don’t want to scare you, baby. You have to
know I would never, ever want to hurt you.”
He sounded so different from the laughing, sarcastic man
she’d come to know. This was the Cooper she’d always suspected hid under his
playful exterior. He was so sweet, but it was hard to believe he wasn’t
sexually active. He was the only one of the three of Tal’s guards who regularly
took weeks off and left the country. “I thought you had a girl back home. I
thought that was why you left every six weeks.”
He was staring into her eyes, holding her hostage. “I go to
a little hospital in Pakistan. I have an old buddy who runs a clinic there.
Baby, I’m not seeing someone. I’m vaccinating babies and running the clinic so
he has a little time off. I told you. I haven’t wanted anyone since the minute
I laid eyes on you.” He swallowed hard. “Are you ever going to look at me the
way I look at you?”
Alea wanted to. She studied him all the time when she was
sure he wasn’t looking. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know
that I can do any of this, Cooper. I…I don’t think I function the way other
women do. I don’t respond to sex.”
Except she was kind of responding now. Her breathing was
ragged. She wasn’t panicked the way she’d been after her rescue. When she’d
first come back, she’d pulled away from anyone who tried to touch her. Lately,
she’d been wondering if she was missing out. Piper was a hugger. At first it
had seemed rude to shove her cousins’ wife away, so she’d endured it, but more
and more she found herself initiating the hugs. And she definitely thought
about being able to touch her men. In her dreams, she opened to them fully, and
they took her in every way. She felt such pleasure, such love… What a
far-fetched fantasy.
And just the fact that she thought of them as her men was proof enough that she’d gone
half mad. She should shove Cooper away right this second before he found out
how cold she was.
“Baby, your nipples are hard.”
He backed up just enough to brush his knuckles over them.
Rough, work-callused skin touched her own, lighting a fire deep in her belly.
She shivered and gasped, then tried to shrink away. He wrapped an arm loosely
around her waist and kept her close.
“You respond just fine.” His voice sounded rough. “Let me
kiss you.”
Alea shook her head. “I-I can’t stand too much touch. I
can’t close my eyes without…”
“Shh, baby. You can’t stand being tied down or having
someone on top of you. We can work on that. It’ll take time and patience, but
I’ve got both.”
“It’s more than that.” But he wouldn’t understand, and
frustration welled. She needed to grab her robe and run away. She looked around
for an escape, but the only way out was through Coop. “I don’t know how I would
handle hands really…touching me.”
“Let me do all the worrying. We’ll work it out.”
That sounded nice. No, it sounded like a huge relief,
letting someone else bear the strain and horror of all she’d endured. God, she
was so deeply lonely, but she feared the risk. What if Coop touched her and she
panicked? How could she ever look at him or the other two again if she freaked
out and made an idiot of herself? They’d know she was frigid. Hell, she’d
confessed it. But they didn’t know she woke up screaming and fighting some
invisible attacker far too often.
Slowly, Cooper slid to his knees, somehow making the move
deeply graceful. “I won’t touch you with my hands, baby, but I want to show you
that there’s not a damn thing wrong with you. You can respond. I can prove it.
Let me kiss you.”
He wasn’t talking about her mouth.
Cooper was right there ,
staring at her. She should be horrified. No one had seen her naked since she’d
come home from South America. But there was something heady about the intimacy of
being
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