My eyes open quickly, the darkness consuming me except for the moonlight from the bedroom windows. My heart’s racing and it’s then that I realize the trembling isn’t a dream. I can’t stop shaking and I’m so fucking cold.

“Shhh.” Jase’s voice is anything but calming. After the initial shock of realizing he’s in bed with me, I barely turn around before the bed groans and he pulls the weighted blanket up and around my entire body.

Frantically I try to recount it all, every moment that I can remember.

“What did you do to me?” I ask, and the question comes out viciously. I’m fucking freezing, and I can’t stop trembling.

“I brought you to bed,” he says lowly, a threat barely there, warning me to be careful but fuck that.

“What did you do?” The words are torn from my throat. It’s not even the fear that’s the most overwhelming. As my throat dries and a sinking sensation in my stomach takes over, I look him in the eyes and realize how much trust I had in him. It wasn’t just business. I gave up more than I should have, and he did something to me. He hurt me.

How could you? I want to say the words, but I can’t bear to bring them up and admit to the both of us that I thought he wouldn’t hurt me. That I was that fucking naïve.

Jase’s arm is heavy and pulls me closer to him, even though I attempt to push him away as he says, “It’s just the endorphins crashing.” Although his words are drenched with irritation, there’s something else there, something buried deep down low in his words that I can’t decipher. “You’re okay,” he nearly whispers and then pulls me in closer, dragging my ass to his groin, my back to his chest and nuzzling the nape of my neck with the tip of his nose. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

His voice is a calming balm. Even as I continue to shake. As my fingers feel numb and then like they’re on fire. Cold again. “I’m so cold.”

I almost expect my confession to turn to fog in front of me. Like warm breath in the winter air.

“You were on a high,” Jase tells me and then presses his arm against mine, pushing it closer to me and acting as if I’m not trembling uncontrollably. “It’s all coming down. I thought you may have a little aftershock. That’s why I stayed,” he explains.

Aftershock. Endorphins.

He didn’t drug me. It’s not drugs. I can barely swallow for a long moment, trying to make it stop, but my body’s not listening.

“Does this happen all the time?” I ask him, attempting to let go of the anger, swallowing my regret that I immediately assumed the worst of him. It was my first instinct, and shame hits me hard as I realize he did quite the opposite.

I’m a bitch. I am an asshole. An embarrassed asshole.

With sleep lacing his words he tells me, “Not often, but I imagine that was your first?” and I instantly clench my legs. Remembering the ice, the cold, his touch, the fire.

My shoulders beg to buck forward, my eyes closing at the memory and the heat flourishing in my belly.

“Was it?” he teases me, nipping my neck and just that small touch threatens to push me over again.

“I can’t,” I say, and the words leave me in a single breath. A single plea. Instantly a chill creeps up my neck, the open air finding its place there as Jase moves his head to the other pillow.

A shaky breath leaves me as I turn my head to peek at him, craning my neck as my back is still positioned firmly against his chest. “Did we have sex?” I ask him, feeling a weight press down on my chest.

Jase merely gazes back at me. The depths of his dark eyes deepen as I stare into them. Licking my lower lip first, I explain, “I don’t remember everything.”

“We didn’t. No,” he answers me, and his expression remains guarded. “I told you, you’d have to beg me for it.”

His warmth calms me and slowly I stop trembling as hard. Very slowly, but the tremors are still there.

“For all I know, I did tell you to fuck me,” I tell him.

“You could barely look at me, let alone speak.”

“Holy shit,” I murmur beneath my breath.

“When I fuck you, trust me when I say you’ll remember it.”

His words force a shiver of pleasure through me when I remember I saw … I saw all of him. “Why am I shaking so much?”

“From you getting off so many times. Your body can only handle so much.”

“I can’t believe it can feel like that,” I say, thinking out loud.

“Sometimes the things that cause you pain can bring you so much pleasure.”

“Not everything that brings you pain.” The hollowness in my chest expands at my thought, drifting to darker places.

The shaking and trembling stop altogether, but Jase doesn’t let me go and I’m happy for that. There’s so much comfort in being held right now.

“Tell me something,” I ask Jase, resting my cheek into the pillow, feeling the warmth come back to me and the lull of sleep ready to pull me under once again.

“Tell you something?” He ponders and then readjusts on the bed, making it shake slightly. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything,” I answer as my eyelids fall heavily without second-guessing and my eyes pop open wider, remembering all the bits and pieces he told me about The Red Room. “Maybe about your brothers?”

Once again Jase’s lips find my neck, and this time he leaves an open-mouthed kiss there. I’m starting to love those kinds of kisses. I think they’re my favorite. “I had four brothers, now I have three and I recently learned that my younger brother, the one I was closest with…” He hesitates and again that small space on my neck feels the prickle of the air instead of his warmth. “I found out his death wasn’t an accident; it was murder. And it was supposed to be me, not him.”

“Oh my God,” I whisper, completely shocked. My heart breaks in half for him. I know the pain of losing a sibling, the agony of blaming yourself. But knowing it was supposed to be you instead? “I’m so sorry.” I put every ounce of sincerity into my words and pray it doesn’t come out the way everyone else says, like the people who say it simply because they don’t know what else to say. “I’m really sorry.”

Jase doesn’t say anything at all. Not for a while until he requests the same from me. “Tell me something.”

“I can’t figure you out, Jase,” I answer him almost immediately.

“You already know who I am, cailín tine. Don’t let me fool you.”

I look over my shoulder to ask him, “What’s that mean? Cailín tine?”

He gives me one of those smirks, but it’s almost sad and short lived. “Fiery girl.”

My entire body betrayed me earlier, and so does my heart in this moment, beating just for him with a warmth I’ve never felt before.

As I nuzzle back down into the pillow, I remember Officer Walsh and I spit out the words before I hide them forever. “A cop came asking about you today. He knocked at my door.”

Nerves prick down my neck, but Jase’s touch remains soothing and his voice calm when he asks, “What was his name?”

“Cody Walsh,” I answer and then feel Jase’s nod as his nose runs along my neck.

“He won’t be a problem. He’s just new.”

“Don’t you want to know what I told him?”

“If you want to tell me.”

“I didn’t tell him anything.”

His response is to kiss my neck. Then my jaw. He tries to lie back down, leaving my lips wanting but I take them with my own. Reaching up to grip the back of his neck, and pulling myself off the comfort of the bed.

It’s a quick kiss, but it was mine to have. And mine to give.

“What was that for?” he asks me, and I answer him honestly. “I wanted you to have it.”

Turning my back to him, I lie back under the covers. There are no more questions or conversations. With my eyes wide open, I pretend to sleep. After a short while, the bed protests under the weight of him moving, the covers are shrugged off behind me and I listen to him leave. Across the wooden floorboards, down the stairs. I can only faintly hear him in the living room, but I recognize the sound of the front door opening and closing.

All the while, there’s this vise wrapped around my heart. Keeping it still, not allowing it to move the way it used to.