Page 56 of Forget Me Not

I stop fighting, hunching over to steady my heart as it races in my chest. “Someone’s in the house,” I manage to croak and Reid releases me instantly, storming through the front door.

He disappears into the quiet house before my mind can really register what’s going on while I sink to the floor, wrapping my arms around my stomach to quell the nausea gurgling in the back of my throat.

A nightmare.

I have them often, but not like that.

Never like that.

My hands shake when I brush the hair back from my wet face, tears still slipping down my cheeks.

He’s not here, Nova. He’s not here.

After what feels like a lifetime later, Reid steps back on the porch, Toast in tow, who plants wet, slobbery kisses on my damp forehead and cheeks.

“What happened?” Reid asks from above me, his gaze disturbed. He crouches down, reaching out and capturing one of my tears with his thumb on my cheek, looking at it like it ruined his favorite shirt.

“Nothing,” I lie, breathing slowly going back to normal. “It must have been a dream.”

A very realistic dream.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Because I have . . .

“Just a bad dream,” I reiterate, sucking in a deep, shaky breath. “I’m okay.”

“You sure?” Reid asks, brushing a stray curl away from my forehead. It’s so sweet compared to the nightmare I just had that a rush of emotions I don’t understand swirl in my chest.

“I said I’m fine,” I snap.

Reid just fixes me with a bored look. “You want to tell me what it was about?”

I shake my head as my heart begins to slow in my chest, leaving behind an empty ache.

“Did it have anything to do with last night?”

He says it so quietly, I’m almost sure I’ve imagined it. Then his gaze meets mine and I can see the fire burning in their chocolate brown depths and I know, he’s been thinking about it, too.

I can’t get his kiss off my mind. His taste—like tobacco and whisky and something so intense and so Reid, I’m not sure there will ever be a day that I don’t crave it.

“Not in the way you think.”

“Nova—” Reid starts, but I shut him up, surging forward and pressing my lips to his. I guess I just had to prove to myself that it wasn’t a one-time fluke. That I can feel something for someone else. Maybe I needed to prove to Jack that he doesn’t own me.

Maybe I just need to prove it to myself.

“Little bird,” Reid rasps against my lips, his fingers tightening in my hair, but I shut him up with another kiss. I let his kiss chase away the demons of my nightmares, then I let his taste replace them with dirty thoughts I have never, ever thought about another person. He groans when I try to deepen the kiss and slip my tongue against his, grabbing my hand on his face and gently prying me back from him.

“No,” he murmurs, his voice husky, like it was last night when I was prepared to give myself to him in the old, abandoned Whitaker house.

“Why?” I ask quietly, embarrassment flooding through me. I know he wants me; the evidence is clear by the bulge in the front of his jeans. Still, this is the second time he’s denied me.

He scrubs a hand over his face, his eyes dark when he pulls it away.

“Because you’re crying and I’m not taking advantage of that.”

I bite my lip, rejection coiling through me.

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