Mind Game (GhostWalkers, #2)(68)

“And that’s because?” she prompted.

His grin widened into a smile. “Because she’s a woman, obviously.”

That earned him a small laugh. Dahlia wiped at more of the mud. “I’m almost afraid to meet her,” she admitted. “She was the one person I built up as larger than life. I needed her to be real, and because I was a child, so young, the memories wanted to fade, so I made up things about her.”

“If you’re worried the real woman won’t live up to the one you created, she will. Lily’s a very special woman. She opened her home up to all of us, provided medical help for Jeff, who’d suffered a seizure and a stroke. She’s worked tirelessly to help us build enough barriers to go into the world without an anchor for short periods of time. The hope is eventually we’ll all get strong enough to have families and live in the world like normal people.”

“I’ve thought about that term so much over the years. Normal. It’s such a little word, yet it means everything.”

“It means nothing at all,” he contradicted. “There is no normal. Define normal for me, Dahlia. We’re all normal and yet abnormal.”

Now that the action was over and the night had closed in, Nicolas was becoming all too aware of her. He directed the boat off the river and up a canal heading toward the very heart of the bayou. All the while, his gaze kept straying back to her. She was tired and needed rest desperately. She was soaking wet and streaked with mud. It didn’t matter. His discipline was beginning to fray around the edges. His self-control was losing the battle with the demands of his body.

She glanced at him, a quick, under the lashes look that said volumes. The harder he tried to keep his thoughts from turning sexual, the more he fantasized. He knew he wasn’t containing his sexual energy very well, but there was something about the way the boat rode over the water and the night enclosed them.

Dahlia sighed loudly and tapped her fingers on the bottom of the boat. “You have three distinct thought patterns. Violence, food, and sex. Not necessarily in that order. And why your sexual energy would be a million times greater than violent energy, only a therapist could tell you.”

There was more than a little humor in her voice, allowing some of the tension to ease out of him. “Don’t you think that’s a good thing?”

“I think you’re seriously disturbed. Don’t you ever just want to curl up in bed and go to sleep?”

“I thought you were action oriented,” he teased.

“I thought you were sane.”

But she was looking at him. He could feel her gaze moving over his body, a silken sweep that left him as hard as a rock. The boat chugged lazily through the canals, carrying them through a grove of trees. The branches swept the surface, long dangling arms of green to brush across his shoulders. Moonlight spilled onto the water, a silver ball shimmering in the depths.

“I love it out here. Does that make me sane?”

“Yes.” There was pleasure in her voice. Warmth. She yawned. “I wish I had more clothes. I’m tired of being wet and muddy.”

“I was trying to get you to the point you didn’t think clothes were strictly necessary.”

She laughed softly and drew her knees up to her chin. “Really? And how long have you been planning on getting me naked?”

“Since I caught a glimpse of your bare bottom. The image is there, Dahlia, forever in my mind, and weak man that I am, it isn’t going away. You didn’t help matters when you unbuttoned your blouse either.”

“How very reassuring. Are you about to start fixating on my breasts again?”

He closed his eyes and savored the memory of the sun shining through her wet shirt. “You’re incredibly beautiful, Dahlia.”

She was silent, watching him closely. Feeling for his emotions. Checking to see if he was sincere. “Thank you. That’s a nice thing for you to say.” She rubbed her chin on top of her knees. “Mostly I’ve been told I look like a witch. Too-big eyes, too much hair. Too small, too everything. No one ever used the word beautiful before.”

“Incredibly beautiful,” he qualified. “Get it right Dahlia.” He consulted his map again and turned without hesitation into another branch of the waterway. “We’re almost there. And I love your eyes.” He was particularly smitten with the small expanse of skin around her midriff and her intriguing belly button.

Dahlia wasn’t about to tell him what she found attractive about him. He was already far too arrogant and sure of himself. He didn’t need to be told she could barely contain her own sexual energy. She loved the way he felt around her. She’d never had anyone want her the way he did. She could feel the energy pouring off of him, reaching out to swamp her, to raise her own temperature several degrees.

She rubbed her chin back and forth across her knees, her body feeling too full and heavy and tight in her skin. It shocked her how sensitive her breasts were, rubbing against the material of her shirt and aching with need.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” he asked.

“I feel what you’re fantasizing,” she admitted.

“Other men must have had sexual fantasies when they were around you. What about Calhoun? Come on, Dahlia, is this really a first?”

“Yes. And I don’t like it. It makes me moody and uncomfortable and edgy. I feel like scratching your eyes out for making me feel this way. And that sets up violent energy and that sets up heat and eventually something—or someone—gets burned.”