Shadows At Sunset - Anne Stuart [52]
“Would you turn off the lights?” she said in a deceptively calm voice.
“If you want.”
“Are you always so agreeable?”
“If you were looking for abuse I’m afraid you picked the wrong man.”
The wrong man. Too many times the wrong man. “Turn off the lights,” she said again, and the room was plunged into darkness.
She heard the rustle of clothes as he stripped and got into the bed, and she reached for the front clasp of her bra, ready to do what she’d done countless times before. At the last minute she changed her mind, slipping beneath the pillowy duvet with her underwear still on. She lay on her back beside him, rigid, trying to control her racing heart, her shallow breathing.
He was nothing more than a shadow in the room, lying beside her. She couldn’t see him; he wouldn’t be able to see her. It was a small comfort. She waited for him to touch her, but he was in no hurry, seemingly content to watch her in the shadows, when he couldn’t really see her at all.
“You have a lot of books,” she said.
She didn’t have to see his smile to know that she’d amused him. “Yes, I do. Do you want me to turn the light back on so you can read them?”
“They looked a little too heavy-going for me. What are they?”
“Medical texts. And you’re right, they’re pretty heavy-going.”
“Why do you have medical texts?” she asked.
“Oh, even an orderly gets curious. Actually my interior decorator thought they’d dress up the room a bit…”
“You’re not an orderly.”
“Nope.”
“You’re not a nurse, either?”
“Nope.”
“Paramedic?” she said hopefully. “Medical technician?”
“Why does it matter?”
She already knew the truth. “I don’t like doctors.”
“Then stay out of the ER and you don’t have to see me at work.”
Not good enough. “Shouldn’t a doctor have more sense than to sleep with a stranger who has a history of drug and alcohol abuse? Ever hear of AIDS? HIV?”
“You brought condoms. And what makes you think I’m safe?”
“Are you?” And would she leave if he said no?
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me?”
“Stop arguing with me, chica,” he said softly. “If you’re sick I’ll take care of you. But I don’t think you are. You wouldn’t have come home with me. You like to think you’re so bad and cruel, but you wouldn’t go around picking up strange men and making them sick.”
“I don’t know why you think you know me so well,” Rachel-Ann said bitterly.
“Because I do. Come here.” She felt his hands on her, pulling her against him, his hand cupping her head, and without thinking she let him tuck it beneath his chin. He was naked, as she expected him to be, and he was hard. She waited for him to do more. To reach down and push the rest of her clothes off. To kiss her mouth, hard, to make her touch him.
But he didn’t. He seemed perfectly content to hold her. “You may as well relax, Rachel-Ann,” he whispered in her ear. “We’re not going to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“And if I don’t want to do anything but lie here?”
“Then that’s fine, too.”
“That’s not what your body is saying.”
“No,” he agreed. “But my body doesn’t rule me. Here.” He turned her around, so that she was cuddled against him, spoonlike, his arms hard and secure around her, holding her, demanding nothing. “Stop shivering. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She was so cold, he was so hot, and all she wanted to do was lie in his arms and weep. She wouldn’t do that. She stared sightlessly at the wall of books, trying to absorb the heat from his body, the strength, and slowly, imperceptibly, the tension began to drain from her body. “So many books,” she murmured sleepily.
“So many books,” he agreed. “Go to sleep, angel.”
“Not an angel,” she whispered. “Don’t want to sleep.”
“Yes, you do. You’re tired of fighting. I’ll keep you safe.”
“What makes you think you know what I want? What makes you think you know anything at all about me?” She could see the gilt outline of picture frames up on the bookcases, tipped facedown. Strange, she thought sleepily.
“I know you. Trust me and sleep.”
“No,” she said. And slept, safe in his