Lucid Dreaming (Zayn Malik BOOK 2)

Chapter 29: Roses III

SIX MONTHS LATER

Loki's POV

Zoey's small arms are wrapped tightly around my chest, slumbering off the last minutes of dawn while I stare down at her. Her plump lips are puffed out, like they are every morning, long eyelashes tangled and curled upwards toward her closed eyelid while her silk bonnet encases her curls, protecting them.

She is a strikingly beautiful woman, she always has been, it was one of the first things I noted when I saw her for the first time when she was eighteen. That and her height. She stands at five foot three, a whole foot under myself, which is very atypical for me. I've always been a fan of tall women, Eveyln was six foot tall, Scarlett is five foot eleven, Danielle was five-foot-eight and Luna - while not an official love of mine, still a worth-while crush to mention - is five foot ten. Meaning Zoey is not only short, but noticeably shorter when walking around everyone in Brandy house, where we've ended up residing again. 

Still, Zoey has captured my attention regardless. Beyond that, she's made me a fan of her small stature. It makes it so easy to hold her like I am now, my heart thudding at the pressing of her skin to mine. 

Love. An emotion I've not truly experienced in a good while, nearly thirteen years. Yet, here I am, engulfed by it as I look down at the woman entangled in the sheets with me. I didn't see this coming, not at all. I was initially just grateful for the sex, since Scarlett had moved on to Pandora, my sex life had dwindled considerably, then entered Zoey. It was animalistic, primal, surprisingly so, to begin with, but the more we did it, the more I realised I was equally interested in everything surrounding the sex, like her sarcastic quips, her ability to always successfully predict the plot to a movie we've just started watching, the way she hums in the shower. I'm not entirely sure why she likes me, loves me even, but I don't plan on questioning it, I'll simply enjoy it for as long as I can, which I'm hoping is pretty long. We work oddly well, dare I use the cliche of her making me a better man? 

I'm not tired, I've been laying here for quite some hours and my arm is long past lost feeling from the weight of her head on it, but I don't care. I'm quite happy here, and I don't plan on waking her.

Zayn, however, has other plans as he pounds on our door impatiently, calling our names through the wood. 

"Come on! There is work to be done." He huffs.

Zoey is shocked awake by the sound, jerking backwards and freeing my dead arm from her.

"Fucking hell." She groans groggily, rubbing her green eyes as they adjust to the dim light of dawn "Where does he get off with this?"

I smile down at her, recalling the thousands of times I've knocked on Zayn's door interrupting his mornings with Luna. Oh, how the tables have turned. 

"Coming." I grunt back to him, sending an apologetic look to Zoey, lowering my voice to whisper to her "His daughter is still missing, and his wife is halfway across the globe, cut him some slack."

"I heard that, I hear everything, we all do." Zayn scoffs, opening the door and gesturing for us to hurry "Come on, you prick."

Zoey props herself up on her elbows "Well, good morning to you too."

*

Gathered around the large breakfast table of the boarding house we've all moved back into since Luna's exit, Zayn lays out a large tattered book with a broken spine in front of us. 

All of us entertain his mannerisms, including waking us all up at ungodly hours, because we're not quite sure what the state of his head is right now. Luna left half a year ago, leaving a trail of fake mistakes to keep the witches on her trail but no clues to Zayn of where she is, and since he has failed to mention how he is feeling at all about her disappearance, and I'm afraid to ask.