The breathing exercises weren’t working. Cassidy persisted in drawing in one slow, deep breath at a time, but she could feel the panic rising.
She could have died.
She could have been raped.
She could have killed him if she’d hit him in a different spot.
The could haves rolled through her mind in relentless waves, and she was losing her shit.
Gage had wanted to talk. God, the very idea gave her shivers. Talk? No, thank you—forever and ever, amen. But she’d felt him slip into sleep about an hour ago, and she wished with all her might that he were awake right now.
They didn’t have to talk, per se, for him to make her feel better, right? He’d turned her down earlier when she’d asked him to fuck her, and she guessed she understood why, but she could do with a nice, brisk shagging right about now.
Something nastily distracting.
Maybe she could wake him up?
She leaned into him, not realizing she was inhaling his scent as she did so until her lungs were full of him. Gage never failed to smell like well-tended leather, the crisp outdoors from his motorcycle rides, and the mint gum he chewed all the time. It was the scent she’d slowly grown addicted to over the past few weeks.
She rarely initiated kisses between them. Whenever they kissed, and it was often, Gage was the person to swoop down and place his lips over hers or demand she go on her tiptoes and lay one on him. But now, she pressed her lips to his neck. His skin felt so warm against hers—warmer than normal. Her lips pulled downward, still pressed against him. How cold was she?
He sighed in his sleep, but other than that, she got no reaction from him. Not even below his waist, where they were pressed together.
Shit. She was out of luck in the fucking department.
She squeezed her eyes closed. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep!
It was not going to work.
Her eyes popped open again, and the could haves surged in volume until they nearly overwhelmed her.
She eased away from Gage’s warmth. For a moment, his arms held around her. She drew back farther, and, in his sleep, Gage made a dissatisfied sound deep in his throat, released her, and turned to his other side.
Without his heat and—damn it—comfort, there was no containing the shivers she’d been able to hold at bay through sheer force of will. They were so bad, her cheap bed was shimmying. She had to get up or risk waking Gage and facing more of his insistence that they talk.
She slid to the edge of the bed, braced herself, and planted her feet on the floor. The air in her bedroom was freezing. She gritted her teeth to keep them from chattering, and she lurched toward her dresser.
Easing a drawer open, she grabbed a pair of sweat pants and a hoodie. She shoved her quaking limbs into them, unable to get the warm clothes on as quickly as she wished due to her lack of control.
As she pulled her hoodie down as far as it would go and tucked her hands into the sleeves, she swept her gaze across her room, feeling at a total loss.
What now?
She was awake. Out of bed. On the verge of a mental collapse.
Her gaze landed on Gage’s sleeping form, and held.
From where she stood, his face was turned toward her. He was sprawled out on his belly in the middle of her bed, and the blankets had drifted down his torso until they draped across his lower back. The cut muscles of his backside were clearly visible beneath the thin sheet, and she could practically see through it to the amazing ass she liked to nibble on a regular basis.
This.
This was the distraction she needed!
She groped behind her back until her fingers encountered one of the many sketchpads she kept on her desk. She whipped it around to her front, spied a charcoal pencil stuffed in the spiral, and grabbed her desk chair.
Her gaze still trained on him, she wheeled the chair to the side of the bed, raised it as high as it would go, and sank into it.
She’d been wanting to draw him forever. Now was her chance.
She flicked a cursory glance over the tip of the pencil. Sharp enough. Good. Flipping to the first blank page she could find, she set charcoal to paper, the resulting rasp immediately settling some of her nerves.
Just as she started to worry about being able to sketch while shivering like mad, she realized her shaking had abated.
She quickly abandoned that line of thought in case merely thinking about shivering would make it come back. In long strokes, she started crafting Gage’s perfect body, easily falling into the same methodical trance she did whenever she sketched.
Should have tried this hours ago. All the time she’d spent worrying. She shook her head, focusing back on her project.
As she began to sketch the slabs of muscle that had distracted her in the first place, her breathing shallowed. The charcoal was not the only rasp in the room any longer.
She finished one sketch only to frantically flip the page and start all over again with another, adding details now that weren’t actually in the room.
She did this often—imagining her subjects in a different setting. Many of her sketches served as inspiration for her writing and vice versa.
She started her third sketch, allowing her mind to wander as she did so. She was in better control of herself now and no longer needed to be on her guard.
Before she realized it, her third sketch was done, and she paused before turning the page, the frenzied need to sketch suddenly gone.
She looked over her work, and then she froze. “What the fuck?” Quickly, she darted a glance at Gage, worried she’d waked him. He slept on.
Frowning, she gazed down at the sketch again. The room—hell, the building—she’d drawn him in was straight out of her set design for the secondary character’s residence in her game.
The character who just happened to be the main gigolo of the story: the one who was helping out the heroine.
She narrowed her eyes and drank in more of the minute details, biting into her bottom lip with greater force at each condemning piece of evidence she spotted.
Damn it. Her character was Gage?
She shook her head. “No,” she vowed out loud. This had been a mistake. A slip. Of course she would mess up—she’d just been through hell. The characters in her game and her real life were two very different things.
Right?
Feeling slightly nauseated, she began to close the sketchpad, turning in her chair toward the desk while she did so.
When her gaze landed on her computer, however, she paused.
Keeping the pad opened to her latest sketch, Cassidy wheeled up to the keyboard.
Something was different. Something was gone.
My writer’s block.
She straightened. It was gone! Just . . . vanished.
She dropped the sketchpad to the desk, and placing her fingers to the keys, made them fly. Words landed on the screen quicker than she could track. Every once in a while, her gaze flitted over the sketch of Gage as her character, but then she was back in the game, writing the ending to end all endings.
It was good. Really good. Her boss was going to shit himself.
“Freckles?”
The groggy voice from behind her startled her so much she nearly shrieked. Her fingers stilled on the keys. She blinked several times then turned around.
Gage was partially up in bed, propped on his bent elbow and scrubbing his face with his other hand. “Why are you up?”
She watched the muscles of his chest ripple for long moments. Oh yeah. He’d asked her a question. She jerked her gaze to his. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Shit,” he murmured. “I fell asleep, didn’t I?”
She shrugged. “It’s no big deal.” Turning back to the computer, she surreptitiously eased her sketchpad closed.
“Yes, it is a big deal. Damn it.”
She turned to him again and was immediately dismayed by the truly upset expression on his face. “Gage, it’s fine. I promise.”
He looked at her hard for several seconds. “Tell me what to do to make it better.” He straightened. “Do you still want me to fuck you?”
“No,” she was saying before she was even conscious of forming the word.
Wait . . . no? She frowned. Why did that not sound like just the thing she needed? She blinked, and her eyes felt heavy and itchy.
Immediate relief flooded her. Tired. That’s all. She was exhausted, and it felt as though her body might actually let her sleep.
“No,” she said again. “I think I want to . . . sleep, actually.”
His face cleared, and he opened his arms. “Come here, then.”
She closed the lid to her laptop and pushed to her feet. The sudden vertical position made her feel as though she hadn’t slept in a century. She padded over to Gage, her head practically bobbing with every step.
She slid into his open arms. They simultaneously sighed.
She grimaced. Embarrassing. Luckily, he couldn’t see her face as he laid them down, tucking her against his body and covering them with the blankets.
“I’m staying awake until I’m sure you’ve fallen asleep this time.” His rough jaw scraped against her hair.
She was asleep with her next breath.