Read Online Army of You & Me by Billy London - Free Book Online Page B

more than a man exerting his power over a woman overrule her natural instinct to not have anyone touch her. She’d found each man, each act wanting. Her needs remained unmet. Not that she hadn’t given it everything, in search of the elusive passion people talked so broadly about. In Rwanda she’d escaped a terrible fate, but the screams of those women who were so savagely and repeatedly assaulted still haunted her. Her therapist had been surprised she had been willing to explore her sexuality. But still she struggled to unite sex with love when it had only ever been associated with power and violence and control.
    Yet when Cain touched her in Cambridgeshire, like he couldn’t help himself, she felt a tantalising breath away from that elusive, enviable, desirable climax. It worried at her that if she gave him that intimacy, what else would he need from her? How long would it take for him to understand how damaged she was and leave?
    Madeline lifted Cain’s arm from around her shoulders and took the throw from the back of the sofa and draped it over him. Upstairs she changed into something a little more comfortable – a button-down pencil skirt and a boat-neck, thin knit cardigan. Once changed and shoe straps were secured around her ankles, she went back downstairs. In her kitchen, she boiled the kettle for tea. Mango and lychee always calmed her. At the very least she should explain it to him. As smart as he was, he wasn’t telepathic. No man was.
    “Madeline!”
    She jumped, in startled cat mode. “What’s the matter?” She made her way back to the living room and Cain was sitting up, the throw in a crumpled heap in the middle of the floor.
    “Where’d you go?”
    “I was in the... Why’d you throw my blanket?”
    He stood up, towering over her. “You’re trying to tiptoe away from me again.”
    “I was just in the kitchen!”
    His gaze turned stormy. “I didn’t mean physically. Look, what happened this morning was going to happen.”
    Really? “Um...”
    “It was going to happen the minute we met.”
    Just one minute... “Excuse me, I do have some autonomy.”
    “Not where you and me are concerned. And the more you keep fighting it, trying to protect yourself from this supposedly inevitable hurt, the more you’re going to kick yourself when I go back on duty for wasting time.”
    The volume of his annoyance triggered her temper. “You’re being an arsehole.”
    “How?”
    “You are. You’re being an arsehole about things you don’t understand.”
    “So I misunderstood when you told me you loved me?”
    Madeline felt the world shudder to a stop. Shit on a stick. “What? I never said that! Did I say that?”
    Cain tucked his tongue against his teeth and clicked it. Oh, God, he was cross. Those weird eyes of his were dark with irritation. He folded his huge arms across his chest and waited. Madeline’s brain activity flatlined. “When did I... When?”
    Cain’s eyebrows slowly inched towards his hairline. “Does it matter?”
    “Well, no. But you haven’t mentioned it until now. To yell at me.”
    “I was brought up by a Captain of the Royal Anglian Regiment. I yell at everything, woman! I yell in the shower. I yell to order coffee. I yell if my phone runs out of battery. So yes, I’m yelling.”
    Perfect distraction, even though he was irritating the hell out of her. “You can lower the tone with me, thank you very much. I don’t care if you were brought up by Genghis Khan, you do not yell in my house and definitely not at me.”
    “Stop trying to change the subject. Why?”
    “Why what?”
    “Why do you love me?”
    “I’m asking myself the same damn question.”
    “Madeline.”
    “I don’t know. Maybe because you have the decency to wear deodorant. Or you wear T-shirts that are clearly too small for you. You’re freaking weird. And you know it but you don’t care. You still laugh. About everything, and you don’t have nightmares about what you’ve seen. Did I say you