LITMIR.BIZ

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left to live or years or decades, I want to live it to be the best I can but I want to feel it too. You make me feel things I’ve never felt before. Good feelings. Scary feelings. But real feelings.’ Feelings she’d ached to explore to see where they would take her because what if she never felt them again? ‘Do you understand that?’

      His dark eyes held hers as he gave a sharp inclination of his head.

      ‘I don’t know if it was this new awareness of life and its fragility that woke these feelings up or if it was just the catalyst...’ She attempted a smile. ‘No, I do know. If I’d met you under different circumstances I still would have wanted you. What I don’t know is if I would have had acted on it. I don’t expect anything from you or want anything more than this. Don’t think you took advantage of me. I gave my body to you freely as a consenting woman, just as you gave yours freely to me as a consenting man.’

      She tried to smile again but her chin wobbled too much for it to form. ‘And that’s it.’

      As Felipe listened, his fury with both Francesca and himself slowly seeped from him.

      Curled on the huge bed, she looked so intensely vulnerable that his heart ached.

      His pulses hammering, he shifted closer to her and took her cold hands, which just a short time ago had been warm, and rubbed them gently between his own then pressed a kiss to them.

      She attempted another shaky smile that made the ache in his heart expand.

      ‘I hurt you, didn’t I?’ he said quietly.

      She drew her lips in and nodded. ‘That was my own fault. If you’d known...’

      ‘If I’d known it was your first time I would have taken it slowly, not taken you like a rutting bull.’

      She pulled a face. ‘If you’d known it was my first time you wouldn’t have taken me at all. That’s why I didn’t tell you.’

      He laughed, his chest lightening at her wry quip.

      ‘You’re right, I have made many assumptions about you, querida,’ he said, reaching out to stroke her pale cheek. ‘It’s the nature of my life. I work with men, the people I protect are normally men too.’

      Women had always been on the periphery of his life, even his own mother, too busy working to feed him for him to learn any feminine secrets. Women were a mystery. He’d shared his bed with many of them through the years but had no clue as to how their minds worked. Francesca was the closest he’d come to understanding.

      ‘Women have always seemed like a different species to me,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘I accepted your family’s description of you being a danger to yourself at face value, which I wouldn’t have done if you’d been a man.’

      ‘Maybe they were right,’ she whispered.

      He shook his head, knowing she was thinking back to her gung-ho response to the Governor’s demand for a cash bribe. ‘To begin with you were on the edge but you soon found the strength you needed. What I am trying to say in my clumsy way is that I’ve not been able to look past my initial assumptions and too busy fighting my attraction to you to see you as you really are.’

      ‘How do you see me now?’

      ‘As strong.’ And beautiful. ‘You’re a fighter, querida.’

      Another tear rolled down her cheek. She screwed her face up as he wiped it away with his thumb.

      ‘Not very strong now,’ she mumbled.

      He leaned forward and cupped her face in his hands. ‘I’ve seen men bigger than me cry. It’s nothing to do with strength and nothing to be ashamed of.’

      She sighed and nodded then seemed to gather herself together, her back straightening. ‘I should put my nightshirt on.’

      Her legs made a slight wobble as she padded to the dressing room and closed the door behind her, re-emerging moments later with her nightshirt on.

      She stood in the doorway and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. ‘What happens now?’

      His heart hurt to see her vulnerability. He couldn’t turn his back on it, not yet.

      ‘Now, querida, we get some sleep.’ Sliding under the bedsheets, he opened his arms to her.

      Tentatively she walked to him. When she climbed onto the bed he switched the bedside light off then gently laid her down so she was nestled against him.

      Holding her tightly, he lay with her in silence, his mind still reeling from everything that had just happened, his loins still aching from unfulfilled desire.

      Instead of acting on it, he did nothing more than stroke her hair and trace his fingers gently over the top of her back.

      He’d never held a woman like this before. It was an intimacy he’d always steered away from.

      He couldn’t stay here holding her like this. Equally, he couldn’t leave her. Not yet.

      Only when Francesca’s breathing had become deep and regular, her limbs weighty on him, did he extricate himself and settle in his makeshift bed on the floor, attempting to calm his racing head and thrumming heart enough to find some sleep of his own.

      * * *

      Felipe opened his eyes, instantly alert to any sound.

      The suite was in darkness. All was quiet. But something had woken him.

      Then he heard it again, the sound that had roused him from his sleep. A whimper.

      He threw his covers off and climbed onto the bed where he found Francesca curled in a ball, crying into her pillow.

      ‘Querida?’ Tentatively, he put a hand on her head.

      She stilled at his touch. After a moment she turned her face and opened her eyes. ‘Felipe?’

      He smoothed damp hair from her wet face. ‘What’s the matter?’

      Her face crumpled and tears fell down her cheeks, silvery in the shadowed darkness.

      ‘A bad dream?’

      She gave a jerky nod.

      He scooped her up to pull her to him and wrapped his arms tightly around her.

      ‘Hush,’ he whispered, kissing the top of her head. ‘It’s over now.’

      Clinging to him as if he were a life raft, she sobbed into his chest.

      ‘It’s over now,’ he repeated, feeling as ineffectual as it was possible to feel.

      He’d held fellow soldiers in his arms when they’d sobbed over a fallen comrade, but never had he held them and heard the cracks of his own heart.

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