“I was going to ask you that question. Before your furniture beat the crap out of me.” With another groan, he rubbed the back of his head and staggered to his feet. “I was trying to rescue you.”

“That’s okay, the demons were all in my head.”

“A nightmare?”

Eyes still filled with the remembered horror, she nodded.

Everything within him softened in sympathy and understanding. He knew the dreams, knew how haunting they could be. He started toward her, manfully not whimpering at the cracking, stinging pain in his shins and the base of his skull.

“I was back there.” Her breath hitched. “I couldn’t get out. I could hear my dad. Screaming—” Covering her mouth with a shaking hand, she looked away.

She wore only a soft white camisole and hot-pink bikini panties, but even in the low light of the lamp he could see the goose bumps raised on her flesh. Miles of sleek, smooth, bronzed flesh.

Down boy, he thought, and did the only thing he could. He reached for her. She met him halfway, curling into him, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Wrapping his arms around her, he absorbed her tremors and stroked a hand down her hair, down her back. “Just a dream,” he murmured, and pressed his lips to her temple.

“The flames were biting at me.”

There weren’t words to take those memories away so he just held her as tight as he could, stroking his hands up and down her quivering body. Later he couldn’t name the moment when things shifted from him giving the comfort, to him losing control of the embrace entirely, but it might have been when he felt her lips against his throat.

And then the tip of her tongue.

“Red.” He anchored his hands to a neutral position by fisting them in her hair.

She did the same to him, then lifted her head, lined up their mouths and took his. And just like that, he sank into her. He couldn’t help it. There they were, with him wearing only his opened jeans and her in her barely there camisole and panties, naked flesh brushing naked flesh, mouths fused, sharing breath, sharing that soulful connection he’d never been able to find in anyone else. It felt like a homecoming.

Still kissing him, she slipped her hand into his jeans, humming with approval when she wrapped her fingers around the biggest erection he’d ever had.

He put his hands on her shoulders, skimming her straps down. Then he lifted his mouth from hers to watch as he tugged the thin material away from her. Her breasts bounced free, and her nipples hardened for him. “You take my breath,” he murmured, and bent to taste her.

She gasped but kept her eyes open. Progress. He looked up at her in the lamp’s glow and felt his heart clench.