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Ellie could only gape. Whether it was from sheer shock or that combined with her exhaustion, but her mind wasn’t working properly. She should have scrambled under the covers, but she lay there in her blouse and panties and wondered what he would do next.
She found out when he sat beside her and began to unbutton her blouse.
Finally getting some semblance of wits about her, she twisted away and jumped off the bed. “I think I’ll leave my blouse on. In fact, I should probably put my slacks back on and rejoin Dad.”
The look in his eyes said she was going to get undressed and in that bed, like it or not. Too bad he was on the side by the closet and coincidentally, the door through which she wanted to escape. Though not half-dressed as she was.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t like being bossed around, Sandor.”
He leaned back against the door, crossing his arms as well and giving her a look she was fairly certain outdid hers in the intimidation stakes. “I do not like seeing my woman ready to collapse from exhaustion.”
“I’m not your woman.”
He crossed that small room with the speed of a Jaguar and then stood towering over her. “We are at odds. I accept this. But youare mine.”
“No,” she whispered the denial that felt like a lie.
“Just as I am yours.”
The words touched her deep inside where she did not want him to go again. And she shook her head, unable to give voice again to the denial her heart said she should not make.
His hands curved around her shoulders and he stepped closer so their bodies were mere inches apart. “So, you do not care if I bed another woman?”
Her heart screamed a denial, but she merely said, “Don’t be crude,” in her best approximation at a distant tone.
“Do not lie to me,” he countered, his tone pure male censure.
She swallowed, wishing he wasn’t so close…or that his nearness did not impact her so much. “I have no right to stop you from going to bed with another woman.”
“I give you the right.”
She opened her mouth, but she could not force a rejection to his offer from her throat.
He kissed her, briefly but firmly. “I give you the right,” he repeated.
She couldn’t say a word. To refuse the right was beyond her, but to accept it carried far too many connotations she was not prepared to deal with. She tilted her head back and kissed him, just as briefly and much more softly.
His eyes closed and he inhaled a deep breath before opening them again. “We will get there,” he promised her. “Now, come. Let me care for you.”
He lifted her again and put her back on the bed, his movements careful as if he did not want to startle her, but the implacable expression in his eyes said he expected her to rest.
Then, his eyes filling with a tenderness she could not fight, he finished unbuttoning her top and pulled it from her body. He hung it up and while he was beside the closet, he hung up his jacket, too. Their gazes locked. She sat up and curled her arms around her knees, but did not protest when he started taking off the rest of his clothes. He did not break the eye contact while he stripped to his silk shorts, neatly hanging everything up in the closet to be donned again later.
He came back to the bed.
She licked her lips. “Sandor?”
“I, too, could use a nap, Ellie. I have slept poorly since the night you disappeared from Boston. We will rest together. And for now, that is all we will do.”
She should argue, but deep inside, she didn’t want to. She trusted him not to push for anything sexual if he said he wouldn’t. And she wanted to be held. So much. Her world was a maelstrom of frightening events and even though he had betrayed her trust, Sandor looked like an island of comfort for her storm-tossed heart.
Silently she uncurled from her protective position and climbed under the covers, leaving room for him to lie beside her. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he sighed with relief. He joined her, pressed the button above the bed to cut the lights in the tiny cabin and then pulled her into his arms.
She didn’t fight, but she didn’t relax, either. She couldn’t. With loving came wanting and since her love for him continued to beat inside her heart, her desire for him was there, too. But she didn’t want to act on it. She didn’t think she could handle it right now if she did.
She was barely holding it together and the way he made her feel when he touched her would rip away the barriers she’d manage to erect to protect herself since discovering both his and her father’s duplicity. Besides, he was right…she both needed and wanted the healing rest of sleep. She was hungry to be held and to feel safe, if for just a little while.
