Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (11 page)

Her dreams were
something straight from hell.
 
In one
nightmare after another, she ran from Jayson, and he was always too fast and
too strong and too evil for her.
 
He
looked like an alternate version of himself—more demonic than anything.
 
His mouth was always twisted into a grin
that was wider than it should have been, and his eyes were maniacal, white and
huge, the dark pupils dancing with glee as he chased her down darkened, twisted
corridors.

In the final
nightmare before she woke up, he had caught her and taken her, hogtied, to some
dingy basement littered with empty pizza boxes that were crawling with maggots
and roaches.
 
And then he’d taken
out a huge knife and begun stabbing her as she screamed and screamed…

“Hey, hey, Caelyn,
wake up,” Elijah said, shaking her shoulder softly.

Her eyes snapped open
and she gave a whimper, hands flying to her face.
 
“Oh, God.
 
Oh, God,” she said.
 
She felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“It’s just a
nightmare.
 
You’re fine.
 
You’re safe.”

The room was dark and
for a moment, the shadows in the corner had almost seemed to resemble a person.

Caelyn’s heart
hammered against her chest.
 
“I
think…I think I’m having a panic attack.”

“Slide over,” he told
her.

She slid over and he
sat on the bed again.
 
“Look at me,”
he said.

She looked at him,
her eyes wide, breathing still labored.
 
She felt like she was underwater, choking.

“Slow down,” he said,
his voice calm.
 
“Breathe with me,
Caelyn.”
 
He made an exaggerated
breath, lifting his chest and then slowly exhaling.
 
“Come on, do it with me.”

“I can’t.
 
I don’t know how.”

“Here, can I take
your hand?” he asked.

She nodded.
 
“Yeah.”

Gently he took her
hand and placed it on his chest.
 
She could feel that he was even more muscular than she’d realized.
 
His pectorals were dense and chiseled,
like stone.
 
“Feel how I breathe,”
he said, “and match your breathing to mine.
 
You’re hyperventilating.”

He started to
breathe, and she kept her hand on his chest, noting the rise and fall.
 
It was hard to concentrate, though, when
she couldn’t stop thinking about how strong and muscular he was.

Maybe the distraction
of being close and touching him was what did the trick.
 
Or maybe it was slowing her breathing to
try and match Elijah’s.
 
All she
knew was that, within a few minutes, she had regained her equilibrium and no
longer felt like she was choking.

“Better?” he asked.

“Better,” she agreed.

“Good.”
 
He touched her hair, then, looking into
her eyes, and smiled.
 
“Think you
can go back to sleep?
 
We need to
get up in a couple of hours.”

“I hope so.”
 
She bit her lower lip.
 
“It might help if you stayed in this
bed, though.
 
With me.”

His eyebrows rose
again.
 
“Are you sure?”

“Nothing can happen
between us, though.
 
I can’t…I’m not
ready…”

“I wouldn’t expect
anything to happen,” he said.
 
“I’m
not Jayson.
 
I would never do that
to you.”

She nodded.
 
“I know, I just needed to say it.”

“Do you trust me?”

“I trust you
completely.”
 
She didn’t even know
why, but it was true.

He got under the
covers with her, and they faced one another in the bed, just inches apart from
one another.
 
He stroked her hair
softly and looked in her eyes.
 
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he said.

“I’ve never met
anyone like you,” she replied, softly.

It was dark, and
warm, and it seemed like they were the only two people in the world right
then.
 
Caelyn felt safe again,
really safe, for the first time since what had happened with Jayson.
 
But in a way, she felt safer than she
had going back before the assault, going back a long way.

The touch of Elijah’s
fingers as he caressed her hair was like magic.
 
His eyes were staring into hers, telling
her without words that she didn’t ever have to worry, that he would take care
of her.
 

I think I might be
falling for him, she realized, as she fell away into a peaceful, deep,
dreamless sleep.

***

When Caelyn awoke,
she was lying with her face pressed into Elijah’s chest, and one of his arms
was draped over her shoulder.
 
She
could hear him breathing deeply, still asleep.
 

The room was quiet,
but the television set was still flickering, as she lifted her head and checked
the clock on the nightstand.

Everything was still,
peaceful and warm.
 
She was tired,
but her adrenaline was flowing from being so close to Elijah.

She looked at his
face, the skin smooth and completely unblemished.
 
He looked like someone had painted
him.
 

Suddenly, his eyelids
snapped open and his big brown eyes were looking back at her.
 
“Hey,” he said, his voice froggy.

“Oh, hey,” she said,
jumping out of bed like she’d been given a high-voltage shock.
 

“You’re up early,” he
said, rubbing his eyes.
 
“We don’t
need to leave for like half an hour yet.”

“Well, I’m just
awake—ready to hit the road I guess,” she laughed nervously.
 
Then she went into the bathroom.
 
Her heart was beating rapidly and she
felt totally humiliated, having been caught staring at him like that.

