Sweet as Syn

13: SYN-Guarding the Door

A perk to drinking: falling asleep easily. A downside: having to pee in the middle of the night from your insanely full bladder. And taking your shirt off in front of a couple hundred strangers. And almost kissing a hot football player whilst shirtless. And getting yanked away and brought upstairs to be put to sleep by an even hotter football player. Well, maybe that last one was more of a perk. Regardless, girl's gotta go.

After I take care of business, I decide to go outside and check out the scene. The party must be over, but I don't have my phone or my shirt, so I have no idea what time it is or what's going on.

It was a massive party, so I was expecting to see some stray partygoers lingering around. Maybe some kissing, some doing more, some passed out. It would have been hard to get that many people out of the house before sunrise.

But when I open the door, the long hall is cleared. Completely empty. Dark.

I step forward to see if I'm just imagining things, and that's when my toe bumps a warm figure.

When I look down and my eyes adjust to the shadow, I am overcome by such a myriad of emotions, I couldn't focus on just one thing if I tried. The compression of my chest, the constriction of my throat, the stinging of my lids. The cracking of my heart.

Wide open.

For Greyson.

Because he is flat on his back, clad in only a pair of grey jogger sweats, sprawled on the floor outside his room like a guard dog.

This isn't like him being the alpha male like he is when we go out, or demanding like he is when I don't want to listen, or possessive like he is when my roommates are around. This is a purely altruistic act. He could have been right beside me in bed, but he chose to lay out on the hard floor and guard the door for me.

Any reserve I had left for Greyson dissolves as I drop to the floor and climb on top of him, curling into a ball on his torso. And there's not one thing between us. Just his warm, naked skin molding to my cold, bruised skin. His hard, rugged flesh meeting my soft, delicate form. His harsh, agonizing past fusing with my merciless, inhumane one. And nothing has ever felt so unequivocally absolute.

He makes a throaty, sleepy groan, and instantly encompasses me in his protective grip, his powerful arms coming up to wrap around me. "Bear," he rasps, and I try not to melt from his sensual, soothing voice mixed with his masculine scent; spicy and clean, like he just came out of the shower then baked a batch of gingerbread cookies.

"You guarded the door for me," I whisper into his shoulder, feeling his muscles pull and flex under my head as he shifts me so that there is no physical way I could possibly feel more safe.

With one arm hooked firmly over my curled up legs and around my waist, his other comes to the back of my neck, protecting my head. If a bomb were to be dropped, I would be salvaged. He's made sure of that.

After a lifetime of crippling terror and cruelty, this overwhelming sense of security cracks every inch of armor and exposes me to Greyson in a way I never thought possible.

The mortifying sting behind my lids gives way and unwarranted, silent tears escape down my cheeks and onto his skin.

"Baby, don't cry," he coaxes in the softest of whispers, like he's speaking to a child. "You're breaking my heart." Maybe he's trying to make up for the complete absence of solace in my life.

His fingers comb through my hair before running up and down my spine, comforting me like no one ever has. I feel his lips press against the top of my forehead and stay there as my tears fall on their own accord.