The Soldier, The Nun and The Baby (Anne Stuart's Greatest Hits Book 2) by Anne Stuart

Author:Anne Stuart [Stuart, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-10-30T22:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Ten

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Her dreams were shameful. Lascivious, shocking things, the likes of which hadn’t bothered her for years. She’d worked so hard at banishing dreams from her life. The terrifying nightmares that brought back full force the bloody day when her parents had died. The lustful dreams that left her feeling hot and trembly. Even the peaceful dreams, where she hoped God was speaking to her, had been blocked from her life. She would wake up once they started, jarred into consciousness and safety.

But she must have been too tired to fight it. The big, strong body stretched out beside hers, touching hers, worked its own insidious effect on her, invading her defenses, her longings, her dreams.

Her skin was hot. Prickling with awareness. There was a strange gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach, and her mouth ached. In her dreams she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. She’d kissed a man. She’d taken pleasure in it, she who’d eschewed men and this world. And she wanted to kiss him again.

Concrete images faded, to be replaced by shifting patterns, sensations. Heat and dampness, flesh and muscle, bone and sinew, taste and desire. She was running then, down a long hillside, chasing something that she couldn’t quite see. And he was behind her, waiting for her. She had only to stop, to hold out her hand, and he’d pull her back, away from the pit filled with noisy, cawing blackbirds, their wings flapping, their white veils fluttering in the jungle breeze....

Her eyes flew open in sudden awareness. She was lying pressed up against Reilly’s body, the thick darkness all around them, with only the soft glow of moonlight sending a faint light in the room. Her arms were around him, tight, and it was more than clear that she’d crawled over to his side, crept up to him while she slept, looking for comfort, looking for something she was too big a coward to define.

His eyes were open, still, in the moonlight, but he made no move to touch her. She found she was clinging to him, and he let her. Beneath her hands, beneath the thin cotton T-shirt he wore, she could feel the beat of his heart. Steady, slightly fast.

“You were dreaming,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Nightmares. About guns and death.”

“I do sometimes,” she said, too weary, too vulnerable to protect herself by lying. She was too close, and the heat and strength of him were irresistible. She knew she should apologize, move away. She knew she couldn’t.

“What happened?”

Another time she would have been more wary. She would have remembered the story she’d been telling him, about the privileged life of French finishing schools. But she was still half-asleep, still shaken from the vivid dream, and she wanted to tell him what she’d never told another living being.

“They killed them,” she whispered, her head down. She could feel the wetness of tears on her cheeks, and she pressed her face against the soft T-shirt, the hard, warm skin beneath, letting the soft cotton soak up the dampness.

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