Page 82 of Prisoner of War
Chapter Eighteen
When Duardo slipped into the darkened room, Minnie was awake and waiting for him, but there was no whisper of cloth as he undressed. No silent pause as he prepared to enter the bed. He came straight to her side and his hand curled over her shoulder, as if to rouse her.
His fingers moved restlessly, stroking the flesh over her collarbone with unexpected gentleness and sendingripples down her spine.
“You are awake,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Her awareness of their invisible watchers made her answer Zalaya. “I wasn’t waiting for you, so don’t get your hopes up.”
He gave a low laugh. “I know what drives men and women. You lie here wrestling with your guilt over your lost soldier.”
Shehadbeen grappling with guilt. “How did you know that?” she said, surprisedinto it.
“I have listened to your dreams as you whispered them into the night. You regret that you were never given the chance to say goodbye properly. You despair that you were cheated of one last moment with him when you might have sealed your relationship for all time.”
She shuddered. He had touched upon the seed of her dreams, yes. This was the unnamed ghost that had driven her to Vistaria.Then Duardo knew. If he knew and was speaking of it now it meant he must have forgiven her.
She blinked away her tears. “That is something you could never understand,” she said, speaking to Zalaya.
“I understand more than you believe. You think it is your fault he died.”
She could not stop the fall of her tears and was beyond caring. She stared at his silhouette. “Yes,” she whispered. “Goddamnyou, yes.”
“Then pretend that he sits before you now. Take the last moment that was stolen from you.”
“Is this another game you are playing? Messing with my head?”
“What would be the value in that?” he asked, leaning on the chain at her wrist, reminding her of it. “I can already take what I want.”
“Then why? What do you get out of it?”
His silence stretched before he stirred. “Time has runout,” he said at last. His voice was barely audible. She knew he did not want the unseen watchers to hear this. “I want to know what it might feel like once more.”
The fatalistic words spoke of an impending doom, one that he had warned her of that morning, of an unraveling and of brewing storms. He moved and she did not know what he was doing until she felt his hands at her wrist, lifting thecuff. There was a tiny snick as the key turned and the chain fell to the sheet. He pushed it away until it slithered off the end of the bed. He got to his feet, stood beside the mattress and held his hands out from his sides, as a man would if he was showing he was unarmed and harmless. “I await your pleasure.”
Her heart hammering unsteadily, Minnie got to her knees. “Mind games,” she whispered.
“You want. I want. Where is the game in that?” he asked. “Tonight, I will not take.”
It was an echo of a previous night, but this time he had laid it out before her so she understood he was coming to her as Duardo, with no taint of Zalaya or regard for those who watched.
She moved across the bed slowly, sizing him up. Her taxed heart scurried, skipping beats and hurting with the pace it worked.Her whole body throbbed and it was not all because of her heart.
She climbed from the bed and he turned to face her, watching passively. She took a step toward him. Another one. And another, so there were only a few inches between them.
She raised her hands to his shirt and slipped the buttons undone. She pulled the tails free so the shirt hung loose and open, revealing the flesh beneath. Witha deep breath, she slid her hands inside and rested them against his chest. Heat and warmth and yielding softness impressed themselves upon her. Then she felt the rapid beat of his heart and the shallow lift and fall of his chest and knew she was affecting him.
Minnie seduced him, deliberately taking what she wanted, with no regard for the camera. The dark would hide nearly everything and anythingshe might want to say to Duardo, she spoke with her hands and mouth instead.
The hours passed as they indulged themselves. Minnie reached for him time and time again, nudging nerves back on-line, teasing needs back to life.
Until, with their limbs entwined and Duardo’s chest at her back, sleep slipped over Minnie and she dreamed...
* * * * *
The dream was both a memory and a fantasy spun fromthe illusion in which she had willfully taken part that night. The memory was of her father complaining about watching one more movie with her. “As long as you don’t tell me the rest of the plot fifteen minutes in, Minerva Benning,” he said as he queued movie.
Duardo, whose lap she sat in, with her shoulder against his warm chest, kissed her cheek. “She can tell me. I need to know what they willdo. I have to outflank everyone, you know.”
