Nightmares from Within (23 page)

“A Seer? So that’s what she’s called?”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s that make you?”

“I’m what they refer to as a Guide,” he responded.

“You keep saying
they
. Who’s
they
?”

“
They
are whatever higher power you choose to believe in.”

“Wow,” I replied. “Could you be anymore vague?”

Daniel let out a little chuckled and leaned back into the couch. “You asked, I answered, my man. Sorry if my response doesn’t satisfy you.”

I sat there in silence for awhile, trying to absorb everything I’d learned over the past few weeks. I had so many questions and I didn’t know if I’d ever get the proper answers for them. Still, I took a shot. “So, was becoming a Guide kind of the same process for you as becoming a Seer was for Taylor? I know her gift, or whatever you call it, didn’t start to develop until she turned seven. Were you around the same age when it all started for you?”

He gave my question some thought before answering. “Not quite. I’m not really like you and Taylor,” he replied.

“In what sense?”

He scratched the back of his neck and I knew that whatever he was going to say would be just as vague as before. “Let’s just say that I’m…omnipresent.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised after everything that had happened since meeting Taylor, but I was. “You aren’t even really human, are you?”

That question earned me another chuckle. “Not in the typical sense, no.”

With that, I decided playing twenty questions with Daniel was a wash. I’d just lived through one of the worst days in my existence and wasn’t up for letting it last any longer. Daniel finally decided to take off, and since there was no way I was leaving Taylor alone, I stripped down to my boxer briefs and crawled into her bed. I pulled her back to my chest and wrapped myself around her as tightly as I could without disturbing her. I let sleep wash over me.

I woke with a start a while later and noticed Taylor wasn’t in the bed with me. With the exception of the red numbers glowing from the alarm clock letting me know it was just past two in the morning, the room was shrouded in darkness.

I slid from the warmth of the bed and into my pants to look for Taylor. A sense of fear washed over me when I couldn’t find her anywhere in the apartment. I didn’t even bother throwing a shirt on. Instead, I just ran out of the apartment to the elevator to get down to the lobby. I came skidding to a halt on the marble floor of the lobby, unfazed by the fact I was barefoot and shirtless.

I scanned the lobby and I saw no sign of Taylor but Gary was sitting behind his desk. “Have you seen her?” I asked. With every passing second, I was growing more and more panicked.

Gary heaved a heavy sigh and pointed toward a hall off to the left of the elevators. “She’s in the gym, son. She does this when she can’t sleep. She wakes up in the middle of the night and runs her ass off to try and clear her head. You might want to get to her quick. From how she looked when she headed down here, I don’t think there’s enough running in the world to clear the darkness in her right now.” He gave his head a shake. “I’m worried about that girl. I’ve never seen her so broken down. I don’t know if she’s going to be able to come back from this one.”

She was going to come back from this. I’d make sure of it. Even if it took me dragging her back kicking and screaming.

Taylor

The whir of the treadmill normally overpowered the endless strip of flashes bouncing around in my skull and helped to tune out the constant noise rattling around inside. I woke up an hour ago and knew there was no way I’d get back to sleep. So I untangled myself from Jordan and decided to go for a run. It was one of the few things that always helped.

Except, this time it wasn’t helping. The only thing in my head was Cassie, playing in a constant loop, over and over, never ending. Overwhelming grief was slowly suffocating me. It was hard to breathe.

I couldn’t clear my head. I barely heard the whir of the treadmill as my feet pounded against it. All I could do was replay everything Cassie had ever said to me. There was one thing that stood out more than anything else.

Love you, friend.

Love you, friend.

Love you, friend.

I had to hop onto the sides of the treadmill to keep from falling off. Tears clouded my vision and the sobbing started up again. I felt a strong arm wrap around my waist as another came around and hit the stop button.

“It’s okay,” Jordan whispered in my ear. “Shh, it’s okay, baby.”

“It’s not okay. None of this is
fucking okay
!” Jordan dragged me over to a weight bench and pulled me into his lap as I continued to cry. “This is my fault. All of it…it’s all my fault. If I had just tried harder, if I…”

He grabbed my chin between his finger and thumb and turned my face to his. “It’s not your fault, Taylor,” he demanded. “You did everything you could.”

“But I didn’t! Don’t you see? If I hadn’t spent my life avoiding these visions maybe I could have stopped this. Maybe I would have seen something that could have helped…”

“Stop! Just stop, baby. You can’t take the blame for losing Cassie, sweetheart. You have as much control of that as you do over what you see in your visions.”

I pulled from his grasp and started pacing in front of him. “Then what’s the point of this, huh? What’s the
fucking
point, Jordan? Why do I have this goddamn gift if I can’t do anything to save the people I love?”

Those last few words came out broken as the tears clogged my throat. I went down on my knees in front of Jordan and clung to his shirt in desperation. “Help me forget,” I begged. I pressed my lips to his hoping to illicit a reaction. “Please, Jordan. Just help me forget. Just for a little while.
Please
.”

Jordan’s hands wrapped around my wrists and made me release my grip on him. “You don’t want this. You’re mourning, Taylor. This isn’t what you want.”

He didn’t understand, this had nothing to do with what I wanted. What I wanted was for Cassie to still be alive. This was about what I
needed
. I shook my head manically. “I
need
this, Jordan. You’re the only one that can help me forget. I
have
to forget.”

