Page 57 of His UnBearable Touch

HOW MAY I HELP YOU?

“Allegra, wait.” He hated doing it, but he pulled the phone from her hand and set it down. “Talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I just… things are moving… have moved too fast.” She searched for the phone and he turned her hand and set it on her palm. “I know I care about you, Valerio. So much.” She shook her head. “Too much.”

He wanted to say something but he didn’t want to interrupt until she’d had her say.

“And I’m feeling out of control… like I can’t catch my breath.”

She set her hand down on his and gave it a little squeeze.

“Can you understand what I’m saying?”

He nodded and lifted their hands, cupping his other hand around her. “I understand only too well.” He drew in a breath and let it out. “When I’m around you I can’t catch my breath, either.”

“I had time to think while you were gone,” she explained. “When you’re close to me, when you’re touching me, I can’t think. I feel everything like it’s amplified, expanding, pulling me under. The air feels solid. My feelings like an ocean wave knocking me off my feet and to tell you the truth, I’ve never learned how to swim.”

“Allegra-”

“I just need a day,” she began and shook her head, “a few days to feel like I’m standing on my own two feet. To feel like I’ve had time to think instead of just feeling everything like a live wire.”

“We have guest rooms. I can sleep in one of those.”

“No,” she tugged at her hand, but instead of pulling it from his gentle touch, she turned her hand to fit their fingers together, “I’m not chasing you from your bedroom. That’s not what I’m talking about.” He kept quiet as he argued with his bear. The beast roared his displeasure, shoving a thick shoulder against their bond. “I talked to Jane earlier. She said I could stay with her until the concert. We need some time to work together outside of the group rehearsals anyway.”

“But this is also because of me.”

She nodded and then shrugged, but he could tell it wasn’t that easy. Her face looked tired, her eyes guarded and Valerio felt her hand go a little cold. “Lance was one man on the outside and one man on the inside. I know you’re not like him, you’d never do what he did, I just-”

“You just need some time.”

He heard the dull tone of his voice, felt the heavy pounding of his heart in his chest. Felt the fear creep up and choke off the air he needed to breathe.

“I need to concentrate and with you, everything I feel,” she gulped in a breath as she started to shake, “is so much more. I need to bring things back to normal, just for a little bit.”

Normal. Normal to him was just an empty hole in the center of his soul. A hole that only Allegra had been able to fill with her touch, her music, her light.

“I want to give you guards. You need to have guards.”

She nodded slowly. “If it will make you feel better.”

He shook his head and tasted blood as his fangs scored the inside of his lips. He was thankful that she couldn’t see. He knew that if she did, she would likely have been afraid of him. His bear had pushed through enough that he knew that his face, his skin, was just a mask stretched thin over the wild animal. He knew his eyes and teeth had already made the change.

When he opened his mouth to speak, he wasn’t sure what would come out of his throat.

“Will you stay the night?”

He saw the change in her face. The pain that flickered across and then settled on her features. Felt the tremors in her body.

What slayed him, flayed open his pain, was the single tear that fell from her sightless eyes as she nodded. “Hold me in your arms?”

He would have done anything she asked. Anything.

Peeling back the covers on the bed, he gently nudged her up on the feather-soft bed and watched with hungry eyes as she laid her head on the pillow and tucked her knees up against her stomach.

He felt his bear growl within him, the protective instinct riding both of them hard. Crawling in behind her, he laid his naked body on the crisp sheets and slid an arm over her shoulder, just under the pillow. His other arm drew the sheet and thin blanket over their bodies before he reached around her body, tucking it just under the generous swell of her breasts.

Her satisfied sigh and the soft caress of her cheek on his bicep made him rock hard against the luscious curve of her backside. “Valerio?”

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