“Can’t—or won’t?” she challenged. There was a long moment when their wills clashed as gazes locked, a silent battle that was not the first of its kind between them. Joey knew it would not likely be the last, even when he was, again, the first to drop his eyes.
“I can’t.” It came out almost as a growl, angry and defensive. His broad shoulders were hunched, and tension radiated from his body as surely as if it had taken solid form. Then, all at once, the tense posture dissolved. He straightened slowly, looking up from under his brows. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” His tone had changed from growl to purr, and Joey found her own annoyance draining away.
“If it doesn’t matter, does that mean you’ll help me?” She was hardly satisfied with his answer, but on her list of priorities the most important thing was still clear. She pushed the memory of their kiss and its bizarre aftermath from her mind.
Luke left the fireside and covered the space between them in one long stride. Joey found herself pressing back into the sofa. He seemed huge standing there before her, all restrained power and unpredictability. Tilting her head back to face him, she repeated stubbornly, “Will you help me, Luke?”
The muscles of his face stiffened and relaxed, but his eyes remained fixed on hers .”I will.”
Closing her eyes briefly, Joey heard the words and felt her muscles loosen. “Thank you.”
The simple exchange seemed to release something in both of them, for Luke suddenly smiled—as close to a real smile as he usually came. Joey suspected genuine warmth in it, and she met it with one of her own. Before, she’d let her unrestrained joy at his offer of help push her to incautious behavior, and that wasn’t going to happen again. But her relief and gratitude were very real nevertheless, she drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them with a sigh of contentment.
Once again they let the deep silence lie. In spite of her pleasant drowsiness Joey found herself watching Luke with that same unwilling fascination as he paced restlessly before the hearth. There was nothing in his walk, or in any of the restrained motions of his body, that was not graceful. She reflected idly that it must come from living in the wild, he was a woodsman, well versed in the ways of Nature. Perhaps his growing up here, on the edge of civilization, accounted for the strangeness that both piqued and intrigued her in spite of herself.
It was easy to allow her thoughts to drift from idle speculation to admiration and then to recent memories. And to dreams. All at once Joey was remembering things she had tried to push away, distracting images that had no place in the scheme of her plans. She remembered the feel of Luke’s body against her back when she had touched the music box, and days ago when—She tried to shut away the rush of sensation that came to her with the memories, but it suddenly gripped her with absolute and uncanny power.
Her face was suddenly far hotter than the fire warranted. She cast the blanket aside and shivered with something distinctly other than cold. Closing her eyes did not keep the images away. Luke with his powerful arms locking her in an embrace she had no wish to escape, his lips on hers, all of her careful control utterly abandoned. That had been reality. For those moments in the meadow the entirety of the world had been a kiss unlike any she had ever known.
And then the dreams: they were worse. In the dreams she was lost utterly, completely vulnerable. The first dreams had brought fear, but since the kiss they had been so compellingly erotic that Joey had forcibly locked them away where they could not interfere, could not destroy her best-laid plans.
Until now. Now she was here alone in a cabin with Luke, aware of him in ways she had no ability to dismiss. Imagination took on greater power than she had believed it could—that she had not experienced since childhood, when she had learned how overwhelming reality could be and gave up dreaming.