Time Waits by C.B. Lewis

Author:C.B. Lewis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2015-05-30T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

SUDDEN MOVEMENT woke Janos.

He had been a soldier too long to sleep heavily.

The sudden chill of the air on his bare skin told him the sheets had been pulled aside, and he propped himself up on his arm, squinting in the darkness. He could see the silhouette of Dieter outlined against the floor-to-ceiling windows, groping around on the floor.

After they’d fucked, after he’d gathered his scattered wits, he’d finished Dieter with his hand again, and they had sprawled together in the bed, sated, too tired to consider moving. There was enough space for them to lie apart, and that was what they had done: opposite sides of the bed. It didn’t feel right to curl up and coo together, like lovers, not so soon.

So they slept, though it must only have been for a couple of hours.

“Dieter?” he said sleepily.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Dieter’s voice was trembling. He was speaking English, which he never naturally did around Janos. “I-I-I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

Janos felt like he’d been doused with ice water, and he sat up, reaching for the bedside table and the lamp. The room was illuminated in soft, golden light, and Dieter shrank back, blinking, turning his face away.

He was trembling, as if terrified, ashen. He was afraid, and Janos’s stomach twisted. Only days, weeks earlier, Dieter had admitted that nightmares troubled him, nightmares of their first meeting. To wake in a bed with the man who was the cause of those nightmares….

It didn’t matter that they had come back to the apartment together, or that they had fucked, and that it had been much more intimate than Janos had expected. None of that mattered, because Dieter was afraid.

“Dieter,” Janos said again, quietly. “You don’t need to go anywhere. This is your home.”

Dieter was turning a shirt over in his hands, twisting it tighter and tighter. “I shouldn’t be here,” he said again, barely audible. His eyes were wide and dark. Janos could see the way his ribs were rising and falling with unsteady, shaking breaths. “Please, let me go.”

No, he definitely was far from fully awake.

Janos remembered the night Dieter had come to him after his own nightmares. He had stayed at a distance, speaking calmly and quietly. Janos didn’t know if that would work, but it was better than doing nothing. He drew away to the other side of the bed, sitting back against the wrought iron headboard, and laid his hand in his lap.

“You can go, if you want to,” he said. “I won’t stop you.”

Dieter remained where he was, looking anxiously toward the door. “You won’t hurt me?”

Janos folded his arm over his stomach and wrapped his hand around the stump of his left arm. “I swear I will never hurt you again,” he said as steadily as he could. Dieter continued to stare at him, blinking hard. “I can go, if you want me to.”

Dieter looked down at the shirt in his hands. “I want to sit down,” he said plaintively, like a tired child.

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