Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 89074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I try to rest again, too, but I was right when I said that I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. I toss and turn, trying to keep the memory of the dream out of my mind.
The comforter feels too warm, but then when I toss it to the side, I’m too cold. I love the sound of the crickets but they aren’t working to soothe me to sleep anyway.
When I toss for what feels like the hundredth time, Rayne groans.
“Get over here,” he says, clearly very much awake, still.
“Excuse me?”
“Come here,” he says, sitting up in bed again and patting the edge of his mattress.
“Fuck off.”
“I’m not kidding, Hunter. Get in my bed or I’ll tell your brother you can’t keep your tongue off my cock.”
“Not a chance in hell you’d do that. I had a bad sleep, not brain damage.”
I turn over in bed, facing the wall, away from him.
I hear him rustling on his mattress, and then the floorboards creak under his weight as he steps down.
When he sits down on the edge of my bed the mattress sinks a little under his weight.
And then I feel his hands on the top of my back, and he pushes his thumbs into the spot where my shoulders meet the bottom of my neck.
He kneads the tension above my shoulder blades and instantly it’s like something is melting away from me.
His hands are very strong.
It’s already the best massage I’ve ever gotten.
He’s wordless as he works the knots out of my shoulders, slowly and steadily pushing circular motions into the tense muscle.
Nobody’s ever touched me like this other than professionals who I’ve paid.
Rayne massages me for a long time, and I’m transported to another world. A world where things like this are normal for me. Where people care for me, and I don’t push back or protest or wonder about their intentions.
When he finishes, he pushes my body toward the wall a little.
Then I feel him lying down in my bed, right up against me, wordlessly.
“If you didn’t just lull me into relaxation I would choke your throat right down into this mattress, without hesitation,” I murmur.
“I believe you.”
I’m still facing away from him, but the side of his body is pressed up against my back. This bed isn’t that wide, and the heat of his skin against mine feels good in the cool air.
Physical contact, bringing be back into reality.
Grounding me.
And he cannot know how much power he has over me in this moment. Not that I’m going to let it last.
“I’m really not the one trying to hurt you, Rayne,” I say softly a moment later.
I turn over in bed to face him, lying on my side. My muscles feel limber and buttery now, like I’ve just been given a new body.
“I think I finally believe that, too,” he tells me. “Maybe.”
He’s lying flat on his back, and he turns a little to look over at me. His head is on my pillow, his hair splayed out around his face.
He looks at my wrist for a moment, then reaches up to toy with my leather bracelets.
“What?”
“Why do you wear these, anyway?”
“I need to have a reason to like wearing a few thin bracelets?”
He reaches up and pulls one of them off, putting it onto his own wrist instead.
He moves his arm around, watching the bracelet slide up and down his own wrist.
“Comfortable, actually,” he says.
“It looks good on you.”
“Good. Now you’re thinking about me rather than your night terrors.”
I sigh. “You know, when I was a teenager and I got night terrors or woke up from nightmares, I wouldn’t count sheep. I’d count throwing knives.”
Rayne puffs out a laugh, his lips breaking into a smile. It gives him dimples, and I realize that right now I’m in bed with someone who endless people at Crimson College probably wish they were in bed with.
“That’s the most Hunter Knox thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I’d count little knives as I imagined throwing them into a wooden wall. Toss after toss, knife after knife.”
“Did it actually help you fall asleep?”
“Eventually. Sometimes. Other times I’d get up and walk around the house. I always felt like a ghost, walking around that big house at night.”
Rayne’s gaze dances over my face. “You probably don’t remember this, but there was one weekend I was having a sleepover with Weston, and I went out to the kitchen to get water—”
“I remember it,” I tell him. “Must have been past three in the morning.”
I watch Rayne’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “I ran into you in the kitchen and you were there dipping Oreos in peanut butter.”
“Heard about it in the Parent Trap movie, and I’ve done it ever since,” I tell him. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”
“I would never knock anything about peanut butter. It’s a major food group for me. Even that night, I wanted to come take a spoonful of it.”