Breakaway

Chapter 11 - Breakaway

DANA

After he kissed me, the rough scratch of his stubble rubbing against the sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist made a shiver race up my spine.

He instantly lifted his head and looked at me, concern making his eyes the deep green of moss. "You're shaking."

"It's okay." I didn't want him to stop. I wanted him to touch me more, push me further, test my boundaries.

He shook his head, and he dropped his hold on my hand. "It was too much. Too soon." His eyes took on that tortured look they had so often, like everything I was asking of him was too much to expect, since he thought of me as a kid sister.

I didn't want him to stop, though, as selfish as it may have been. "No, I..." I lifted my hand to his face and ran my fingertips along the prickly surface of his jawline. I shivered again. "Don't stop."

He let out a groan, soft and strangled in his throat. But he turned his head toward my hand and pressed his lips against the inside of my forearm again.

My pulse was roaring, so loud in my head and so frantic in my wrist.

Slowly, torturously slowly, he placed a series of tiny little kisses up my arm all the way to the inner bend of my elbow.

A wave of dizziness crashed against the backs of my knees. I put my left hand on his shoulder to support myself so I wouldn't fall into him.

He kissed me there, again and again until he'd covered every minuscule patch of flesh inside my elbow with his lips multiple times. His fight for air was rough and ragged like mine. The rise and fall of his chest lifted his shoulders, pushed my supporting arm up and dropped it down with each breath.

Then he moved higher, his lips blazing a fiery path along my inner biceps.

I couldn't think. Could barely breathe. Needed more. I released his shoulder and moved that hand to fist in his hair behind his head, pulling him closer.

The side of his face brushed against the outside of my breast. That was when all the pleasant tingles turned to full-on panic.

I ripped myself away from him, fear clawing at my lungs. Flew around to the far side of the bed. Grabbed the pepper spray and held it out in front of me as I crumpled down into a ball in the corner.

"Fuck!" Eric was up from his chair and coming toward me, but he stopped halfway across the room and turned back. "Fuck. I'm sorry." He paced, running his hands through his hair, over his face.

I was shaking so hard I worried I would accidentally spray him. But it was him. It was Eric. I'd asked him to do what he was doing. I wanted it. I wanted him.

Keeping my head pressed back into the corner so my lungs were open and I could get as much oxygen as possible into them, I reached up with a shaky hand to put the pepper spray back on the nightstand. It clattered around for a second before I dropped it.

Eric spun around to me, his eyes wild. "No. Pick it up again." He marched to the door and I heard the locks of the main door click into position before he moved to the passage between our rooms. "Pick it up, and come lock this door behind me."

"Eric?" His name, nothing more than that, was almost too much for me to get out.

"I'm sorry. I— Just pick it up and lock the door, Dana." He was standing just inside my room, looking more haggard and pained than I'd ever seen him. "Please."

Nausea was roiling in my stomach. I swallowed, trying to force it down and keep it at bay. "Stay with me." Even saying that much nearly released the bile building in my throat. But I needed him to stay. I needed him to fight through my panic as hard as I was fighting.