heart hurt to see her vulnerability. He couldn’t turn his back on it, not yet.
‘Now, querida, we get some sleep.’ Sliding under the bedsheets, he opened his arms to her.
Tentatively she walked to him. When she climbed onto the bed he switched the bedside light off then gently laid her down so she was nestled against him.
Holding her tightly, he lay with her in silence, his mind still reeling from everything that had just happened, his loins still aching from unfulfilled desire.
Instead of acting on it, he did nothing more than stroke her hair and trace his fingers gently over the top of her back.
He’d never held a woman like this before. It was an intimacy he’d always steered away from.
He couldn’t stay here holding her like this. Equally, he couldn’t leave her. Not yet.
Only when Francesca’s breathing had become deep and regular, her limbs weighty on him, did he extricate himself and settle in his makeshift bed on the floor, attempting to calm his racing head and thrumming heart enough to find some sleep of his own.
* * *
Felipe opened his eyes, instantly alert to any sound.
The suite was in darkness. All was quiet. But something had woken him.
Then he heard it again, the sound that had roused him from his sleep. A whimper.
He threw his covers off and climbed onto the bed where he found Francesca curled in a ball, crying into her pillow.
‘Querida?’ Tentatively, he put a hand on her head.
She stilled at his touch. After a moment she turned her face and opened her eyes. ‘Felipe?’
He smoothed damp hair from her wet face. ‘What’s the matter?’
Her face crumpled and tears fell down her cheeks, silvery in the shadowed darkness.
‘A bad dream?’
She gave a jerky nod.
He scooped her up to pull her to him and wrapped his arms tightly around her.
‘Hush,’ he whispered, kissing the top of her head. ‘It’s over now.’
Clinging to him as if he were a life raft, she sobbed into his chest.
‘It’s over now,’ he repeated, feeling as ineffectual as it was possible to feel.
He’d held fellow soldiers in his arms when they’d sobbed over a fallen comrade, but never had he held them and heard the cracks of his own heart.
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