she was still unconscious? Maybe her lungs were filled with water and she’d hallucinated all this while succumbing to the final phase of drowning? Was she experiencing some incredible dream on her way to the hereafter? That wasn’t so unlikely. She’d heard stories before.
Was any of this real?
Determined to find out, she reached and touched his pec, an inch above that small flat nipple. Her fingertip sizzled like creamy butter on a hotplate, at the same time as her centre glowed and blood tingled with fresh life. As her fingers fanned over the black, crisp hair, bolts of crackling electricity ripped through her veins. His flesh was so firm, so masculine and—
She stopped.
Inched her gaze up.
He was looking down his aquiline nose at her fingers—which were kneading the warm cushioned steel as if they belonged there.
Tilting his cleft chin, he raised a dark brow and his entrancing eyes met hers.
“Let me know when it’s my turn.”
She snatched her hand away. Her breathing was all over the place again and her face was flaming. Simply put, she wanted to die.
“I was just…er…just making sure they were—I mean, that you were—” Embarrassed beyond words, she spat out the rest. “I was making sure you were real.”
“Oh, is that what you were doing?”
His lopsided grin drew a crease down one side of that highly kissable mouth. And his eyes…
They were so clear and bright and laughing.
Laughing at her.
She understood why. She was acting like a loon. A suspicious, ungrateful, concussed, groping loon.
But then his gaze sharpened and his expression changed.
“Are you cold?” he asked, edging close again.
“I don’t think so.” But that noise…Were her teeth chattering? Checking out the clouds building to black overhead, she shivered and instinctively hugged herself. “I am kind of shaky.”
A line cut between his brows and he cupped her chin, turned her head gently one way then the next. His gaze intensified, and for a giddy moment Nina imagined she’d fallen head-first into those amazing ice-blue eyes. When he checked her pulse against his platinum Omega, she relented and played compliant patient. After six weeks of serving other people’s every whim, there was part of her that needed this one-on-one attention, mandatory though the attention might be.
“What’s the verdict, Doc?” Did he want her to open her mouth and say ah?
Her answer came when he rolled his shoulders back and peeled off his shirt. Her eyes popped out of her head. Mamma mia. What a specimen.
“You need to be kept warm,” he told her, stripping a sleeve off one dynamite arm and then the other.
“Thanks,” she managed to wheeze, “but I don’t think a wet shirt will cut it.”
“Body heat will.”
“Y-you’re going to hold me?”
He blindly tossed the shirt on a bush, then loomed over her, the chiselled planes of his face unforgivably close. “Any objection?”
Her gaze zeroed in on his mouth, on the dusky pink of his full bottom lip, and her pelvic floor muscles squeezed.
She’d tried to refuse him before and her opposition had got her nowhere. If anything, being obstinate had made matters worse. An air of entitlement, albeit tempered by GQ looks and bad-boy charm, was a quality that stuck in her craw. She’d kow-towed to similar sorts too often these past weeks…people who would once have classed her as their equal.
All that aside, this guy was no idiot. If he said she needed to be held—hell, he was probably right. And if she must be gathered up against some unknown body…heck, it might as well be his.
When she mustered a haughty look and shrugged one shoulder, he scooped an arm beneath her neck.
“Tell me if I hurt you,” he said, careful of her bump and her foot as he lay beside her.
He drew her close until her ear rested on the plateau of flesh and muscle below his collarbone. Despite her irritation, she almost sighed when one iron-warm palm splayed over the small of her back, pressing her deftly against his powerhouse length.
His breath brushed her ear. “How’s that?”
She could be smarmy, could fib and say she was uncomfortable; she was in a way—only because he had, indeed, been right. It seemed those remarkable arms gathering her near were exactly what her traumatised body had needed.
Comfort…a masculine mountain of it.
She buried her nose in his chest and mumbled, “Better.”
She imagined his grin. “Good.”
He was damp but hot, as if a furnace were blazing away beneath the skin, and when she closed her eyes everything but the impression of security and strength faded from mind. His earthy scent, mixed with a lingering hint of aftershave or soap, burrowed into her pores and played havoc with her rag-taggle reason.
This felt nice. He felt nice. Nice and strong and not-so-plain-or-simple sexy.
She inwardly sighed.
Oh, why not admit it? The throb in the base of her belly wasn’t a consequence of relief or gratitude, or even exasperation. It was desire—the forbidden, molten lava kind that blocked out other stimuli, heightened each sense and alerted every fibre. It was the kind of intense physical attraction that had her half convinced she needed to dissolve into this man right here, right now, or simply cease to be.
Crazy.
Clearly the knock on her head had bumped the arousal lever in her brain up to high. Every synapse seemed to have direct dial to the pulse ticking merrily away between her thighs. Every nerve-ending was wired to zap the burning tips of her breasts. All of which made her horribly nervous.
And terribly curious.
They were strangers, brought together by near tragedy. She was a level-headed woman who, admittedly, hadn’t had a man in a while. A good while. And certainly never one like this. But her urge to gaze up, look into those incredible eyes and offer him her lips…
It was wrong. Totally off beam.
Wasn’t it?
A moment ago his bedraggled kitten had wanted to know if this was real. Now Gabriel wondered too. He hadn’t peeled off his shirt and drawn her close for any reason other than her shaking. She needed to be kept warm.
Sure, he was benefiting too. Lying on this cushiony spread of sandy grass and listening to the rhythmic wash of waves gave him a chance to recuperate. His system needed a break. Only…
He didn’t
