because he was running his hands gently over my body, unknowingly keeping certain parts of me more active than they should have been since we had company. “Did I hurt you?” he asked worriedly.

“Doubtful,” Jace responded before I could. My friend had his forehead resting in his palm. He was a complete wreck, like he’d been running hard. I thought about everything I’d put Jace through over the past few weeks and mentally added him to the list of people I needed to make amends to. He’d taken the brunt of my anger when I’d had to deal with withdrawal symptoms that had made me feel like I was coming out of my skin, and he’d pretty much had to force me to attend every AA meeting, along with counseling sessions for my PTSD. On top of that, he’d been away from Caleb and Willa for nearly a month. That, in itself, was a big deal. Caleb wasn’t in exactly the best headspace considering everything he’d been through, but at least he was surrounded by family. It was a little nugget of relief I could hang on to for now, but the fact was that I owed Jace and Silver my life.

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