Page 74 of Never Fall for an Angel

“It’s me, little devil.”

Reality washes over me like a cold bucket of ice water when I smell the familiar scent of leather, whiskey, and the forest.

Hefound me.

I want to push him away. I don’t want him to see me like this, but I can’t shove him away. Not when he’s a shining beacon while I’m lost in the storm of a century.

“They’re going to kill me,” I croak, my eyes blurry from the tears clogging my vision. My chest seizes as the invisible handswrap around my throat, bleeding the life from my body until I can’t hold on anymore.

“Never.” It’s rough and violent. A dark promise that some twisted part of me knows he’d keep. “Come here.”

I can’t even fight it. Not when he falls to his knees in front of me and not even when he tugs me into his lap, his arms banding around me to crush me against his chest. My throat burns, my heart beats a mile a minute, and my vision swims with hot tears.

Christian sits back against the side of the bed, his hand on the back of my head when I bury my face in his neck. He doesn’t move save for the soft strokes of his fingers down the ends of my hair and the movements of his chest beneath my cheek.

I cling to him, my arms around his neck and my body shaking with the force of the violent sobs that refuse to stop. My fingers fist the material of his T-shirt like he’s a life raft out at sea, and I’m on the verge of drowning. He makes a rough noise with the sound of the hoarse cry that leaves my lips, and a tremor moves through him as he holds me tighter.

“Breathe, baby,” he murmurs, his lips against my hair and I can’t escape the way he says it. Like if I were to stop, I’d be unleashing the darkest depths of hell on the world.

As if his own life depends on it.

A clap of thunder sounds outside, but here in his arms, I don’t even jump. Not when this is all a dream, and I’ll wake up alone tomorrow morning.

I’m not the final girl. I’m not the girl who gets what she wants. This isn’t a romance book where he comes in and confesses his undying love for me. This is a dream that my mind formed to save me from the nightmare my scars created.

So I soak him in, allowing myself to give into the fantasy that I could be his and he could be mine. The voices can’t reach me here. The hands can’t reach me in his embrace. It’s just me andhim, wrapped in each other’s arms in the quiet solitude of a sleepy cottage while I shatter into a million pieces in his lap.

He may be harsh. He may hate me for the bullet still lodged in his chest. He may be the devil, himself outside of my dreams . . . None of that matters when he’s the one thing that chases my demons away amid the warzone my mind has become.

He presses his lips against the scar on my forehead. “You’re safe with me,” he whispers, his voice vehement and dark beneath the pouring rain outside, and in this dream, I actually believe it.

A shiver moves through me, and I sink into him, soaking in his warmth as it bleeds into my soul. I don’t know how long we stay there, but the tears fade. His hand running soothing circles over my back doesn’t. It’s not until he slowly stands, carrying me over to the bed, that I even realize I’d fallen asleep.

When he lays me back against the sheets, something sharp and agonizing aches in my chest.

“Please?” I whisper, my throat in danger of collapsing again. “Please don’t leave me.”

I know it’s weak. I know it will only blur the lines in my head when I see him tomorrow. I also know I can’t stop it. Real Christian would tell me I’m pathetic and to grow up. Stop being afraid of the dark like a child. Dream Christian climbs into the bed beside me, pulling me back into his chest before covering us with the comforter.

“Never, little devil.”

And then he presses a rough kiss to my cheek with a quiet “Sleep” and holds me like it’s his dying wish.

Like I’m his.

The unfortunate difference between actual Christian and dream Christian, though?

When I wake up, only one’s real. And I’m in bed alone.

The morning after my Christian-infested nightmare, I’m in a foul mood by the time I make it down to eat breakfast.

To make matters worse, Christian has chosen today, of all days, tonotretreat to his office the moment dawn crests on the horizon.

And he doesn’t have a shirt on.

When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I freeze when he regards me indifferently over a pan of scrambled eggs and bacon.

We’ve come to a sort of truce in the last couple days, but with the rain dredging outside and his incessant need to be . . .here, I can feel the tendrils of my sanity starting to shred, one by one.

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