I kissed him again, and after a few seconds he finally responded and kissed me back. I buried my fingers in his silky blond hair and pulled with more force than I’d ever used before as I tried to intensify the kiss.

When he pulled back I was afraid he was going to stop me. He stood from the bench and reached for my hand. “Come on,” he said as he pulled me from the ground and out the doors of the gym. As soon as the elevator doors closed he slammed me against the wall and attacked my mouth in a brutal kiss. It was exactly what I wanted. I didn’t need slow, passionate loving. I needed rough and reckless…hard. That’s what was going to help me forget, even if it was only for a little while.

Putting a hand under the back of my thigh, Jordan pulled it up around his hip and I followed suit with the other one. As soon at the elevator dinged on my floor and the doors opened Jordan was moving. He carried me through the apartment and into the bedroom where he dropped me on the bed and pulled my running clothes off while I worked the button and zipper of his pants.

It was only a matter of seconds before we were both naked and Jordan was spreading my thighs to make room for his hips.

He buried himself all the way in one hard thrust. My back arched off the bed at the wonderful combination of pleasure and pain. “God, yes,” I panted. “Just like that, Jordan. Fuck me hard. I need it just like this.”

He pulled out until just the tip rested inside me. “I know, baby. I know,” he said against my lips just before he slammed back in. I cried out at the wonderful things he was doing to my body as he kept up his punishing pace.

I felt my climax building faster than it ever had before and I welcomed it. I didn’t care about prolonging things. I just needed release…needed to clear my mind.

“Faster, Jordan.”

Our sweat slick bodies moved against each other as I planted my feet in the mattress and lifted my hips to meet each thrust. “You’re almost there, baby, just let go.”

At his words, I tumbled over the edge of release, screaming out as the most intense orgasm I’d ever experienced coursed through my body.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, Taylor. So perfect.” Moments later, Jordan joined me in his release. His head thrown back as his pleasure took over, he let out a loud groan. His hips were still pumping until he’d drained every last bit of himself into me before he finally collapsed on top of me. I welcomed his weight and wrapped my arms and legs around him, holding on tightly.

“God, I love you, Taylor,” he murmured into my neck before finally lifting his head and staring straight into my eyes. “I love you so damn much, Crimson. You’re my world.”

Tears instantly welled up and slid from the corners of my eyes and into my hair.

“I’ll do anything for you. I just need you to know that.”

I couldn’t speak. All I could do was nod as he poured his heart out to me. Once we’d both managed to calm our breathing, Jordan pulled himself out of my body and I instantly missed the intimate connection. But he didn’t go far. He pulled the covers back up over both of us and wrapped me in those strong arms of his. I’d told him what I needed to get myself through the night and he’d given it to me, no questions asked.

Seconds later we were both asleep.

A week had passed since I sat in a hard, cold folding chair and watched them lower Cassie into the ground. My best friend. The only best friend I’d ever truly had.

Benny sat on my right, Jordan on my left with Daniel standing behind me. For all the people I had surrounding me…supporting me, all I can remember thinking was how alone I felt.

Jordan refused to tell me anything about Cassie’s death. He insisted that having the details wasn’t going to help…that I shouldn’t remember her the way she died, but how she was when she was alive.

I knew by how he spoke, that what Cassie had gone through must have been awful so a part of me was grateful to Jordan for protecting me from that.

After several days of not leaving my apartment, lying in bed while Daniel and Jordan hovered, I finally decided that I couldn’t take it any longer. The longer I stayed in that apartment the more I felt like the walls were closing in on me. The only time I felt at ease was at night, just before I fell asleep when Jordan wrapped himself around me in my bed, blanketing me with his warmth.

Neither he nor Daniel left my side since Cassie went missing. And although I appreciated their support, the two of them were driving me out of my mind.

“Are you sure you should be working right now?” Daniel asked again…for the hundredth time.

When I woke up that morning I decided that sitting around all day wasn’t doing me any good. I told them both that I was returning to work and needless to say, neither of them thought it was the best idea. On top of being worried about how I was handling losing Cassie, they were both concerned with my wellbeing since The Poet was still out there.

I not so nicely informed them that their opinions didn’t matter for shit and that I was going, whether they liked it or not. Apparently to them, that meant I was stuck with Daniel sitting in my section the whole damn shift, eating discounted meals and bugging the hell out of me whenever I passed his table. If he wasn’t such a good tipper I might have kicked his ass out.

“You ask me that one more time and I swear to God, Daniel, I’m going to have the kitchen staff spit in your food for the rest of eternity.”

He held his hands up in surrender at the thought of tainted food. “You got it, boss lady. I’ll shut up now.”

I shook my head and walked away to go wait on my other customers. I was pouring a cup of coffee when the man at the table asked, “Bad day?”

I glanced from the cup to the handsome, smiling face looking up at me. He looked to be in his mid to late thirties with nice brown eyes and a few days growth on his face. I might have appreciated the genuine smile he was giving me if I wasn’t hurting. But even with all the bad things that had happened, Jordan was still at the forefront of my mind and I didn’t have it in me to look at another man as long as Jordan was in my life. And he’d made it pretty clear over the past week that he wasn’t going anywhere.