***
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Aiden said as he tucked a few strands of my hair behind my ear.
“Hi,” I whispered, gazing up into his hypnotic green eyes. I was still feeling amazing from whatever Anna had done to me, and all those loving feelings were heading his way.
His perfect lips parted into a smile, filling my body with even more desire.
A not-so-discreet clearing of the throat came from across the room. I looked over to find Anna sitting across from me on the other side of the sofa, holding back a smirk.
Normally, I would have died from embarrassment knowing that my boyfriend’s mother knew what I was planning to do with her son, but I was still too much in Zen mode to care. I did, however, manage to stop any further thoughts on that subject.
Pulling myself up so that I was once again leaning against the mountain of cushions, I looked out of the window to find darkness had set in. It was pitch black outside, bar the twinkling lights coming from the houses on the other side of the seaway.
An ever-so-slight panic flittered over me at the thought of the shit I would be in with my mum for not staying at home. A small laugh escaped my lips. If she only knew just how rested I really was. God, I had never been so relaxed in my entire life.
“Don’t worry about your mum. I told her that you didn’t want to be alone today, and Anna volunteered to keep you company, except she was waiting for a package to be delivered, so you came here instead,” Aiden explained.
It was actually a pretty good cover. I’m sure it made Mum feel guilty for leaving me and grateful that I had been properly looked after.
“You’re not just a pretty face,” I said to Aiden and caressed his cheek.
Aiden grabbed my hand, kissing it softly before placing it in his lap.
“Sorry to burst your happy bubble, but we have to talk about your vision,” Anna said, snapping me back to reality.
At the thought of Chelsea’s murder, a small pain shot through my heart. Actually, it was more like a light buzzing feeling.
“The easiest way for me to know what happened is for me to see exactly what you saw,” Anna said, tucking her golden brown hair behind her ears.
I squinted my eyes as I looked at her, as if that was going to make what she just said clearer to me, which of course it didn’t.
“What I’m going to do is go inside your mind—mentally, not physically.” Anna laughed, but I was still too zoned out to catch on to her joke.
Aiden wasn’t laughing either, so maybe it wasn’t that funny. Which, when it came to Anna, wasn’t that uncommon. Her jokes sucked. Maybe it had something to do with her age; I still had no idea just how old that really was.
Anna cleared her throat at the same time Aiden burst out laughing, which stopped my inner ramblings and made me feel the tiniest bit of guilt over what I had just thought. Something told me that I just might feel a little sorrier tomorrow.
“Anyway,” Anna continued, stopping me from thinking anything else I might regret. “I will be able to see exactly what you saw, so I’ll know precisely what we’re dealing with. Now, this may feel a little strange, but just remember, this is not going to hurt you a single bit.”
“Go for it.” I was still too out of it to care what she did. And at the moment, I didn’t think I was even capable of articulating anything that would describe what I saw, anyway.
Not knowing how long the whole mind reading thing would take, I snuggled into Aiden’s side, mostly trying to get comfortable, but also because I still had the whole loving vibe going on, and I wanted to get as close to him as possible.
Aiden wrapped his arm around me while I rested my head against his chest. Listening to the steady beat of his heart, I waited for the invasion to begin.
It was hard to explain what happened next, because there literally was no explanation in any human language for what it felt like when someone entered your thoughts. One minute my head was my own, and the next I could feel her penetrating my mind. It only lasted about ten seconds, then she was gone.
Anna didn’t say anything straight away; she just sat staring at nothing in particular. Finally, she turned to us, her expression unreadable as I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.
A couple of seconds later, it was Aiden who spoke. “Come on, it’s time for bed.” He squeezed my arm, motioning me to get up.
I was too caught up in the fact he was about to take me home to care that Anna hadn’t offered up any explanation of my vision. “But I only just woke up,” I whinged. I really did not want to go home. The truth was, I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be with Aiden. At the moment, he was like a security blanket I couldn’t be without.
Aiden scooped me up into his arms. “Well, lucky for you, you’re not going anywhere,” he said with a smile.
I scrunched my eyebrows together in confusion.
“I called your mum about an hour ago to let her know you were still asleep. She said to just let you sleep, and she would see you in the morning,” Anna explained.
Mum didn’t have a problem with Aiden and me spending the night together. I think it comforted her to know I had someone to watch out for me during the nights she spent working on some new lead.
She wasn’t worried about what went on behind closed doors, either. After all, her parents had been as strict as they came, and she’d ended up sneaking around with a guy and wound up pregnant with me at fifteen. Her parents freaked. They wanted her to give me up for adoption, but my mum wouldn’t hear of it, thank God. So they gave her an ultimatum. She either had to give me up for adoption or move out. She moved out and into a cheap motel when she was six months pregnant, and somehow raised me as well as found herself a successful career. All without the help of her parents or my biological father, who hadn’t wanted anything to do with her or me once Mum told him she was pregnant. I guess she figured that teenagers would be teenagers. And tonight, we would definitely be teenagers, I thought, breathing in his intoxicating smell.
“I’ll just go now,” Anna said, disappearing suddenly.
I looked up at Aiden, waiting for him to explain Anna’s sudden departure.
He laughed. “I guess you forgot she can hear your thoughts,” he said as he carried me up the stairs.
“Oops,” I whispered, blood filling my cheeks.
“Don’t worry, she wanted to get back to my dad anyway.” He carried me into his room.
“It’s so weird you calling Dave your dad,” I thought out loud.
He set me down on his bed and sat down beside me.
“Do you really want to be talking about my parents right now?” he asked with a mischievous grin. “’Cause I heard that you couldn’t wait to get me alone.” He ran his hand along my thigh, making my whole body quiver beneath his touch.
My heart was racing as I crawled on to Aiden’s lap. Bending forward, I pressed my lips against his. He welcomed me, kissing me passionately. I had never felt like this about anyone before I met Aiden. It was as if every relationship I had before him was meaningless, as if I was just filling in time until he came into my life and awakened all those senses that had been lying dormant.
Aiden ran his hands up my thighs, stopping when he reached the end of my kaftan. He lifted it up over my head and kissed my lips softly before working his way down my neck. With one hand on my lower back and the other gently supporting the base of my head, he swung me off his body in one smooth motion, carefully lowering me onto my back. He pressed his heaving body against mine, careful not to crush me under his weight. I let my mind succumb to the passion, forgetting about the last few days, and just enjoyed all the love he was sending my way.
Chapter 6