He was not quiet. He gave a deep moan as he came, and pressed his forehead tighter against hers.
“Good?” she asked.
“Amazing.”
She’d thought so, but it was nice to have confirmation.
They lay there for a while, and then Jas stirred, helping her up. “Will you sleep in here?” he asked.
Her heart melted. “Yes.”
They tidied up and then climbed into bed, both of them still naked. At some point, she’d want to examine his body in greater detail, but that could wait for now.
He pulled her close, so her head lay on his shoulder. Thoughts tried to nibble on the edges of her consciousness. The two of them needed to talk. It was very important they talk, actually. About what this meant.
If it means anything.
Katrina brushed that cynical voice away. It had to mean something. He said he wanted her.
He also told his brother you were just a client. Which one is true?
She calmed when his hand brushed over her butt and patted her there, like he knew she was fretting. “Go to sleep. We can deal with this in the morning.”
Deal with this didn’t sound romantic and lovely, now, did it? But she was too exhausted to think about it and dissect it and take it personally. Sleep crashed over her, and she welcomed it.
WHEN KATRINA WOKE up from a dark dream in which she was running, running through an endless tunnel with no light at the end, struggling to breathe, she knew she wasn’t going to be sleeping for the rest of the night.
Katrina was dimly aware Jas was lying next to her, but cuddling wouldn’t help her right now. She slipped from the bed to sit on the floor, the rug and the plank floors underneath grounding her. She crawled away to brace herself against the wall. Her brain buzzed like a million bees had set up residence inside it. Her breathing grew short, sweat beaded on her forehead, her chest tightened with pain. The dark room spun around her.
Heart attack!
No. It wasn’t a heart attack. She inhaled and exhaled, letting the panic wash over her. For her, anxiety was like a rip current. The harder she fought it, the more it dragged her out to sea.
In a real rip current, you got out of it by swimming perpendicular to the current. Here, she just had to tread water. Eventually it would pass.
It would pass.
It would pass.
Everything passed. Nothing felt the same forever.
More sweat, more tears. She doubled over, the pain in her chest becoming too intense. A light touch moved over her hair, but even a light touch felt too sharp. She shook her head, rejecting it, and it vanished.
Katrina let the storm thunder and rage, and slowly her heart rate began to slow, the pain growing less intense. She inhaled deep, dragging the oxygen into her lungs in greedy gulps.
When the attack had mostly passed, she tipped her head back against the wall and opened her eyes. Jas sat across from her on the floor, holding an orange prescription bottle. He lifted it up in question.
She shook her head. The anti-anxiety meds were on an as-needed basis, and other than her lingering nausea, she no longer needed them tonight.
Jas didn’t ask her what had happened, for which she was grateful. She hated that question, because she rarely had a response. “You okay?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He studied her, as if confirming that she was telling the truth. He placed the bottle between them. “Do you want a hug?”
Katrina wrapped her arms around herself. “I would very much like that, thank you.”
He sat next to her and pulled her into his arms. She rested her head on his chest.
His naked chest.
Oh right, they were both naked.
She snuggled closer. That was fine with her. This was the stuff of dreams, naked-cuddling with Jas.
The zings were muted now, satisfied by physical exhaustion, but still there, comfortably hovering under the surface. These weren’t the electric lustful zings from before, but cozy zings. The zings that invited cookies in front of a fire.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“Yes, but I like the cold.”
He shifted. “The winters here were my favorites. It can get over a hundred in the summer, but the winters make up for it.”
“Yikes. Does it ever snow?”
“Once, when I was a kid. So not really.”
“I miss the snow.”
“Tahoe’s not far from here. Do you want to go? The car’s gassed.”
She choked out a laugh, then looked up at him when she realized he wasn’t laughing. “We can’t get in the car and drive to Tahoe.”
“Why not?”
She opened her mouth, but she had no explanation. “Because . . . well, that’s wild.”
“If you want the snow, we can go.”
She ran an internal check of her body. They could go, if she wanted to. “What would we do there?”
“Have a snowball fight.”
“I’ve never had a snowball fight. At least, not since I was a child.” When her mother had been alive.
“I can fetch some mittens from Bikram.”
Katrina smiled, charmed at the thought of tussling in the snow with Jas. “No. I’m too tired tonight, but maybe some other time.”
He ran his fingers up and down her arm, soothing her. “Do you have bad dreams?” she whispered, though she knew the answer.
“Yes,” Jas said, his admission coming faster than she’d expected. “I often have bad dreams.”
“Do you want to tell me about them?”
He puffed up his cheeks. “Not now.”
She wanted to touch his scarred knee, ask him to share, but didn’t want to push him. “I had one.”
“What was it about?”
“I don’t remember. My dad, I think.” All this talk about family and blood. She closed her hands into fists.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She nodded, then shook her head.
She’d felt so strong and independent. Taking up space. She didn’t want her dad’s memory to taint that.
Then again, whenever she did think about her dad, it was like a boil welling up that needed to be lanced. Her therapist was usually who she went to for that. It wasn’t even dawn yet, she couldn’t call Andy.
It would make her happier to talk right now.
Happiness is a radical act.
“When my mom died in that car accident, they had to hunt down my father. I’d barely seen him when she was alive. That first day, when he picked me up from the social worker, he told me he would provide for me until I could get a job.”
“You were nine.”
She shrugged. “Yeah. I got scouted a few years later, though. He was happy to stick around while I was making money and funding his lifestyle, so long as he could direct what I did and when I did it.”
“What an asshole.”
“He was an asshole. He controlled . . . everything. Where I ate, what I ate, what I drank, who I saw.” He would have controlled who she married if she hadn’t had a brief evening of rebellion the night she’d met Hardeep.
After they’d talked all night and she’d told Hardeep about her dad, the man had leaned forward. Sounds like we could help each other. Marry me, and you’ll get away from your father. You’ll have money, comfort, a doting husband.
She’d stared at him across the few feet that separated them in the library. What will you get out of it? Sex?