A blood-curdling scream coming from Kit’s bedroom has me lurching up from the couch ready to slaughter someone.

She screams again as I enter her room and the sound along with the way she’s clutching the poker chip on her necklace for dear life shreds me.

I’m almost positive she’s having a nightmare, but just to be sure, I scan the room and make sure the window is locked.

“No.” A choked sob rips from her throat and she kicks her legs. “Please don’t kill me.”

I’m about to reassure her I’d never lay a hand on her, let alone kill her, but she starts flapping her arms and cries out again. Only this time—it’s my name on her lips.

Shudders are wracking her small frame, whipping her around the mattress like a plastic bag in the middle of a hurricane. I want to grab her, shake her out of it, and tell her it’s only a dream.

Instead, I approach her bed carefully, like she’s a bomb about to detonate. “You’re okay, Kit.”

It’s like she doesn’t even hear me. If anything, me speaking only makes it worse. Her tremors grow more violent and so do the screams.

Seeing her like this is the equivalent of someone cutting my chest open with a shard of dull glass.

When she yells for me again, I don’t hesitate. I wrap my arms around her as though she were a wild animal needing to be tamed.

She struggles for the first minute, kicking and thrashing, but then she goes limp and blinks up at me.

“Preston?” Her voice is laced with panic and her body feels cold despite her sweat soaked skin. “Is it really you this time?”

She looks so confused and helpless, something inside me unhinges. “It’s me, angry girl.”

I loosen my grip so she can move freely again and she bolts upright. “It wasn’t before…it was a trick and I couldn’t—”

“You’re safe. It was just a bad dream.” I palm her cheek. “You know I’d never let anything happen to you.”

I’m not a good person and most of the time I deserve the bad shit that comes my way, but Kit’s my proverbial line you don’t cross.

Not unless you have a death wish.  

She nods slowly…and then to both my horror and concern she throws her arms around me—clinging to me like I’m her lifeline as her soft sobs fill the room.

I’m at a loss for words, but given her heart rate and breathing are still erratic, I do the only thing I can think of—I situate us so she’s resting against my bare chest and we’re skin to skin.

Then I trace my fingers up and down her spine until her crying slows down and she stabilizes.

“Thank you.” Her voice is burnt toast. “God, you must think I’m crazy.”

“If it’s any consolation, I thought that way before tonight.”

“Asshole,” she says, but there’s humor in her tone.

She shifts slightly, and I get a whiff of her hair, that intoxicating berry concoction going straight to all the places they shouldn’t. “You want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” She draws in a ragged breath. “But this is kind of nice.”  

“It—” I clear my throat so I don’t finish that sentence. “I once read in a camping magazine that sleeping like this keeps you warm.”

“You mean snuggling?”

She might as well stick a big floppy bow on my balls and suggest we paint each other’s nails. “I don’t snuggle.”

“Would you prefer the term cuddling?”

“Bishop.”

“Relax, Holden. You can be the big spoon.”

She nuzzles closer and I trail my hands up and down her arms. Something I regret almost instantly. Not only is her skin softer than butter in the midday sun, she must have changed after I put her to bed because all she’s wearing is a thin little tank top and shorts.

My dick stirs, very much aware that the only two things separating him from his own pearly gates are a pair of boxers and her tiny bottoms.

I stifle a groan when I feel her nipples harden and I have to remind myself what transpired earlier.

Kit was right about us needing to stop whatever was starting between us.

For a multitude of reasons.

The first one being—she’s gay. It’s not an issue for me, but if she’s going to have a mental breakdown every time I whisper dirty things in her ear and we dry hump, it’s probably best we don’t anymore.

Goose bumps erupt over her exposed flesh and my own heart rate ticks up. It’s taking everything in me not to slip my hand between her legs and find out what kinds of sounds she makes when she comes.

Instead, the hand on her back slides under her shirt and I circle her pierced navel with my thumb, recalling reason number two.  

Mixing business with pleasure never ends well for either party. Once things like emotions and sex are involved…it makes shit complicated. The bottom line becomes murky.

And deal’s get broken.

She licks her lips and it’s all I can do not to move her shorts to the side and bury myself inside her when her tongue touches my skin and she arches her hips, pressing her pussy against me.

My heart pounds in my ears and hot lust pulsates my groin when she repeats the movement. Instinctively, I dig my fingers into her ass and thrust, eliciting a sharp gasp from her.

Then there’s nothing but choppy, desperate breathing in the darkness. The chemistry a thick, palpable current running between us.

“Preston.”

Her voice is shattered glass and it’s like a knife twisting in my gut.

“I know.”

Her teeth scrape my shoulder and she shudders when I reach down and adjust my erection, squeezing the tip to take the edge off before I tuck it into the waistband of my boxers.

A few minutes later, the sound of her sleeping softly fills the air and I recall the most important reason of them all.

Kit’s a jump first and ask questions later type of girl.

But if I allow my selfishness to get in the way and let her do that with me…

I’ll hurt her worse than I did before.

And this time, she’ll have every reason to never forgive me.