Page 36 of Riordan's Revenge

My dreams didn’t play ball. In them, I was running from danger, my heart racing so fast it felt like it could explode. A black car chased me, screeching through traffic and herding me down alleys and side streets in Deadwater’s suburbs. Doors slammed. First Gen’s father then my ex-boss appeared in entryways and rejected my need for sanctuary.

I ran out the end of the street to find my way blocked by a churning river. The water boiled, frothing grey and white.

In my hands, I held something small. A little life. Maybe a bird or a kitten. All I knew was that it was precious and I had to protect it.

A bullet whistled past my ear.

From the car’s window, the mayor leaned out. He taunted me with a cruel smile and words I couldn’t understand. He held a comically large handgun like something from a Western. Then he fired again.

The bullet lodged in my chest. It punched me back into the water.

The river closed over my head, freezing cold, cutting off my air, and I sank down, clutching my precious creature like myfaltering heartbeat could save it. I tried to fight. To swim. My body didn’t respond.

There was nothing for us but to drown and die.

With a gasp, I woke, frozen still but with my pulse racing. It took several seconds to realise I could breathe easily. And to recognise the warmth of the woman curled against me.

Cassie had crept close while I slept, as she’d done when I’d been knocked out. Except this time, my arm was tucked around her frame, and our hands were entwined and linked at her chest.

My heart skipped a beat.

I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep, but maybe she’d seen my nightmare. Turned off the TV, forgiven me for the shower incident, and decided I needed comfort.

All I knew was that contact. Her heat spread down my arm, doing the same thing as last time she’d touched me like this—battling the cold inside me and giving me something better. My breathing sounded loud in my ears. Adrenaline from the nightmare or maybe the fight still ghosted through me.

I couldn’t move. Not to withdraw my hand and not to bring her closer, though it felt like the most natural thing in the world to lift her onto my chest and kiss her awake.

In the darkness, I was hers and she was mine.

For a minute, I’d pretend.

Cassie stretched against my body, her bare toes drawing down my leg and her ass too close to my groin for comfort. She turned so we were facing each other.

“Everything’s okay. It was just a nightmare. Ye shuddered with it then relaxed, but it came back so I cuddled up. Ye are so nice to sleep with. I’ve never done it with anyone else.”

I asked a question that had plagued me, easy to say in my half-awake state. “Why did you proposition me?”

“Seem to recall ye were the one with his dick in his hand in my bathroom.”

I heaved in a breath. “Before that.”

Cassie’s blue eyes focused on me. “They say do the thing that scares ye.”

“Seriously.”

“I am being serious. I live by that. It helps me every day.”

“What scares you, wild girl?”

For a moment, she just watched me, then her throat bobbed. “Everything. I think I’m broken like that. I get nightmares, too.”

“What about?”

“I lie awake at night and think that my family’s gone. As a kid, it was even worse. I had to ask Sin and Lottie for my own rooms so I could move out of theirs.”

“How would that help?”

“I didn’t want to disturb them by repeatedly checking on them in the night, particularly when they had their babies.”

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