Page 53 of Guarded from Corruption

“Good.” Her eyes droop shut, and she curls into my chest. “Can we go home now?”

“Yes, hun.” I press my lips to the top of her head. “We’ll be home before you know it.”

As she snuggles into my neck, her next words come on a soft breath. “I thought of you. The whole time. I knew you’d protect me.”

Oh. This feeling.

“Ah, Jade. Always.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

JADE

I yank myself from the nightmare on a strangled gasp.

Chest tight and heart thundering, I lie still as I wait for the last images of my dream to fade. The man in the hoodie looming over me, only his flinty eyes visible in the darkness. The heavier one pinning my wrists above my head, his gaze sickly satisfied.

Then the things I couldn’t see, but haven’t forgotten.

The sharp prick as the needle slid into me. The heavy fatigue dragging at me, sucking me into oblivion. That voice, oily and malevolent, saying, “Don’t fight. Or I’ll hurt you.” The choking fear when I heard the soft snick of my apartment door closing.

Shuddering from the adrenaline surging through me, I try to breathe through it, using the box-breathing technique I used to recommend to my patients.

It doesn’t work, and I can’t stop shaking.

I don’t want to wake Niall up again. Thanks to my nightmares, he hasn’t gotten more than a few hours of uninterrupted sleep the last few nights. Not that he’d complain, but I feel guilty. And I worry.

The beginning of a relationship is supposed to be the fun, easy part, not riddled with stress and fear and anxiety. I’m supposed to be the confident, independent, strong Jade I always prided myself on being, not obsessing over wrinkles in fabric and waking up in the middle of the night crying.

Niall never complains, but there’s a small part of me that worries I’m a burden to him. That he’d be better off concentrating on his new team, building a life in Texas, maybe finding a woman with fewer issues than me.

But I don’t want him to find another woman. I want him with me.

“Jade, hun, did you have another nightmare?” Niall rolls on his side, his brow furrowing as he examines my face. Before I can answer, he embraces me, hugging me against his chest. “You did. I can tell.” His breath feathers across the top of my head. “Why didn’t you wake me right away?”

It feels so good to be held, to feel his reassuring warmth and strength surrounding me, all thoughts of denial fly from my head. Instead, I burrow my face into his neck and mumble, “I didn’t want to wake you up again.”

“Ah, sweetheart.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head. One hand runs down the length of my hair, the other rubs my back in soothing strokes. “I don’t want you worrying about that. If you’re scared, wake me up right away.”

“But you need sleep,” I protest. “I’ve already woken you up so many times.” A lump lodges in my throat. “I thought I’d feel better. Now that everyone is in jail. But the nightmares… it’s frustrating. They keep coming.”

Niall adjusts me in his arms so he can meet my gaze. Gently, he says, “Jade. Hun. It’s normal. You’ve been through a lot. And after that night—” He swallows hard. “It’s only been a few days. Of course what happened would give you nightmares.”

“I guess.”

“What would you tell one of your patients? If they were going through something like this?”

I make a little face at him. “That it’s normal. But?—”

“Give yourself some time. Okay?” He leans in to brush a soft kiss to my lips. “Not only are you still dealing with some serious trauma, but there’s everything we learned about the facility, too. It’s a lot to process.”

Niall’s gaze goes dark for a moment, a familiar tell that he’s feeling guilty again. He shouldn’t—I insisted on using myself as bait—but I know it was hard on him, watching me be taken and going against all his instincts by not stopping it.

I’m pretty sure he’s also thinking the same thing as me. That I could have been one of the women held at the facility for weeks, trained to be obedient, and sold to the highest bidder.

A shudder runs through me. A few of the women the police rescued—there were eighteen in total—had been missing for over a month. Over a month in that terrible place, subjected to countless tests and hungry stares and skin-crawling touches…

And then something I hadn’t experienced while I was there. In interviews with the police, a handful of women recalled being hypnotized and subjected to conditioning sessions that sounded a lot like what I learned about in my psychology classes.

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