Chapter 135 - Inseparable

Daphne

My alarm goes off at 6:30 AM. That gives me plenty of time to roll out of bed, freshen up, get dressed, and fix my hair before I meet Louis and Nash for breakfast. I’m not much of a morning person, and it usually took two rounds of the snooze button before I surrendered and threw back the blankets.

I couldn’t quite understand at first what jerked me awake just a few minutes after six. Something jolted through me, like an electrical shock. I jumped in bed and lay there, panting for breath, staring at the ceiling, trying to orient myself. I couldn’t find anything wrong, not with the room, not with myself, so I put it off as the tail end of a bad dream or a sudden cortisol spike. Maybe it was a pregnancy thing.

I tried to relax back into my pillows, but I felt like I had too much adrenaline coursing through my body. I was also feeling very, very warm. I kicked off the blankets and tried again to close my eyes, but I just couldn’t. My heart was galloping, and that heat was spreading, like I had been injected with liquid fire, and it was slowly spreading through my whole circulatory system.

I bounced off the mattress and headed for the bathroom. I had water bottles in the mini fridge, but what I felt was too urgent. I twisted on the cold water in the faucet and turned my head to put my face under the stream, drinking the water and letting it spash over my face at the same time, practically water-boarding myself.

When I came up for air, I grabbed a towel to blot the water off my skin and my dripping hair. I lowered the towel and looked at my face in the mirror. I was very flushed, my cheeks were bright red, and already I could see a sheen of perspiration starting along my hair line and in the hollow of my throat.

Hot. So very hot! Even the cold air blowing from the air conditioning wasn't helping.

I started peeling off my pajamas, which were already starting to stick to my damp body. I turned on the shower, just a few degrees warmer than ice-cold, and jumped under the spray. I felt like the droplets that hit my body should immediately turn into a cloud of steam. They didn’t. They ran in cold, shocking rivulets down my body, but did very little to cool the burn on the inside.

My heart was beating hard, like I had run a marathon, and my breath was coming heavily too. I braced my hands against the side of the shower and tried to focus on slowing my breathing.

My heart continued to hammer against my ribs, and strangely, it started to feel like I was feeling more than one heartbeat under my sternum. Like three hearts, beating at the same rhythm. And then there was a sharp pain in my head, like someone had just smacked me with a broom handle.

“Ouch, s.hit,” I grabbed my head, and rubbed the sore spot right beside my eye. “Goddess damn it, Nash! What the hell are you doing?” I asked out loud.

I had an idea…that he was at his butt-crack-of-dawn training session, and I was getting some kind of live-feed to his sparring sessions.

“Damn it, this mate bond thing is whacked,” I growled. I adjusted the water temperature just a little bit warmer and grabbed the shampoo. As long as I was already in there and already all wet, I might as well finish the job.

I was just scrubbing my fingers through my hair to work up a good lather when a sudden sharp pain bloomed across my knuckles. “Ow! Sonofabitch!” I pulled my hand out of my hair, wiped the suds out of my eyes and examined my knuckles. There was no mark, but I swear I could feel the pain, like I had just shut my hand in a car door. “What the f.uck, Nash? If you are going to fight, at least be on the winning end!”

With my head still throbbing and my hand still stinging, I finished shampooing and rinsing my hair. I was just squeezing some conditioner into my palm when it suddenly felt like I got tasered square in the chest. I stumbled back into the shower wall and gasped for breath.

Holy mother moon goddess, this is getting serious!

What kind of full-contact sparring was Nash doing!? Didn’t they know he was just a human? He could get seriously hurt out there! I was going to have to have a word with Louis about his safety...

Before I could finish that thought, the heat in my veins rushed lower, right between my legs, and my gasping for breath suddenly became a very needy moan.

“What kind of crazy masochist gets the s.hit beat out of him in training and becomes aroused?” I hissed out loud. I tried to ignore the new throbbing between my legs and finished conditioning my hair. Having Nash train had been my idea, but if this was how I was going to wake up every morning, then we were absolutely going to have to put a stop to that!

By the time I finished scrubbing my body, that feeling of lava in my veins had receded. My head was reduced to a dull ache, and my fingers just felt a little stiff. My heart was beating its usual relaxed rhythm, and my breathing was back to normal. I briskly toweled off and went to get dressed. I pulled on a somber navy blue dress with short sleeves, a pair of black sandals, and quickly wrapped my wet hair in a bun before I snatched my purse and keys.

When I rounded the corner into the dining room, both Nash and Louis stood. There was something odd and tense about their expressions. The air seemed extra charged, and both of their scents seemed a lot stronger than usual. I immediately noticed that Nash had a big red welt on his temple.

And when Louis pulled out my chair, I noticed the king's knuckles were very purple and swollen.

Nash hadn't been fighting just anyone. He'd been fighting with Louis. And one of them, or maybe both of them, had been enjoying it very much.

I dropped into the chair with a huff. "Alright, you two had better start explaining what happened this morning."