In her bed, I have found perfection. In what feels like one simple move Kelsey is in my arms, her body relaxed against mine, our breathing in sync, her back rising and falling with her breaths in time with the way my chest moves with mine. I could stay here forever, just feeling her breathe. Her sheets smell like her. I'm surrounded, engulfed and more aware than I've been in a long, long time.

"When did you start doing yoga?" My mind is wandering. I'm focusing on the sound of her breathing, the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest.

She strokes her fingers over my forearm. Soothing. Soft. Sensual. This body-to-body contact completely consumes every ounce of my consciousness.

"The first time I ran out of sleep meds. About six months after I got out of the Army." I hear what she doesn't say: six months after I left her. "I tried drinking through the problem and it didn't really help. I was staying with a friend down at Benning, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life and she dragged me to my first class. It was super weird at first but I got hooked on it." The sound of her voice, throaty and deep, vibrates against me, drawing me in deep.

"What was weird about it?"

"Being still. Getting my brain to stop racing." She makes a noise. "The first time I tried yoga nidra, I had a full-blown panic attack."

"That doesn't sound like a good thing." My fingers tense against her ribs. "What's yoga nidra?"

"The easiest way to explain it is being halfway between sleeping and waking. They call it the yogic sleep. It's guided meditation where you focus everything internally, except your hearing."

"And you think it helps you? How?"

"Well, yoga teaches us that our bodies store all our bad memories. Yoga is a way of coming to terms with them by releasing all their stored energy through practice."

"I thought yoga was more cleansing and releasing toxins and all that shit."

She laughs and the vibration massages my heart through the wall of my chest. "Some of the time. But other times, it's about accepting where you are and what you've been through. About not fighting the darkness."

"That sounds like something you need a counselor for."

"Yeah, well, I can't afford a hundred bucks an hour for a counselor. Yoga is cheaper."

The bitterness in her voice hits me hard. I lean forward and nuzzle her cheek with mine. "It seems like a hell of a lot of faith to put in an exercise routine."

"It's more than an exercise routine. It's something…sacred. It's important to millions of people. And I damn sure don't have any faith in the VA." She breathes out deeply. "I don't want to talk about the VA. It would require hours of meditation to get rid of the anger."

"Yeah. I get that. I haven't even tried to get seen there for my knee."

She turns in my arms, resting her cheek on my chest. "I'd forgotten about that. You never got the surgery while you were active duty?"

"Never had the time. When I finally decided to get out, the process came really quickly."

"So you're walking around with ripped tendons because you refused to make time to go to the doctor?" The sarcasm drips off her words, thick from the sleepy edge in her voice.

"Well, when you put it that way," I say dryly. I stroke her hair out of her face and press my lips to her forehead. The need to keep touching her is a compulsion. A drive. I can't stop stroking, petting. I’m just reveling in the sensation of her body next to mine, exchanging heat and warmth and oxygen.

She's silent for a while. Her breath is warm on my neck, steady. I almost want to check to see if she's fallen asleep.

"In yoga, there's this meditation called trataka." Her voice vibrates through her body and into mine. "The flame meditation. You stare into a flame until your eyes water, then you close your eyes, focusing on the mental image of the fire."

I have no idea what this has to do with anything but she is still lying in my arms. She could read a fucking cereal box right now and I would still listen. She’s falling asleep but still talking to me about yoga.

I’m so fucking grateful that she’s not alone right now. That she didn’t turn me away when she realized it was me on the other end of that email exchange.

"The first time I did it, I cried the entire time." Her voice thickens. I tighten my arms around her. I don't have the words I need. I'm trying to tell her with my body, my touch, that I'm here now. I wasn't, but I am now. That she's safe. "It was overwhelming. I almost quit yoga forever. Again."

"But you didn't."

"But I didn't." Her palm slides over my forearm, resting there. "The more I did it, the calmer I felt." Her fingers tighten, digging into the black ink on my skin. “I guess I wasn’t prepared for it to stop working. I haven’t slept in months.” She doesn't stiffen. Doesn't pull away with the admission that she didn’t have everything under control like she thought.

"I'll stay," I whisper. "If you need me, I'll stay." It's a promise I can make. For now. In this moment, she is everything I need, the fulfillment of every promise I broke to her.

She slides her arm over my chest, resting her palm against my heart. "I want to sleep with you."

"By ‘sleep’, do you mean sleep or screw?"

When I look down toward her, her face is tilted up. She smiles faintly. "I hate feeling like this. Like I'm teasing you. Using you."

I arch one eyebrow. "Honey, you can use me any time."

"Somehow you managed to make that sound filthier than I think you meant it to be."

"Only if you want it to be."

God, but it feels good to be flirting with her, even if she’s half asleep.

To be fucking alone with her.

I cup her face, nibbling on her lips. "Kels, I don't need to have sex with you."

"Jesus, thanks for that ego-smashing let down," she says mildly.

"I mean, not right now." I lower my forehead to hers, smiling because I can't help it. "I want you sober." She flinches at the word sober but I press on, needing her to hear me, to really hear the words I'm speaking. "I want you to do filthy things to me. But I only want that when you're ready for it. When it's not going to spark the nightmares that had you running away like last time."

She closes her eyes. For a moment, I feel like she's going to ask me to leave. That she's going to get up, open the door, and tell me she's changed her mind.

