Black Ice - Anne Stuart [70]
He moved his head slightly, so that his face brushed her ridiculous tangle of hair. She looked very different as a shorn lamb. Younger, and more vulnerable. And even more desirable.
But looking like that helped remind him that she was off-limits. He had no right or reason to touch her again, and it would only complicate things.
And he needed to stop thinking about her and get what sleep he could. It didn’t matter that the feel and the scent of her was all around him. He was cool enough to ignore trivial distractions like that. He closed his eyes, breathing in the scent and sound of her, and let himself sleep.
It was midday. Chloe wasn’t quite sure how she knew that—the room was pitch-black, not a speck of light coming from the roof window. Her body had a natural clock—she woke up at eight-thirty every morning whether she needed to or not, and if something woke her in the middle of the night she always knew what hour it was, whether a clock was around or not.
Everything had been thrown off balance the past few days. She slept more than she’d ever slept in her life, probably a reaction to the horrors she’d seen. For all she knew she could have been asleep this time for fifteen minutes or three days.
Bastien was still with her. She’d turned in her sleep, and she lay in his arms, sprawled across him, her head on his shoulder, her hand on his chest, his arm around her. She should have yanked herself away, but she didn’t. She didn’t move a muscle, only her eyelids as she tried to decipher something, anything, through the darkness.
Bastien slept deeply and silently. Probably part of his self-discipline. He wouldn’t allow himself to snore like most men. He slept so soundly he probably wouldn’t even notice if she carefully pulled herself out of his loose embrace and turned her back on him. It was too exposed, lying like this. Too…confusing.
Stockholm Syndrome, she reminded herself unhappily. It had nothing to do with reality. She didn’t even like the man. For now she had to stay with him, but once she was home things would be put into perspective and her momentary attraction would vanish with a dollop of self-loathing.
Well, perhaps not self-loathing. There was no denying that the man who called himself Bastien Toussaint was physically beautiful. And no denying that he saved her life, perhaps more than once, which would be bound to make her grateful.
She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about anything, not the man beside her, not Sylvia, not the people who’d sat around that huge board table and pretended to talk about groceries. She would think about the snow. Thick and white and blanketing the city in stillness, drifting down in big flakes and clogging the roadways, closing the airports, trapping her in the arms of a killer…
“Stop thinking about it.”
He hadn’t moved, his steady breathing hadn’t changed, but his soft voice broke the stillness like a shard of glass.
She rolled away from him, moving as close to the wall as she could. There was still no way she could keep from touching his long, lean body in such a narrow bed. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was. Until you woke up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous—I didn’t move. I opened my eyes and that was all. Don’t tell me the draft from my eyelashes woke you.” Her voice was low and caustic, pushing him away as her body couldn’t.
“No,” he said, his voice low and sleepy, but she wasn’t fooled. “Once you started thinking your blood began to move. I could feel your heartbeat speed up, your pulse race. Even though you didn’t move a muscle.”
“Well, aren’t you special?” she said, sarcastic.
“I beg your pardon?”
Of course he wouldn’t know the American reference. He might read pulses and heartbeats but he’d probably never watched Saturday Night Live and the Church Lady. Maybe he’d never watched television at all. It wouldn’t surprise her. He’d said he never even went to movies.
What did surprise her was that even with her back safely to him she was still acutely aware of him. Still had a totally irrational longing for