Free Hell Without You by Ranae Rose Page A

door hinge drew her out of purgatory, jolting her back to full awareness.
    She threw off the covers and went to her own door, lurking cautiously behind its cover.
    Donovan shuffled down the hall, weak moonlight highlighting the muscular planes of his back as he reached for the bannister.
    Her heart seized up as he took the first step. God, what if he fell? She hadn’t thought of that before.
    She didn’t dare startle him while he was on the stairs. Frozen in place, she waited, following only when he’d made it safely to the landing.
    She wasn’t surprised when he headed for the kitchen, but she was ready. As he crossed the tile in the dark, she flipped on the light and headed for the sink.
    From a safe distance, she doused him with a glass of water before he could touch anything.
    He didn’t come out of it as cleanly as he had the last time. Mumbling and swearing, he pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and shook his head.
    It was agony to stand there and watch, afraid to reach out, afraid to lend a hand even though her fingers tingled, aching for contact with his skin.
    This time, the fact that he was naked hardly fazed her. She was too worried to be turned on, so no harm done.
    “Donovan, you’ve been sleepwalking again,” she said when his cursing trickled down to a few choice words. “You’re in the kitchen.”
    He didn’t remove his hands from his eyes, and the sight of him with his head in his hands made her stomach shrivel up with doubt.
    What was she doing? Throwing water on someone who wandered in the dark, thinking he was in a war zone on the other side of the planet?
    She might be fucking things up even more spectacularly than his experiences there had. She might be doing it all wrong, and still, she didn’t have a clue what she could do differently. Her strategies had all been born of desperation, tempered by that first night, when she’d first realized that he could be dangerous.
    “Damn it.” He finally dropped his arms to his sides. His eyes were red around the edges, slightly puffy after the way he’d rubbed them.
    “Come on. Let’s get you back to bed. There’s still plenty of time for sleep.” It wasn’t even one in the morning yet.
    Shoulders taut with tension, he strode forward. No reaching for the checkered towel that hung on the front of the stove, no offers for coffee or jokes about loincloths. Not even an argument.
    She followed in his wake, feeling useless. Wasn’t there anything she could do besides throw water at him when he wandered off in his sleep? As a kid, she’d used the same strategy to punish the family cat. When the tabby had climbed on the screens, she’d misted it with water from a spray bottle.
    It didn’t feel right, doing it to Donovan.
    When they reached the top of the stairs, she followed him to his room, so wired with worry that she needed to see him climb back into bed.
    “Clementine…” He paused in the doorway, silhouetted by the weak sickle moonlight that drifted through the window.
    “What?”
    Silent seconds ticked by. “Get some sleep. We’ve… We’ve got an early morning coming up.”
    The scrape in his voice rooted her in place.
    “Okay,” she lied, fearing rest more than ever.
    In the darkness, something hot and rough closed around her fingers.
    One of his hands. Fighting a wave of nerves, she looked up, seeking out his gaze even though it was a useless effort.
    His palm was more calloused than it had been before, the pads of his fingers rougher. The feel of his callouses against her flesh made the skin on her arms pebble and her nipples shrink to pinpricks.
    “Is everything all right?” She spoke into the darkness, knowing it wasn’t, feeling a familiar sadness deep in her bones.
    He let go of her hand just as abruptly as he’d taken it. “Yeah.”
    He climbed into bed, and then there was nothing for her to do but retreat back to her room, where she reclined against the pillows, listening for the creak of door hinges.
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