“You wake up in a bad mood all the time or just when you think of me bangin’ another bitch?” he asked.

Needles pierced through my brain at his last four words, the pain so severe, I flinched and felt nausea roil up my throat.

“Hey,” his voice came soft at me. Soft and close.

I opened my eyes and saw him in my space, his face dipped to mine.

“What’s the matter with me?” I whispered, my recent uncontrollable and totally irrational behavior filtering through my conscious, freaking me out.

“You get you’re mine?” he asked back instead of giving me an answer.

I was not ready to commit to that verbally so I just stared at him.

He let that go but kept talking.

“If you’re mine, I’m yours. Not even gonna think of another man’s hands on you, much less anything else.” His jaw tensed even as he continued, talking mostly between his teeth. “Tear the room apart if I did.”

“This is freakadelic, Abel, and not in the good way freakadelic can be.”

His head twitched as his brows drew together.

“Freakadelic?” he asked.

I nodded once. “And not in a good way.”

He shook his head, but his features softened, most specifically his mouth.

Oh man.

Definitely.

Unbelievably.

Beautiful.

Uh-oh.

“I’m here,” he stated.

“I can see that,” I replied.

“And you’re here.”

“That I am,” I confirmed unnecessarily.

His face dipped closer. “We’re together, Delilah, nothin’ else matters.”

At that, I pulled in a soft breath, and as I did, his eyes dropped to my mouth as if he could hear it even though it was silent.

They moved back to mine. “Now you got ten minutes. I get time today, I’ll put up a curtain or somethin’, give you some privacy while we’re here. But until then, I’ll give you the room.”

After saying that, he turned, moved to the kitchen, flipped on the light switch that illuminated that space, then he went to the door and out of it, giving me the room.

It was then I realized he was talking about the bathroom area.

I bent to retrieve the toothbrush that caused my first-thing-in-the-morning psycho behavior and hurried to the bathroom area, not about to waste my opportunity for some privacy for my morning business.

I took care of it, including washing my hands, brushing my teeth, and splashing water on my face, before I turned to the room, still drying my face with a clean hand towel I’d grabbed from the shelves.

It was then I spied my purse and my body grew solid.

I stared at my purse over the hand towel I had pressed to my face as all the events of last night washed over me, every freaking whacked-out, impossible-but-they-still-happened one.

He’d saved my life. He might have saved me from getting raped, but he’d definitely saved my life.