In the total absence of light the cavern felt vast. Tiny sounds echoed, making it difficult to zero in on their source. His muscles tensed as his body went into automatic defensive mode. He turned every sense he possessed to rapidly scanning the surrounding area for a threat.
Gina didn’t move. Except for her breathing, which seemed abnormally fast. Was she awake? He couldn’t tell, and he didn’t dare to even so much as whisper her name in case someone was near. She lay with her back to his front. His arm was draped around her waist and her delectable ass pressed against his crotch, which was already sporting significant morning wood, although he was as sure as it was possible to be that they’d only been asleep for a few hours and it was still the middle of the night. Strands of her hair tickled his face, she smelled of soap and woman, and his hand was full of a soft, warm tit. She felt slender and supple and sexy as hell against him. So much so that he felt a stab of regret that at the moment he had more urgent things to think about than how horny she was making him.
Carefully he removed his hand from her breast and reached up for his weapon, which he’d tucked beneath the coat his head was pillowed on, and brought it down to rest on the part of the sleeping bag that covered her hip.
Asleep under battlefield conditions, which he considered these to be, he almost never woke up for no reason. Something had jolted him back to awareness. But if there was anything that shouldn’t be there in that cavern with them, he wasn’t picking up on—
She gave a little mewling cry, startling him, and began thrashing around in what seemed to be a desperate attempt to escape the shrouding sleeping bag. Careful to keep his gun hand out of the fray, he grabbed her to keep her from throwing herself out onto the stone floor, caught a heel in the kneecap and an elbow in the ribs for his pains, and had his answer: she’d woken him up.
From the small distressed sounds she was making, he was pretty sure that she was having a nightmare.
“Gina.” Placing his gun carefully back beneath the pillow, he wrapped both arms around her, imprisoning her flailing arms. He threw a leg over hers to keep from getting kicked again and nuzzled her ear. “Gina, wake up.”
She did, with a gasp and a shudder, then went stiff as a board in his hold as, he thought, she struggled to get her bearings. She was still facing away from him, and he could hear her agitation in the raggedness of her breathing.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you.” He freed her trapped arms and legs while still keeping a precautionary arm around her waist, and at the same time reached for the flashlight, hoping that feeling less physically restricted and being able to see something besides utter blackness might help her get oriented. Switching on the flashlight, he was treated to a glimpse of a fall of tawny hair and a slim shoulder and a beautiful bare breast emerging from the confines of the sleeping bag as she turned her head to cast an alarmed glance back at him.
Her big blue eyes, awash in tears, glistened as the light caught them.
“Cal.” She breathed his name with obvious relief, then said, “Turn the light off, please,” in a constricted voice that confirmed it for him: she was crying.
The knowledge unexpectedly made his gut clench.
He switched off the light, returning the flashlight to its place beside the gun. She wriggled around to face him, and he gathered her up, turning onto his back with her, cradling her in his arms. She snuggled close, naked skin to naked skin, her head and a hand resting on his chest, a slender, sexy leg sliding over his thighs. He could feel her heat, her curves, the satin of her skin, pressing full length against him, but what got to him most, what garnered his attention and made his stomach twist, was the hot dampness leaking onto his chest.
Tears, he knew.
Her crying disturbed him on a visceral level, and why that should be he had neither the time nor the energy to try to sort out at the moment. What he knew for sure was that it wasn’t a positive development, details to be worked out later. Grimacing at the niggling unease his reaction to her tears caused him, he set himself to calming her.
He smoothed a hand over her hair: silk against his palm.
“Bad dream, honey?”
She replied with a sniffle and a shudder as she pressed even closer against him. Which might have worked fine for getting him to think about something else—like, say, sex—if it hadn’t been for the tears that were spilling like rain onto his chest. Or if the knowledge that she was crying didn’t make him feel like someone was working him over with a club.
“Gina. Talk to me.”
“It was just a stupid nightmare. I get them occasionally, okay? I’ll be all right in a minute. I’m sorry I’m crying all over you.”