He must think I’m a total freak.

Caelyn washed her
face, brushed her teeth and then came out of the bathroom.

When she opened the
door, she was greeted by the sight of Elijah, stripped to the waist, as he bent
over his bag and searched for a new shirt.
 
Finally, he stood up, holding the new t-shirt in his hands.
 
He smiled at her, but all she could see
was his incredible body.

He was like a fitness
model. He could have been on one of those infomercials, showing how to use some
ridiculous machine that would give you ripped abs for five payments of $19.99.

 
She averted her gaze, pretending to look
out the window.
 
“It’s still dark,”
she said, by way of conversation.

He was taking an
awfully long time to put his shirt back on.
 
“Yeah, I like driving early in the
morning like this.
 
You grab a
coffee, put on the radio, there’s hardly any traffic and you just go.
 
It’s kind of beautiful in a way.”

She made eye contact
with him and they both smiled.

“That’s poetic,” she
said.

He shook his
head.
 
“I must be tired still,
talking that shit.”
 
He pulled his
shirt on.

She almost wished he
hadn’t.

A few minutes later,
they were back in the SUV and on the road again, having gassed up once more and
gotten fresh coffee for the drive.

It was much as Elijah
had said.
 
There were still very few
cars on the highway, and the sky was just starting to turn purple and pink, and
lighten a bit above the trees on the horizon.

He turned the radio
on low, and there was just the soothing sounds of voices talking about safe
subjects, and the taste of coffee and the presence of Elijah beside her,
driving, and occasionally looking over and giving her a cute little smile.

They didn’t talk much
for the next few hours, it was enough to drive and look forward to
Florida—where they would arrive that evening.

The peacefulness
wasn’t disturbed again until the text came in.

She looked at her
phone, hoping it was anyone but him, anyone at all.

When she looked,
though, his name was staring at her in stark black and white.

JAYSON.

And then his texts,
one after the other:
Hey, haven’t heard
from u lately.
 
U around tonite? Hit
me back.

She turned her phone
off and threw it in her purse.
 
She
thought briefly of tossing the phone out the window, but ultimately decided not
to.
 
He wasn’t going to control her
actions from a distance.
 
She
wouldn’t destroy something of value just because he was using it to contact
her.

Once again, Caelyn
could barely breathe.
 
Elijah
glanced at her.
 
“Who was that?” he
asked, suspicious.

“No one,” she
lied.
 

“Seemed like someone,
based on the way you threw your phone and the look on your face.”

“It’s nothing.”
 
For some reason, she didn’t want to tell
him.
 
Part of her was afraid he
would try to reply or respond to Jayson in some way.

Another part of her
simply didn’t want to deal with it at all, wanted to pretend that everything
would be automatically fine once they reached Florida.

But she was starting
to suspect that reality was more complicated than that.

Jayson texted her
again and again that day.

She knew because she
checked her phone once more when she was in the bathroom at a rest stop some
time later, when they’d crossed into South Carolina and were bearing down on
Georgia.

There were three more
texts, sent about an hour apart from each other.

Are u ignoring me?

We should talk.

Call me ASAP. I want to see u again.

Caelyn promptly
turned her phone off again.
 
She
felt almost faint, her stomach lurching as she went outside and saw Elijah
topping off the gas tank at the nearby gas pumps.

He knew something was
wrong.
 
She could tell by the way he
watched her, as though he was waiting for her to break down and tell him the
truth.

And she wanted to
tell him.
 
Hell, she was starting to
think that maybe having Elijah send a couple of “friends” around to tell Jayson
to stop contacting her might not be such a bad thing after all.

But then she brushed
it off once more.
 
Jayson would get
the hint eventually.

She just needed to
keep ignoring him.

***

It all started to
feel real sometime outside of Savannah, Georgia.
 

That was when she
first saw the palm trees.

“Oh my God,” she
practically yelled.

“What?
 
What is it?” Elijah asked, looking
around, as if expecting to see a rattlesnake in the car.

She pointed out the
window.
 
“Palm trees.
 
Look!”

He shook his
head.
 
“You really are nuts,
Caelyn.
 
I thought we were about to
be attacked by terrorists or something.”

“I didn’t realize
we’d be seeing them so soon,” she marveled.
 
They swayed gently in the breeze as they
passed them, and she rolled down her window and sniffed the air.
 
It smelled like summer and freedom.
 
She yelled out the window.
 
“Florida!” she said, laughing.
 
“We’re coming!”

Elijah glanced at her
again.
 
“Are you losing it or what?”

“We’ve been in this
car for forever.
 
I think I’m
allowed to have a moment.”

“Let me know when
it’s my turn.”

“Go on, have a
moment,” she told him.

“Fine.”
 
He rolled down the window and stuck his
head out.
 
“Woo-hoo!
 
Florida!”
 
The car swerved and he abruptly
straightened, blinking as he got control of the wheel.
 
“Oops.”