Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [50]
She was both hurt and furious, but years of self-discipline enabled her to sleep dreamlessly anyway. When she woke hours later, just before her alarm went off, she felt better. Then she frowned. It seemed as if her subconscious could hear the echo of her name being called. She sat up, tilting her head as she listened.
“Dee! Damn it to hell!”
After weeks of hearing that particular note in his voice when he called her, she knew that he was in pain. Without her robe, she ran to his room.
She turned on the light. He was sitting up, rubbing his left calf, his face twisted in a grimace of pain. “My foot, too,” he gritted. Dione seized his foot and forcefully returned his toes to their proper positions, digging her thumbs into the ball of his foot and massaging. He fell back against his pillow, his chest rising and falling swiftly as he gulped in air.
“It’s all right,” she murmured, moving her soothing hands up his ankle to his calf.
She devoted her attention to his leg, unaware of the fixed way he watched her. After several minutes she straightened out his leg and patted his ankle, then pulled the sheet over him. “There,” she said, smiling as she looked up, but the smile faded as she met his gaze. Those dark blue eyes were as fierce and compelling as the sea, and she faltered in the face of his regard, her soft lips parting. Slowly his eyes dipped downward, and she was abruptly aware of her breasts, thrusting against the almost transparent fabric of her nightgown. A throbbing ache in her nipples made her fear that they had hardened, but she didn’t dare glance down to confirm it. Her new nightgowns didn’t hide a lot; they merely veiled.
Suddenly she couldn’t withstand the force of his gaze, and she averted her eyes, her thick lashes dropping to shield her thoughts. His body was in her line of vision, and abruptly her eyes widened. She almost gasped, but controlled her reaction at the last second.
Jerkily she got to her feet, forgetting about how much the nightgown revealed. She’d accomplished her aim, but she didn’t feel smug about it; she felt stunned, her mouth dry, her pulses hammering through her veins. She swallowed, and her voice was too husky to be casual when she said, “I thought you said you were impotent.”
It was a moment before her words registered. He looked as stunned as she felt, then he glanced down at himself. His jaw hardened and he swore aloud.
A hot blush suddenly burned her face. It was ridiculous to stand there, but she couldn’t move. She was fascinated, she admitted, completely bewildered by her reaction, or rather, her lack of it. As fascinated as a bird before a cobra, and that was a Freudian simile if ever she’d heard one.
“I must be psychic,” he whispered rawly. “I was just thinking that that little bit of nothing you have on would rouse the dead.”
She couldn’t even smile. Abruptly, though, she was able to move, and she left the room as swiftly as she could without actually running.
That disturbing dryness was still in her mouth as she dressed, pulling out her old clothes rather than the clinging new garments she’d been wearing. There was no need to dress seductively now; that particular milestone was behind him, and she knew better than to play with fire.
The only problem was, she discovered as the days passed, that Blake didn’t seem to notice that she’d reverted to her old clothes, her modest nightgowns. He didn’t say anything, but she could always feel the blue fire of his gaze on her when they were together. In the course of therapy she was constantly touching him, and she gradually became accustomed to the way he’d wrap his fingers around her leg while she massaged him, or the frequency with which their bodies rubbed together