Jackson

She stirred in my arms. She was having a nightmare.

I pulled her in close and whispered in her ear. She needed to know I was here for her. I wanted to comfort her. She trusted me enough to fall asleep in my arms. Did that mean she trust me to chase away her demons?

“It’s ok, Angel, I’m here for you.”

“LIAM!”

I stilled and waited, watching for her eyes to refocus. She was paralyzed, her eyes glazed over. It didn’t take long for the recognition to return.

Then the realization of what she did.

One of my arms was trapped to my side with her thigh. My hand was pinned above my head, and her knee pressed into my throat.

I laid still.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She released me and jumped off the bed. Wrapping herself in the quilt on the chair, she searched for her clothes.

“Angelic, come back to bed.” My voice remained calm. She was terrified and getting ready to run.

“Fuck, Jackson, I almost strangled you in your sleep.” She was horrified and frightened.

“We had a deal, no running until we talk.”

“Are you fucking serious?” She sat in the chair beside the bed, shaking. I wanted to go to her and hold her, but now wasn’t the time. She needed to come to me on her own.

“Angelic, if you don’t stop and take a breath, you are going to hyperventilate.” My concern was more for her safety than mine. “Like you said, I’m not as dumb as the tabloids say I am. I recognize the signs of PTSD. I knew if I stayed calm until you woke up, you wouldn’t hurt me. I’m going to come to you, ok?”

A whispered choked “Ok” was all that came out of her mouth.

Her eyes skidded in every direction. She was embarrassed, maybe even ashamed. It was my responsibility to let her know being vulnerable was nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed of.

I crossed the bed and made my way to where she was sitting. I wrapped my arms around her and she leaned into me. I guided her to the bed and helped her under the covers and climbed in facing her.

Brushing the hair from her forehead, I leaned in and kissed her.

“You don’t have to talk. I want you to know you can trust me. I want to help you. Let me help you.” I didn’t ask the question that was killing me. Now wasn’t the time.

She scratched my sweet spot. A vibration from the low growl escaped, proof of the pleasure it provided. I should be comforting her, not the other way around. I didn’t want her regretting falling asleep in my arms.

“I’m not sure where to start.” The crack in her voice broke my fucking heart.

“Is this about your claustrophobia?” I figured that was a good a place as any for her to begin.

She smiled weakly at me. “Mostly. It goes a little a deeper.”

“You told me you won’t beg, can you tell me why?”

She snuggled into my chest, her breathing long and deep. “Don’t let me fall asleep.”

Her pleas were almost a sob. It took everything she had to ask that of me.

“If we do, and you have another nightmare, I’ll wake you up instead of trying to hold on to you.” I kissed the top of her head. I thought holding her tight would comfort her. I read her nightmare wrong; now I needed to make it right.

“Ok,” she whispered, her breath soft on my chest. I would do whatever it took to make everything better for her. I wanted to take all her fucking pain and swallow it whole.

I held her, caressing her gently, waiting for her to make a decision. Would she reveal her dark torment or pull away and bury her pain?

“My stepfather was overbearing and abusive. He used to make my mother beg for every little thing. As I got older, I started to question his behavior. I didn’t see other kid’s fathers behaving like this. It only made him direct the abuse towards me. When I misbehaved, he used to lock me in my bedroom closet until I begged him to let me out. What constituted as misbehaving was left to his discretion.”

“Your mother let him?” I already knew the answer. If Angelic's mother took the abuse, she probably felt powerless to stop it.

“She was weak. She used to tell me to stay in my room and not provoke him. I did, as often as I could. He would always find something anyway.”

‘How did you end up at Brentwood?” If her stepfather was controlling and abusive, it didn’t make sense he would let her go.

“My grandmother convinced him that Brentwood was run like a military academy. They would discipline me and he would not have to have me under foot or in his way.” There was a light hint of amusement in her statement.

“You’re close to your grandmother?” I liked this woman already, just for the fact she was able to get my Angel away from that abusive bastard.

“Yeah, she was my rock. She couldn’t get my mother to leave. She wanted to make sure she got me out.”

“That day, in the park, you told me your stepfather passed and you were trying to decide if you should go home to live with your mom. Why did you come back to Brentwood?”

“Turns out my mom is one of those people who aren’t happy unless someone is making them miserable. She had another man living with her before summer break ended. I didn’t want to stick around and watch herself self destruct. I couldn’t.”

She was clinging to me like a life raft lost in a storm. I let her take whatever comfort she wanted, needed. We laid there for a while. Her fingers traced the lines of my abs, feathering down my happy trail, stopping slightly above my shaft, then gliding back to my nipples.

Her touch did things to my sanity. She had crawled under my skin. I wish to god she never leaves. I wanted to make love to her. To prove there were good men. Men who would never ask her beg.

