Page 117 of Visions of Darkness

“You should get a jacket, too,” I told her.

I honestly didn’t know where we’d land or if we’d ever end up anywhere. How long this was going to last. The one thing I did know was sitting in one place for too long seemed like welcoming tragedy.

Pushing the cart, I followed her to the jackets and coats, and Aria peeled off her sweatshirt so she could try one on. She pushed her arms into it, pulling out her hair from the back as she turned to me.

“What do you think?”

It was black vegan leather and cropped, and she was just so perfect and right, her gaze open and unforgiving.

Vulnerable and unguarded.

Shy but wanting to be seen.

Because that cage had kept her from experiencing any of that.

Dating. Boyfriends. Kisses.

Pleasure, when we got so fucking little of it.

All while it made me fucking irate to think of someone else touching her.

There was no resisting rounding the cart, from taking each side of the jacket, bunching them in my hands and drawing them together at the chest. I tugged her toward me at the same second.

Our noses were close to touching, and the gasp she released was mine.

“What do I think, Aria?” My voice turned jagged. “I think you’re beautiful. And if I dreamed, I would dream of you.”

She exhaled a shattered breath, and I forced myself to step back. To let go. Knowing I was letting things fall from my mouth when I shouldn’t.

But how could I keep them from her?

“We should get out of here,” I said, returning to the cart. I started to wind it through the racks.

It took Aria a second to move, and she was peeling off the jacket and putting it into the cart when she caught up, her voice soft when she whispered, “I dream sometimes, Pax—and it’s always of you.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Aria

Pax scanned our items in the self-checkout lane.

Quick.

Efficient.

Gaze always, always scouring the area as the scanner continually beeped, never ceasing in his oath to defend. I knew that he would. He’d more than proved it last night.

But it was the promise of his words from a moment ago that had left me staggered. Shaken me so badly that I kept peeking up at him as I loaded our purchases into bags. What filled me with the urge to trace my fingertips over the spot where he clenched his fierce, defined jaw, to drag my nails through the stubble and return to whatever it was that we’d shared last night.

Push into it.

Into the place where I could fall. Just for a little while. Into his warmth and his safety and his touch.

I wanted it, even if it was only once.

That need got tangled with the constant impulse to reach out and touch the people who jostled around me.

To listen.

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