She could almost laugh. Don’t be alarmed. A ludicrous statement. Like, “Don’t turn around, but there goes Cher—and she’s shaved her head!” Or like the dentist saying as he lifts his drill, “You might feel a slight tingle but don’t let it bother you.”
It was impossible not to be alarmed. When he laid his thigh across hers, it brought the full solidity of his maleness directly up against her bottom. The rough cloth of his fatigue pants pleasantly abraded her sensitive skin.
“Aren’t you cold, too?” she asked in a high, thin voice.
“No. I’ve got on pants and you’re wearing nothing but—”
Right. Stop right there, O’Neal. Don’t say it. It was better left unsaid. Neither of them needed to be reminded that all she was wearing was a pair of panties, and that they were sheer and skimpy and damp. Better that they direct the conversation toward anything—books, movies, politics, the weather—than to even make mention of her attire, or lack thereof.
“I still have my canteen. Do you want some water?”
“No,” she replied breathlessly. She didn’t want him to move. Every time he moved, she felt him. Vividly. And her mind kept reverting to when she was trying to get the pistol out of his waistband and how his body had looked. What she had only guessed at then, she could feel pressing against her hips now.
How long would this night last? Hours. And what if the soldiers didn’t break camp and pull out at daybreak, as she and Linc had tacitly assumed they would? She didn’t think her pounding heart could stand the strain. Something had to be done, said, to relieve the tension.
“Tell me about yourself, Linc.”
God, she didn’t want to know about him. If she were smart, she didn’t want to know that he sensed her with every nerve fiber in his body. They were alive and kicking, feeling her, smelling her, tasting her. She didn’t want to know how his blood vessels were pumping with desire for her.
He had raced back to the house, the convoy of military trucks only minutes behind him. He had bounded into the large living room, already issuing orders for her to get the children and their pallets up and into the kitchen. He had been dumbfounded when Joe told him that Kerry wasn’t there, that she’d left the house.
Cursing her even while he spoke soothing words that the children couldn’t even understand, he herded them into the dark, dank cellar. It was spooky, but it provided a perfect hiding place. As he sealed the door and moved a cabinet over the floorboards, he cursed the headstrong woman who was loose in a jungle crawling with guerrilla fighters when she could be safely hidden.
Only fear for her safety had contained his fury as he had dashed through the darkness looking for her. He remembered seeing the creek when he had previously scouted around the deserted estate. The refreshing water had tempted him into taking a quick dip. Acting purely on a hunch, he had followed the vine-choked path toward it.
He had felt both murderous and profoundly relieved when he discovered Kerry splashing in the shallow water. Taking time only to hide her pile of clothing in the brush, he’d lifted her out. Snatches of erotic pictures were emblazoned on his brain.
He knew that her breasts were full, and that her nipples were so pointed and pink that a man would go through hell for a chance to touch them with his tongue. He thought about her breasts now, lying soft and unrestrained beneath his shirt and he ached to touch and reshape them in his hands. And a while ago, when she had rolled onto her back, he had known that all he had to do was lower his head and... God, it had been agony not to.
He knew that her derriere was taut and rounded, cute and saucy and sexy as hell. And now that sweet little butt was cuddling his sex. It took every ounce of self-discipline he possessed not to groan out loud with the thought.
He tried not to think of the way her hair had looked with the moonlight shining on it, or the way that silvery light had turned her eyes as deeply mysterious as sapphires. Her lips were strictly off-limits. Yet the memory of their taste lingered in his mind. He couldn’t allow himself to think about the most vulnerable, most alluring part of her neck being only inches from his lips.
For someone already denied heaven, one more wicked thought didn’t matter. But he would die and see the gates of hell before the night was out if he continued torturing himself this way.
They needed diversion. Anything. To get their minds off what must surely be as discomfiting for her as it was for him, though for different reasons.
?
??What do you want to know?” His voice was little more than a growl.
“Where did you grow up?”
“St. Louis.”
“Tough neighborhood?” she asked instinctively.
He scoffed. “Lady, you can’t even begin to imagine.”
“Your parents?”
“Both dead now. My old man raised me. My mother died when I was just a kid.”
“No brothers or sisters?”
“No, thank God.”
“Why ‘thank God’?”