He was quiet for a few seconds, then said, “Maybe it’ll help to talk about it.”
She glanced at him, and—Oh, holy shit! He wasn’t wearing a shirt. She could have sworn he’d been wearing one when they’d lain down, but … not now. Some time during the night he must have gotten too warm, and she’d been too out of it to wake up when he’d taken it off. She gaped at him, at the way the light gleamed on the powerful curve of his shoulders, the sinewy, vein-laced muscles in his arms. A dark patch of hair decorated the middle of his chest, spread lightly over his pecs. There was a scar on his right shoulder that ran in a jagged line about three inches long, but it was an old scar, smoothed by time to nothing more than a silver line. It was, nevertheless, a silent reminder that the man next to her was a warrior, a man who had seen battle and been shaped by it. He’d been wounded, he’d faced death, he’d maybe, probably, caused death. He’d know and understand strategy, and he’d go into any situation determined to win.
More rattled than seeing a half-naked man warranted, Angie squirmed, then casually tossed an arm over her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at him, but not because he was too hard on the eyes. Too much the opposite, in fact, so much so that seeing him like that interfered with her thought processes.
“After everything that’s happened, I have enough nightmare fodder to last me a lifetime, including sleeping with you.” She tried to sound insulting, but it didn’t work. Being so close to all that muscle had obviously fried her brain, because she couldn’t stop a teasing smile from quirking her lips. Teasing? Oh, God, was she actually trying to flirt with him? She needed to slap herself completely awake, and back to sanity, because otherwise she was just going to make a total fool of herself.
He laughed. Dare laughed. Despite the danger of seeing all that skin, Angie peeked out from under her arm, just enough to see that it was a genuine, natural laugh, the real deal. It was rusty and rough and sounded as if he had a hair ball caught in his throat, but it was a laugh, and she got that melty sensation in her chest again. She’d wanted to make him angry so he’d stop asking questions, but instead she’d undermined herself by smiling and he hadn’t taken her seriously.
When he stopped laughing, he propped on his elbow and looked down at her, leaning over her a little, and abruptly her heart stopped melting and began thumping hard inside her chest. Probably it was the light making his expression look like something it wasn’t, but right there, right then, she thought he was looking at her as if he wanted to eat her up.
Tension made her mouth go dry. She wasn’t the most experienced woman on the planet, but she instinctively knew that expression even if no man had ever before turned it on her. It was a completely male, sexual, predatory, hungry look that both lured her closer and at the same time made her want to run. This kind of sexy look was a trap, because it would make any woman melt from its toe-tingling, butterfly-inducing intensity.
She knew better than to fall for that; Dare wanted sex, but even though he’d saved her life and she owed him big time, she didn’t think she could handle going where he apparently thought this was going. She didn’t think he was thinking about her owing him; he was a man, so more than likely he wasn’t thinking about anything other than just sex. But if she had sex with him while she was thinking about owing him, then that put her in the category of prostitute, using her body to pay a debt. Then there was the big letdown that sex always was, the buildup that led to a fizzle. No matter how she looked at it, having sex was a bad idea.
“Don’t even think about it,” she warned.
His eyebrows went up, and he made a derisive sound in his throat. “You’re about two years too late,” he returned.
Two years? Startled, she gaped at him. “What?”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Tell me about your dream.”
Dream? What dream? Completely distracted, she shook her head, then belatedly realized that her dream might be a good way to distract him, because there was nothing admirable about her wedding.
“Fine.” She dropped her arm and glared at him, squarely meeting his gaze and ignoring the rugged attractiveness of his stubbled face. His expression didn’t change; he didn’t try to hide who he was and what he wanted. “I dreamed about mud and bears and wedding cake icing.”
His eyebrows did that quirking thing again. “Icing?” He blinked, and she could tell he was trying to connect a wedding cake to the bear.
“I was drowning in it. Mud at first, then it turned to icing.” She scowled at him. “You know I got married a few years back, right?” They lived in a small community. Everyone pretty much knew everything about everybody else, at least the pertinent information, though some details were less well known than others. Her dad had been at her wedding, of course, and had comforted and supported her afterward, but he’d never said what he’d told Harlan or anyone else once he got home, and she’d never asked.
“I heard you were supposed to, but something happened.” A cautious note entered his rough voice, as if he thought she’d been ditched at the altar, or something like that.
“I had it annulled.”
Surprise flickered in his eyes. “Annulled, huh?” An annulment wasn’t like a divorce; you could pretty much get a divorce for anything. Even something as simple as liking different colors could be the basis for incompatibility, but an annulment had very specific legal requirements.
“A divorce would have been easier,” she admitted grimly. “Even my lawyer advised me to just get a divorce, and he was right. But I was so … I just wanted it to be erased, as if it had never been, and there was no reasoning with me.”