Her Dark Wolves

What Sleep Refused To Hide

Chapter Eight

What Sleep Refused to Hide

Lily's POV

She had always been a light sleeper. Practical. Efficient even in rest seven hours, no more, no less, and she woke clean and oriented and ready.Dreams had never been something she paid much attention to. They were just

noise. Static between one day and the next.

That was before.

In the two weeks since she had accepted that she could not outrun whatever was happening to her since Tyson had stood in her office doorway with coffee and a real smile and dismantled her entire avoidance strategy without saying more than four words her sleep had become something else entirely.

It had become them.

Every night. Without fail. The moment her eyes closed and her body surrendered to unconsciousness, the dreams found her vivid and warm and detailed in ways that left her breathless and burning when she woke.She had taken to lying in bed for several minutes each morning just staring at the ceiling, waiting for her heart rate to return to something that could be called composed. It was becoming a problem.

It always began the same way. The office but not the office as it was in daylight. Darker. Quieter. The city lights bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling windows in long silver lines across the floor, the room stripped of everything sharp and corporate until it felt like somewhere older. Somewhere that had always existed just for this.

She was standing in the centre of it. She didn't know how she'd gotten there. She never knew. That was the nature of it she was simply there,and they were already in the room with her, and the air between them was pulled taut it hummed. came from the shadows by the window unhurried,inevitable, dressed in black with his collar open and his amber eyes fixed on her with an intensity that had no professional veneer over whatsoever. No desk between them. No distance. Just him, moving toward

her like a decision that had already been made. She should have stepped back. In the dream she never did.

His hand found her face first large and warm, cupping her jaw with a gentleness so at odds with everything she associated with him that it stole the breath from her body. His thumb traced her cheekbone. Slow. Deliberate. Like he was learning her by touch and intended to take his time about it.

You've been running from this.Jason said.

Not an accusation. Just a fact, delivered in that low, careful voice of his the one that placed every word like it had been considered and kept only because it was necessary. His eyes hadn't left hers.They were very close now. Close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from him, that cedar-dark scent of him wrapping around her like something she'd been cold without and hadn't realised.

I know,she whispered.

Stop.One word. Said against her temple, his lips brushing her skin so lightly it was almost unbearable the restraint of it more devastating than certainty would have been. His hand slid into her hair, tilting her head back, and she felt every nerve ending in her body light up at once like he'd found a switch she didn't know existed.

Then Tyson.Behind her. She hadn't heard him move but she felt him warm and solid at her back, his hands finding her waist with a quiet confidence that said he'd thought about this. His chin dropped to her shoulder, his mouth at the curve of her neck, and the contrast between them hit her all at once Jason's cool precision in front of her, Tyson's warmth at her back, and she suspended perfectly between them like something the universe had arranged on purpose.

We've got you, Kitten.

His lips pressed to the side of her neck soft, unhurried, with the patience of someone who understood that anticipation was its own kind of pleasure. She felt her eyes close. Felt her body lean back into him instinctively, her head tipping to give him more,while her hands found Jason's lapels in front of her and held on like the ground had tilted.

Jason's gaze dropped to her mouth. Something in his expression shifted that iron composure of his developing a crack she'd never seen in daylight, something raw and wanting surfacing briefly before he controlled it. His thumb brushed her lower lip and she forgot, entirely and completely, every sensible thought she'd ever had about professional distance.Tell me to stop.

She didn't. She couldn't. The word didn't exist in this version of the world. Tyson's hands tightened slightly at her waist that small, possessive pressure that shouldn't have undone her as thoroughly as it did and Jason closed the last breath of distance between them, his mouth finding hers with a quiet certainty that felt less like a first kiss and more like a homecoming. Like something that had been waiting a very long time to happen finally, finally being allowed to.

Warm. Deep. Unhurried in a way that made her feel simultaneously like the most important thing in the room and completely,willingly undone by it.

Tyson turned her gently from behind and then his mouth was at her jaw, her throat, the curve of her shoulder, tracing warmth across her skin in a trail that made her breath come unsteady and her fingers curl into the fabric of Jason's shirt. Both of them. Surrounding her. Unhurried and certain and so devastatingly present that she felt it in her bones.

You were always ours.From the very beginning.

She woke at three forty-seven with her heart slamming and her skin warm everywhere and the sheets twisted around her like she'd been fighting something in her sleep.

She lay completely still in the dark and stared at the ceiling and breathed. Deliberately. In and out. Until her pulse came down from wherever it had gone.

It was a dream and she was a grown adult woman who had complete control over her subconscious and this was absolutely fine and not at all something she was going to spend the next four hours awake thinking about.She spent the next four hours awake thinking about it.

By seven in the morning she had replayed every detail with a thoroughness that she refused to classify as anything other than involuntary. Had noticed, against her better judgment, that the dream versions of them had felt exactly like the real ones the same warmth, the same specific gravity of their presence, the same feeling of being utterly, helplessly seen.

Which was not something she needed to be thinking about on a Friday before work. At all. She walked onto the forty-second floor at eight fifty-three with her coffee, her blazer, and the most composed expression she had ever assembled in her life.

Jason was already in the main office. He looked up when she passed — just briefly, just that habitual amber glance that she was slowly, miserably learning to brace for. Said nothing. Went back to his work.

She made it to her office. Sat down. Opened her laptop.

Tyson appeared in her doorway at nine-oh-two. Knocked once she'd noticed he always knocked once, where Jason knocked twice and leaned against the frame with that easy, unhurried presence of his, the almost-smile already in place.

Morning,Kitten.

Her brain, unprompted and entirely without her permission, produced a highly specific image from approximately six hours ago. She felt her face do something she immediately controlled.Good morning, Mr. Addams, she said. Smoothly. Perfectly. Like a professional.

He tilted his head. That amber gaze moved over her face

in one slow pass reading something there she hadn't meant to show and the almost-smile deepened just slightly at the corner . Sleep well?

The question was entirely innocuous. Completely normal.There was no possible way he knew. And yet. Perfectly, she said

He held her gaze for one long beat. Then pushed off the doorframe, still smiling that not-quite-smile.Good.He walked away. Lily turned back to her screen. Put both hands flat on her desk. Breathed.

From across the floor, through the glass wall of the main office, she could feel Jason's eyes on the back of her head without looking. She'd developed a sense for it that particular warmth, that particular weight. She opened her email. Stared at it.Closed it again.

Opened her phone under the desk and typed to Jerry

with one hand.

The dreams are getting worse. His response arrived in eight seconds.

Define worse

I am not defining worse.

LILY.

She put her phone away. Got back to work. Told herself very

firmly that tonight she would sleep dreamlessly and wake up

a sensible person.

She already knew it was a lie.

Her mind had built a wall. Her dreams were tearing it down brick by brick."She could fight what she felt in daylight.But the night belonged to them completely.

End of Chapter Eight