To Have and to Hold by Serena Bell Page B

twisted the covers around himself, and he was fighting against them. In the nightlight’s dim glow, a sheen of sweat covered his skin, and his face was contorted with terror.
    I should leave.
    But she didn’t, and when he cried out again, she didn’t think, she just climbed onto the bed with him and put her arms around him.
    “Shh. Shh, Hunter. It’s okay.”
    He made a muffled, startled sound, and in the almost dark he turned to her and lifted his face to hers. Took her mouth without a word.
    In that mysterious middle-of-the-night time, outside of rational thought, she didn’t protest or try to stop him or ask him what he thought he was doing. She just pressed herself closer to him and wrapped around him tighter and opened to him. And it was so familiar, the pressure, the heat, the taste of his mouth. The sounds he made—relief, hunger, demand. More grunt than groan, but only barely, and his arms were around her, too, his hands in her hair, on her face. The kiss so dark and sweet, so full of emotion, that tears welled up in her eyes, until she could taste salt.
    Then he broke it off.
    “Shit. Trina. I was—” He sat up abruptly. Reached for the lamp switch.
    She scrambled out of his bed and stood, blinking in the light.
    “You were in my bed.”
    “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
    His eyes were startled, the pupils huge, though from desire, shock, or the sudden light, she had no way of knowing.
    He was shaking his head. “What—?”
    “You were asleep. Having a nightmare. And I—I wanted to help, and I didn’t think. God, you must think I’m—”
    “No. No.”
    Her face was hot with frustrated desire and fresh humiliation. She covered it with her cool hands.
    He reached for her hands and pulled them back, one by one, from her face. Took them in his and shook them as if to restore her to her senses. “I know I have nightmares. They told me in the hospital. The nurses would come sit with me sometimes.”
    “I—”
    “Trina—”
    “No, I’ll go.”
    “Wait.”
    If he hadn’t been holding her hands, she would have been back in her room by now. Anything to get away from him, from the pity in his eyes. Anything to get away from what she’d done—taken advantage of a man who was asleep, suffering, a man who’d made his feelings about her plain enough.
    “Trina, this is a fucked-up situation. There’s no road map. We’re going to make mistakes.”
    “I—I can’t believe I did that.”
    “Trina, stop beating yourself up. I did it, too.”
    “You were
asleep.
”
    His gaze tugged away from hers, sought refuge in a corner. “Not the whole time.”
    The words hung there in the halo of the bedside lamp.
    “Why—why are you telling me that?”
    For a long moment, his eyes held hers, and something blazed hopeful and bright in her chest. Then his gaze dropped.
    “I don’t want you to blame yourself. I don’t want you to feel like you accosted me and I’m some victim. We both—reacted. We both made mistakes. We’re both feeling our way. We can agree to forget it happened, okay?”
    What a strange choice of words.
Forget.
    What she’d done had been wrong. She shouldn’t have come into his bedroom. She shouldn’t have climbed into his bed. She shouldn’t have touched him when he was powerless to give her permission.
    But she wouldn’t
forget
that he’d responded.
    She wouldn’t
forget
the way he’d kissed her, or the sounds he’d made, or the way his hands had felt on her hair and her face.
    “We can pretend it didn’t happen.”
    If he saw the vast difference between forgetting and pretending, he didn’t say anything.
    And it wasn’t until she was lying in her own bed again, touching her lips, puffy and tender from his kisses, the stroke of his tongue still tingling along hers, that she said aloud what she’d been thinking:
    I can’t forget, Hunter. I can’t ever forget.
    —
    When she was gone, he eased himself slowly back down on the bed.
    What had just happened?
    She’d heard