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Nodding, Catherine accompanied Jason back to the hut, leaning heavily on him. He had to take even more of her weight now than he did before; all her hobbling around outside in the middle of the night chasing after a ghost or a dream or her imagination or whatever it was had left her sore knee throbbing and shards of pain shooting the whole way up her leg, from her foot to her hip. Eventually, after she struggled nearly all the way there, Jason swept her up into his arms.
“Let me carry you, baby girl. You’re in pain, aren’t you?”
Catherine held the torch in one hand and wrapped her other arm around Jason’s neck. She felt safe in his arms. Like she was where she belonged.
The lantern they’d left burning when they’d rushed out of the hut lit their way as Jason carried her over the threshold. He carried her to the bed and laid her gently down on it. Catherine’s head spun. What had just happened? Everything was a blur. She couldn’t separate the dream from reality, it was all mixed together inside her head. Had the man gone over the cliff, or hadn’t he? Had he sat on a rocking chair on the rickety porch outside the hut, or hadn’t he? Had he buried something under the tree behind the hut, or hadn’t he? She closed her eyes sadly. She’d probably never know. Even if Jason kept his word and they did go back out there at first light, there were no guarantees she would be able to find anything. Where was she meant to dig, exactly? She couldn’t just dig up all the ground around the tree in a several metre wide radius, could she?
“I’m going to get you some more ice for your knee,” Jason said. “And a coffee. Or would you prefer a Milo? Are we going to try to get a bit more sleep before we go gallivanting around, searching for something that may or may not be there?”
She could tell by his grin that he wasn’t at all bothered by her insistence they follow up on what she saw in her dream, so she gave him a cheeky grin back.
“That’s what we came up here for, isn’t it?” she pointed out. “But I won’t be doing any gallivanting. I’ll be watching you dig.”
“Me, dig? How did I get roped into this?”
Catherine blew him a kiss from her perch on the bed. “When you decided to come with me. Besides, it’s manly to dig holes. You want to be the manly alpha male, don’t you?”
From the kitchen, where he was retrieving an icepack, Jason flexed his hands. “Are you seriously suggesting I’m not manly enough for you? Because we can rectify that right now, little girl.”
Catherine giggled, then patted the bed beside her. “Don’t worry about the drink. Just come and get back into bed, you’ll need to conserve your energy for the morning. All that digging you’ll be doing.”
Jason wrapped the icepack in a tea towel and dimmed the lamp, leaving it on the table where it cast a warm, ambient glow around the hut. He lay next to her on the bed, holding the icepack gently against her knee and winked.
“I didn’t redden your bottom thoroughly enough earlier, did I?”
Catherine shuddered, and squirmed, wincing slightly with the movement. Her bottom was still tender. “Oh, you did,” she assured him. “You definitely did.”
CHAPTER11
If he hadn’t known Catherine so well, he wouldn’t have seen the pain in her eyes, the confusion, or the fear. She was trying so hard to hide it, he knew. But he saw it. He held the ice to her knee with one hand and stroked up and down her leg with the other, trying to soothe her. To offer comfort, solidarity. He didn’t understand what she was feeling, or why this was so important to her, but he wanted to be with her through it.
“If there is something buried out there, we’ll find it. I promise.”
Catherine smiled, but her eyes were full of doubt. “I don’t even know anymore,” she admitted. “It was so real, seeing him run straight over the cliff, but there was nothing there. I saw it. Maybe Steve was right. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe this whole thing is just all in my head and I’m just a nutjob.”
“Hey,” Jason growled, reaching up to take her chin in his hand, tilting her face up to meet his eyes. “We’ve been over this. You’re not crazy.”
It puzzled him that her dreams hadn’t eased with being up here. He’d been convinced that they would. He’d been so certain that a break away, a bit of rest and relaxation, connecting with him again, forgetting her ex and her shitty past was all she needed. He’d been so sure it was stress causing her dreams. But now… now he didn’t know. He didn’t believe in the supernatural. He didn’t believe in anything science couldn’t explain, and he didn’t believe that dreams were premonitions or predictions of the future or anything even remotely rooted in reality. But Catherine was forcing him to question everything he believed.
Catherine didn’t tug her chin away, but nor did she agree with him. Instead, she just looked up at him and grinned sheepishly. “Of course I’m crazy!” she argued. “But you love it. You don’t hold it against me. You just accept me as I am.”
He couldn’t explain the emotions that washed over him after hearing her words. How could he tell her that hearing her call herself crazy, when she’d been so upset over her ex convincing her that was she was, hurt his heart? He didn’t want to hear it. So he frowned and patted her hip firmly.
“I think you’re forgetting that your bottom is bare under that dressing gown, little girl,” he reminded her sternly. “It would be really easy to roll you over, reach under it, and smack your bottom hard.”
He tried not to smirk as Catherine squirmed.
“Not too hard, Daddy!” she protested, her voice high-pitched in faux outrage.
“Yes, hard,” he confirmed. “You need Daddy’s discipline. You need lots of it.”
Sliding his hand toward her inner thigh, he reached inside her dressing gown until he found what he was searching for, his fingers prickling at the touch of skin on skin. She was surprisingly warm for someone who had worn virtually nothing outside and had been shivering noticeably in the chilly breeze.
Subconsciously, his fingers worked their way upward, his thumb brushing over that special place between her legs that he’d enjoyed exploring so much. His cock hardened. He swallowed. Now wasn’t the right time. He removed his hand. She groaned.
“Put it back,” she whispered. “I liked it.”
Jason’s eyes widened and he smiled. “You’re insatiable, little girl,” he murmured. “Your bottom is sore, your knee is sore, and still you want Daddy’s fingers there?”