I don't move. Don't speak. I slide my thumb over her cheek and offer myself to her. For whatever she needs. For however long she needs.

“Stay,” I whisper.

His body physically relaxes beneath my touch. His heart is slow and steady beneath my palm, his breathing smooth and slow.

We lay in the quiet for a long moment. I’m somewhere between sleeping and being awake. Except that I feel everything about him, his body, his touch. The warmth surrounding me. Connecting me. Threading our energies together.

"How did you end up in North Carolina?"

The sound of his voice is deep beneath my cheek, soothing. The beating of his heart is a warm comfort. There's a lazy arousal sliding through my body. A sensual need tinged with old, never forgotten fear.

This is Deacon, I remind myself. I don't have to be afraid. I shouldn't be.

But I am. Because the nightmares are there, always there. The shame of being weak. Of being unable to handle everything the Army threw at me.

"Because I had nowhere else to go after I got kicked out of the Army," I finally admit. There's no sense in hiding it.

"Wait." He goes deadly still. "When did you get kicked out of the Army?" His lips are warm against my skin but his body is tense.

He kisses my forehead gently. His fingers leave tiny heatwaves behind each stroke. His attempt to calm me doesn't break through the shame burning over my skin. After a second or two he adds, "You don't have to tell me. It doesn't matter."

I smile, savoring the drugged feeling of being so close to sleep. "I popped hot on a urinalysis. The Army changed the medication policy so that you couldn't take anything you’d had longer than six months. My brigade commander had a zero-tolerance policy for any drug use. My company commander managed to get me separated as opposed to court-martialed."

His body tenses. It's a subtle shift but it's there, just there. His fingers continue to move, sliding over my skin, stroking softly. "Motherfucker."

I make a noise. "Yeah, he really was. Always droning on and on about being a professional and if you couldn't take care of yourself, how could you lead soldiers? This from a guy who spent the bulk of the war at the Pentagon." I release a deep breath, tightening the back of my throat in a cleansing ujjayi breath. "When I went to his office, he told me I was a disgrace and I should consider myself lucky I was being administratively separated. That the Army didn't need NCOs like me in the force who couldn't handle their personal issues."

Deacon swallows hard, practically vibrating beneath my touch. "I'm having a hard time not being violently angry right now," he whispers. His voice is tight, thick. Ragged in a way I haven't heard from him in a long time.

"I've made my peace with it. I can't change it. And I knew the rules but I took the meds anyway." I press my lips to his throat. "I needed to sleep."

He shifts in a sudden burst of energy and pulls me tighter to him. Our bodies are flush, chest to chest, thigh to thigh. He's warm and pulsing and alive. So very alive.

He's my personal flame. I stare at the pulsing of his heartbeat beneath his skin at his throat, then lean in, feeling the beat beneath my cheek.

"Does not being alone really help you sleep?" he asks after a long silence.

"It's not a cure all. But it helps."

I close my eyes, focusing on the memory of his pulse in the darkness.

"I wish you could have come to me," he whispers, so softly I almost don't hear him.

I nuzzle his throat. "Fear is a powerful thing."

His fingers slow along my back, then pick up their soothing rhythm once more. "I know."

I shift, wriggling against him, and then I feel him hard and stiff against my belly. Heat bursts through my veins, warming between my thighs. I fight the urge to arch against him. "That feels uncomfortable."

He makes a noise deep in his throat. "I'm practicing delayed gratification."

"Really?"

"No. I'm actually thinking about all the times we used to sneak out to that bunker in Iraq."

The heat flashes to a fire. I press my thighs together, remembering the urgency, the rapid way we'd both struggle to free each other from our body armor and uniforms. The urgent way he'd slide between my thighs, filling me.

"You were always so wet whenever I touched you." His voice has changed now. Deeper. Richer. Aroused.

The fear is there, nestled against the boundary of my erotic vision. Close, so close to breaking through. Like the fear of getting caught, it adds a sharp edge to my arousal. A poignancy.

"I used to count the hours until I could sneak away and see you."

His body is pulsing now with a new energy. A new heat. Old memories collide with new. I’m recalling how he felt when he pushed me back against the cellar wall at The Pint.

"I've been dreaming of this, Kels," he whispers. "Just holding you again. Hoping there'd be some way we could get back to what we were."

"We weren't much more than fuck buddies in Iraq, Deacon."

He tenses again. "You know that's not true." There’s a violent edge to his words. His fingers bite into my skin before they release me, stroking over the spot. "It was more than that for me."

"It didn't start out like that for me." I close my eyes against the hurt buried in his anger. "But I grew attached to your penis."

The laugh slides out of him, rich and needed, snapping the tension between us. "Yeah, well, he's missed you, too."

"Not that he's lacked for company," I grumble.

He makes a strangled noise. "We all do what we have to do to avoid the nightmares."

It's really hard to hide my skepticism. "Sex with strangers helps you avoid the nightmares?"

"Sleeping with strangers on the Internet was going to help you?" he shoots back but there is no venom in his words.

"Touché." I press my lips to his throat again, breathing in the scent of his skin. I give in to the temptation and arch against him, rubbing my hips against his erection. "We could…"

He rolls me then, faster than I'm prepared to react. He settles between my thighs, his body hard and stiff and unyielding against me. "I want you. More than anything, I want you, Kels." He kisses me then, soft and sweet and demanding all at once. "After you've slept."