Free Waking Kiss by Annabel Joseph

bathroom or some hidden corner? I did a quick, nervous inventory of all the possible hiding places, but no, he was gone.
    I traced the etching on the vine-like footboard, trying to quiet the alarm bells in my head. It wasn’t normal to break into someone’s place and leave a bed like this without asking. He barely knew me. Or did he? He’d kissed me and held me in my blanket shelter, and talked to me about intimate, personal things. About bondage, and dominance and submission. Hell, I’d pretty much begged him to fuck me. I’d also cried in front of him—twice. So maybe he thought he knew me well enough to make a grand gesture like this, or maybe it was an apology for upsetting me. Maybe he was so rich he was out of touch with what was considered normal.
    I climbed onto the mattress and lay back, luxuriating in the soft pillow top, and inspected the pair of plastic-encased sheets. Eight-hundred thread-count luxury in crisp white Egyptian cotton. There was a note card slipped down inside one of the packages with a W embossed on the front. I pulled it out and flipped it open.
    This bed will keep the devils away.
    That was it. Nothing else, no signature, no elaboration. I stared at the silk curtains enveloping me, and the detailed, twisting ironwork of the frame. This was the most beautiful, extravagant gift I’d ever received—but it came with a bunch of uncomfortable memories, memories of his hands, his lips, his arms around me. My psychotic breakdown and his freaked-out retreat. He would expect me to call him and gush over this, but I didn’t have his number anymore, and I couldn’t find his house if I tried. He’d probably wait all evening for me to contact him in gratitude. What would he think when I didn’t?
    He’d think I wasn’t worth this beautiful gift. Maybe he’d come and take it back as stealthily as he’d delivered it.
    No, he wouldn’t. Before he did that, he’d come over here to see why I didn’t call. What if he came tonight? I made up my new bed and changed into my pajamas, and crawled behind the curtains in a mild panic. For two, three, four nights I waited for him to knock, or just pop the lock and come in, but he didn’t come.
    All that came were vivid dreams of Liam at my bedside, leaning down to kiss me in my forest bower like Sleeping Beauty’s prince.
    *** *** ***
     
    I didn’t buy the bed with any ulterior motives. It was a gift, freely given, but I was disappointed not to hear from her that night. Or the next night. Or the next. Maybe she was pissed that I’d broken into her place, but I’d only wanted to surprise her and cheer her up. She must have thought I was a world-class psychopath.
    It was probably for the best. She was a damaged, delicate person. She needed help, not extended sessions of kinky sex. I used company resources to look into her past, to see if there was something I could do, some anonymous way I could help her. I was 99.9 percent sure it was God-fearing daddy who’d hurt her so badly. What I didn’t know was what he’d done to her or how long the abuse had gone on. It had been sexual in nature; that seemed an obvious assumption. The rest of it, I didn’t know.
    What I did know with one hundred percent accuracy was that I had to let go of my fantasies about sleeping with Ashleigh. She had a lot of issues to take care of before she’d reach a place where we could connect. She wasn’t even into BDSM. Well, not yet anyway…
    No. I couldn’t daydream about breaking her to the lifestyle. I didn’t have the time or the skill to fix a woman as messed up as her. Oh, there were messed-up chicks in the scene, sure, and sensitive, white-knight guys who loved to try to heal them. I’d never been one of those guys.
    December arrived, Sleeping Beauty became Nutcracker , and she traded her poufy ball gown for a sleek snow-fairy tutu. I told myself that if she really wasn’t okay, she couldn’t dance as beautifully as she did, but I knew that for a lie. If she was