What Sleeps in Shadows

Chapter Ten

Honestly, Raven had half-expected Damian to rescind his offer of spending the holiday with him and his family after what happened over the weekend. He had sat there and told her point-blank that she was a temptation, and Raven couldn't find her own courage to tell him that she felt the same way. Damian was her own temptation, and she knew that whenever she got too close to him, her mind wandered to all the secretive places and hollows she wasn't sure if she was allowed to indulge in.

But, oh, how she wanted to indulge.

Raven was embarrassed to admit she had played Friday's mistake over and over in her mind, until it felt like she could recite every line, and remember every gasp. And sometimes when she thought about it, she changed things, and pretended she was a little bolder. She thought about the way he had sounded so desperate for something, as he shoved her tightly against the workbench, as his mouth moved over her, as his fingers tore her tights. And then she found herself wondering about what it would have felt like to trace the outline of his cock through his clothes, to feel him twitch under her fingers as she unfastened his jeans and released him.

But more than any of that, she wanted to know that Damian - poised, composed, cold, calculating, distant Damian - could feel just as hopeless and lost as she could. She wanted to know that she wasn't suffering alone in all of this, and that he was just as twisted up about this as she was.

"Stop... stop thinking about it."

His voice was a low rumble, like far-off thunder, and it ripped Raven from her own daydreams. She turned and looked into the driver's seat with a flush, watching as Damian white-knuckled the steering wheel and glared out at the horizon. He changed lanes and merged onto an exit ramp, looking a bit like she needed to reel his control back in. His lips twitched, but through the thin afternoon light, she could still see his eyes darken and a flush tint his cheeks. Had he been thinking about it too? Or was he still just feeling the echoes of her own emotions?

She shifted in her seat and set her hands in her lap, looking out at the trees as they sped by. They were still an hour away from his home, but most of it was country road.

Quiet, empty, country road.

"Sorry." She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and cleared her throat, her heart skipping a beat. "I... ah... my mind was wandering. I didn't meant to... bother you."

"I know. I know what you were thinking about, and it's not exactly helping any of this." His right arm twitched, and he glanced at her. She felt like his stare was boring into her, breaking off bits of herself and claiming them as his own, but she couldn't turn away. Damian shifted again, and his mouth tugged into a frown. "It was something that happened, and we need to work past it."

She huffed out an annoyed breath, her mouth reacting before she had a chance to stop it. "It seems to be something that is happening with more frequency." Raven winced and she clenched her fists together, closing her eyes. "Sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

"You did mean it like that." Damian sighed and shifted the car into a higher gear, running a hand through his hair. The tension rose between them again, stretching painfully thin as they both tried to search for the right thing to say, but nothing was coming to mind, and they were both trying to stumble through a mess of emotions that didn't make sense to either of them. "I don't know what to say, Raven."

"I didn't ask you to say anything, and I didn't ask for an explanation. Honestly." She shrugged and turned away from him, looking out the window. If she kept staring at him, she knew she would be doomed to make poor decisions all over again. She pulled her sleeves down over her fingers, as if she needed something to do with her hands. "Look, I know that this is beyond complicated, and we both keep making... wrong decisions. More often than I think either of us care to admit."