I was falling in love with her, Angelic. I had always loved my Angel. I had to know if she could love me back. I needed to be careful not to let my jealousy over a man she might have loved affect my emotions. This was about getting her to release her demons, not about me.

“Angelic, what does Liam have to do with your nightmares?”

The tension I was expecting did not manifest. Her body remained melted into mine and her breathing soft.

“After Brentwood, I joined the Army. I can hear you laughing, Jackson.” She looked up at my smiling face.

“The Army, really!”

“Yes, they paid for my education. I was a photographer. I photographed the aftermath of some of the destruction, for records.”

“Are you talking about war torn countries?” My shock resonated and her body tensed. This was hard enough for her without having my reservation projected upon her. I lifted her chin and brought her lips to mine. “You must have seen some pretty fucked up shit.”

“Yeah, it was hard a lot of the time. It made me think that maybe my stepfather wasn’t all that bad. How fucked up was that?”

She rolled her body over top of mine, her small frame bearing hardly any weight against me. She hovered, staring into my eyes. I didn’t know what she was hoping to find. My only wish was that she trusted me enough to continue her story.

She came down and brushed her lips to mine. I let her take whatever she needed. I was not finished with her. I knew she needed to come to me. I hoped she was not finished with me either.

She laid her head against my heart. “You’re a good man, Jackson.”

I wanted her to say she loved me, she trusted me, she wanted me. I would have to settle for her believing me to be a good man. There were times I doubted that.

Not with her, never with her.

“I was on an assignment and things went south. The area was supposed to be secure before my team went in. It wasn’t.” The slight hitch in her voice told me everything I was fearing when this story began.

“Angelic, were you a POW?”

“Yes.”

My heart wrenched and my gut contracted. I promised I would not hold her too tight. It was instinct, a natural reflex to protect, to comfort.

“How long?”

“How long was I kept or how long ago did it happen?”

“Both, if you can talk about it.”

“Six years ago. I was confined to a dark hole in the ground for a month.” The calmness in which she divulged the information concerned me. She should be furious. She would have had counselling to deal with the trauma. Obviously, if she was still having nightmares, it didn’t work.

I would insist she see someone. I would take care of everything. She would never have another nightmare again if I could help it.

“Jackson, do you know what Katie’s brothers do, exactly?”

“Some security shit.” Truth was, I had no idea what the Steele brothers did. It was common knowledge that if you did not ever have to do business with them, that was a good thing.

“The Steele brothers are the guys you call when you need a special service that bypasses red tape.”

“The Army called them to get your team out?” I was shocked. I always thought the Army took care of their own. How bad was Angelic’s situation that the Army called in outside specialist?

“They got us out, but my head was really messed up. They kept us confined and I was thrown back to all the times my stepfather locked me in a closet. I spent some time in a VA hospital.”

“You’re still having nightmares, didn’t the therapy help?” Let me help, I wanted to plead, make her accept and come home with me.

“The therapy helped a little. When I was recovering, Liam, Katie’s brother, came to check on me a few times. He offered me a job. I would be a forensic photographer. Sometimes after a job, they would get accused of property damage done. My job was to take photographic proof in case of future lawsuits.”

“It sounds safe.” I had no idea how to respond. This was a heavy conversation and she was trusting me with her demons. I wasn’t going to let her down.

“Did you learn those wicked moves in the Army or working for Katie’s brothers?” She packed a lot of power beneath that petite frame.

She laughed at my question. “Both. The Army conditioned me to train. Liam taught me the self defense moves.” Her body tensed. “Jackson, I became involved with Liam.”

She said no more, gauging my reaction. She looked up and met my eyes. I hoped all she saw was the love I felt for her in this moment. Love and an overpowering need to protect her. She ran her fingers across my sweet spot. I was putty in her hands. She could tell me she was in love with Liam and I would still want her.

“Except for tonight with you, Liam was the only man I had spent the night with. He helped me with the nightmares. He knew when to hold me and when to wake me up. He did more for me in three months than a year with the therapist.”

She continued to stroke the side of my face. “I’m sorry I called out his name.”

“Don’t be sorry, my Angel. You were searching for something familiar. Something to chase away the nightmare. I did it all wrong this time. I will learn, I swear, Angelic, I will learn to hold you just right. I will learn to chase away the nightmares.”

She propped herself on her elbows staring at me with her beautiful blue eyes wide and mocking. “Jackson, he didn’t chase them away. He fucked away the pain. He distracted my brain with pleasure. That’s all it was, a physical distraction.”

“Now I’m confused. If fucking him made the nightmares go away, why did what we did bring one on? Angelic, am I the reason you had the nightmare? Are you afraid of me?”