“Get off of me!” she screamed in Arabic. “I don’t want to.”
“Cantara, wake up.” Raoul lightly tapped the side of her face. Zeke flinched, knowing he would have hated doing it. Seeing her in the grip of such unmitigated horror made it necessary. “Come on, darlin’, it’s just a dream.”
Her body abruptly stopped trembling and she quit fighting him. Her eyes alighted upon him and she looked confused.
“You were having a bad dream,” Raoul said gently, stroking the hair away from her face. “That’s all it was.”
“Don’t leave me,” she said, trembling. “Please don’t leave me here alone.”
Zeke and Raoul shared a look, shed their clothes in seconds and climbed into the bed, one on either side of her. Zeke took her hand as Cantara rested her head on Raoul’s shoulder. She sighed just once and mumbled something that sounded like much better.
“We won’t ever leave you, darlin’,” Zeke assured her. “We’ll always be here for you.”
“Hmm.”
She seemed reassured and within seconds she was sound asleep again. This time she slept through the night without once stirring.
Cantara woke feeling rested, stronger. Of course, that might have had something to do with the two hunky bodies that had surrounded her throughout the night. She had drawn from solid protectiveness that felt so non-threatening that she mentally ceded responsibility for her wellbeing to them. The relief was palpable—as though a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
She stretched and flung one arm carelessly to the side. An empty side. Her eyes flew open. They had left her. They’d promised they wouldn’t. Didn’t they realize how badly she needed them?
“Hey, easy baby,” said a voice from her other side.
She turned to see Raoul, leaning up on one elbow, his eyes alight with an unfathomable emotion as he watched her.
“I thought…I thought you had gone, that I’d dreamed it all.” Panic she was unable to conceal gripped her. “I was back in—”
“Shush. We won’t ever leave you again.” He brushed her hair away from her forehead with a delicate touch, lowered his head and gently covered his lips with his own. “Zeke has gone to make us some breakfast, is all.”
“What time is it?”
“Eight in the morning. You slept for twelve hours, apart from one brief nightmare.”
“I don’t usually sleep at all.” She frowned. “Well, I don’t think I do.”
“Well, I’m glad you feel secure enough to sleep here in your yellow room, darlin’.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. “I am so goddamned relieved to have you back, Cantara.” His shoulders shook and tears leak from the corners of his eyes. He was actually crying. Her beautiful, tough hunk of a husband who didn’t look as though anything could scare him was reduced to tears because he had missed her, and because he seemed to feel guilty about her ending up wherever it was she’d been to. “I’m so sorry I failed you.”
“I’m sure you didn’t fail me.” She snuggled up to the rock hard wall of warmth and safety that was his chest, anxious to reassure. “I think I must be pretty strong-willed.”
Raoul chuckled through his emotional turmoil. “Well, there is that.”
“You need to tell me what happened. It might help me remember, and absolve you from guilt.”
“We will, honey. But not yet. You need time to readjust before you relive your nightmares.”
“Whatever you think best.”
He smiled that meltingly gentle smile of his that so got to her and cupped her chin in his long fingers. “What I think best is having you here in this bed with us. I never thought it was gonna happen.”
She could feel something pressing against her thigh. Something hard. Yea gods, he had an erection! She panicked and jerked out of his arms. Did he want what the other one wanted from her—the one who had frightened her, hurt her? Wasn’t that what all men wanted, even the civilized ones like Raoul? Nice try, but she was onto him.
“Sorry,” he said, looking embarrassed. “It’s just the way you make me feel. Ignore it. It’ll go away on its own.”
“Raoul…I can’t…I don’t think I want to—”
“Listen to me, darlin’,” he said, holding her by the shoulders and looking intently into her eyes. “You’ve had one hell of a time. We can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through.” Nor could she, that was the problem. It would help if she could remember. “But you’re safe now, and no one’s gonna make you do anything you don’t want to. Trust me on this.”
“I do trust you, Raoul,” she said, relaxing back against him. “But it’s confusing, not knowing who I am or what I’ve done, and being afraid of my own shadow. I don’t feel as though I’m the sort of person who scares easily, which makes it that much more frustrating.”
“Shush, I know.” He placed a finger against her lips and sent her another of his devastating smiles. It lit up his features, transforming his face from merely handsome to drop-dead gorgeous. “But we have all the time in the world now to make you better. You’ll remember when you’re ready to.”
Zeke joined them at that point, carrying a tray bearing their breakfast. He was wearing a ratty pair of cut-off jeans and, far as Cantara could tell, not a whole lot else. She might still be feeling weak, but not so weak that she couldn’t appreciate his sculpted torso, his rippling muscles and graceful coordination. He and Raoul were impossibly good looking and self-assured, but there the similarities ended. Zeke was part Arapaho. She sat a little straighter as she recalled him telling her that yesterday.