Darkness(79)

“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.”

Accompanied by a gasping breath, a tremor that shook her from head to toe, and more dripping tears, that truculent response made him tighten his hold on her and press his lips to the top of her head. He had a shrewd idea about the subject of her nightmare: the plane crash that had killed her family members. The difficulty she’d had talking about it earlier, along with her emotional response to the little she did say, told the tale.

“You can cry on me all you want. What I said earlier about crying women scaring me—that was just a dumb joke. Nightmares are the pits. I used to get one that made me cry every time I had it.”

He could feel her settling herself more comfortably against him. Silky skin, tits, legs, a beautiful naked woman in his arms who was his for the taking—and all he could think about was stopping her crying. She was shivering, and he tugged the sleeping bag more tightly around her shoulders. The softness of her breasts pressing against his chest, the slide of her smooth, taut thigh over his, the nudge of her bush against his hip, pointed him toward a hell of an enjoyable way to give her thoughts another direction fast. But her tears stopped him. Knowing that she was hurting stopped him. If he was right about the cause of her nightmare, and he was 99.9 percent sure he was, the pain she was suffering went deep. He knew, because he’d been there. What she needed most was to talk it out.

Forget the urgings of his cock: he was there to listen.

“Really?” She sounded deeply suspicious, but her tears seemed to be slowing.

“Yes, really. After my mom was killed in a car accident, I would dream that I saw her walking through my bedroom door. She would smile at me and disappear. I would wake up every time bawling my eyes out.” It was the truth, and although it had been at least twenty years since he’d last had that dream, he could still remember the wrenching agony of it—and how lost and alone he’d felt waking up crying in his bed and knowing that if he didn’t muffle his tears, if his father heard him, he’d come in and berate or beat some manliness into him.

He could feel her attention focusing on him like radar. “Was your mother killed in a car accident?”

“Yep.”

“How old were you?”

He told her.

“Oh, my God. Poor little boy.” Her hand moved up his chest in a sensuous slide that he was acutely aware of. Her arm curled around his neck and she pressed closer in silent comfort. He could feel the imprint of her naked body against his with every cell he possessed—right along with her sympathy, her sorrow for the little boy he’d once been. She said, “I’m so sorry,” and he dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

“It was a long time ago. But I understand nightmares.”

She took a deep breath. He realized that he no longer felt tears falling on his chest. Good.

“After your mother died, who took care of you?” Her voice was steadier. There was a note in it that told him how eager she was to focus on him rather than herself for the moment. He was fine with that if it helped her.

“It was just me and my dad until I left home after high school.”

She snuggled herself against him some more. “Then what did you do?”

Cal hesitated. The need for secrecy and anonymity had been ingrained in him over the last few years, but his background wasn’t confidential and, somewhat to his surprise, he found himself wanting her to know.

“I attended the Air Force Academy. Became a pilot. Then, Air Force Special Ops.”

“I knew you were military.” There was a wealth of satisfaction in her voice. She was no longer sounding so small and scared, and she’d quit shivering. He congratulated himself for that.

“Not anymore. Like I said, I’m a private contractor.”

“Doing what, exactly?”

“Right now, trying to stay alive.” His voice was dry. Ignoring the growing erection that her wriggling around against him wasn’t helping, he settled himself in to chat.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“Nope.”

She made a sound that combined annoyance with disgust, then said, “What about your father? Is he still alive?”

“Yes.”

“The two of you must be close.”

“We manage to exist on the same planet and that’s about it.”

“Is he very different from you? Like, an accountant or an insurance agent or something?”

“He’s a retired Air Force officer. When I was growing up, he was a hard-ass and I was rebellious. My mother was the buffer. When she died, our relationship went to hell on a slide.”

“That’s sad.”

Cal shrugged. He didn’t find it particularly sad. He and his father had no problems now that he was grown. They’d achieved a kind of détente, the key to which was never seeing each other. “It is what it is.”

She took a deep breath, then confessed what he’d been almost certain of all along. “That’s what my nightmares are about, too. My family—the plane crash that killed them.” She sounded like she was having a hard time getting the words out, but at least she was talking about it. That was the result he’d been aiming for with his own confessional: kind of an I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours deal. A high school guidance counselor had once done the same thing for him, and not long after that the nightmares had stopped.