firm, male touch her body truly longed for, as if it had found its ideal long ago and had no intention of letting the idea of him go, ever.
She wanted him, wanted him here and now and in her bed, in her. Even in her deepest sleep, her cheeks flushed with even more heat at the very thought of such emphatic possession as she knew his would be. Then the part of her that longed for him all the time she was trying to forget took over and wrenched that spectre lover back into her bed. He followed her impatient hands with kisses, tracked merciless trails of slick heat over her sensitised skin, pressed questing fingertips into the places she most wanted them to explore and she gasped in pleasure, at last.
In her dreams he was hers as surely as she was his, so why wake up to cold reality? Her unconscious self conspired with her inner wanton to revel in their heat and closeness and her body tingled and writhed and strove for something more against the heavy bedclothes and the depths of the long night. He’s here! The words seemed to have been whispered, as if he truly was with her in every way there was between lovers. Doubt invaded even her imaginary idyll as soon as she felt they were not alone in this dream of fulfilment she had given herself, though.
Even as her phantom lover reared over her to feast his hungry mouth on her waiting lips and sink his mighty, roused body blissfully into her longing depths to complete them as lovers, she heard a voice from beyond the grave whisper, ‘No, no, don’t let him love you like that. Never love a man, Chloe. Look where love got me. Push him out of your heart, keep him out of your body and never, ever let yourself love him,’ it ended on a wail, as pain took a deeper hold and the pale ghost sliced a dead and icy hand down on dream Luke’s warm neck and he vanished like smoke on the wind.
Chloe’s dreams landed her back into a cold, windswept wreck of a house high on the moors where nobody went unless they had to and even then they came away crossing themselves as if they’d met the devil at the back door. She writhed against the cooling sheets in terrified protest as images flashed through her sleep like the torn black of mourning weeds, weathered to faded shreds of their midnight prime.
There was blood, so much blood, and Chloe began to whimper in her sleep. The unending awfulness of the time and tragedy of that forsaken place bit into her. However hard she tried to clean the gore up she couldn’t wash it away and into her terrifying dream flashed images of a fragile young woman laid out pale and cold on the narrow, mean bed as love leeched out of that wretched house and grief rolled in to replace it like the dense cloud hanging over the wintry moor.
Then she was back to the following December day, winds beating savage and remorseless on the tiny windows until even the stout shutters shivered and shifted against the threat of it as if they might break open. The younger Chloe wept and over the roar of the wind came the relentless slash of rain, beating on the narrow windows as if it wanted to drown every last breath of life in this place where only wind and rain should rule and people didn’t belong.
Now she desperately needed Luke and he wasn’t there. He faded and forsook her when she drifted back to a time when there was no Luke to tempt and tantalise her, only a howling and an empty stretch of pain inside that seemed to go on for ever. Then the storm softened and grew less with every breath and instead of tempest outside there was one within determined to give her no peace. A howl rose high and demanding as the child she’d done her best to forget refused to be comforted, or to sleep when there was no solace to be had here. The baby’s enraged cries beat louder and louder on her poor ears until they filled her whole world. Young Chloe wanted it to die, too, if that would make it stop. The woman she became wanted to shake the girl so she forgot her selfish woe and got on with the life that came out of all that pain.
‘No, don’t take her with you!’ she woke screaming and shot upright in the bed, trembling and sobbing. The coils of that terrible dream still wrapped round her, she began to rock as she tried to fight her way back to now and tell herself it wasn’t true.
‘Whatever is it? Who frightened you?’ a gruff demand came out of the night as the door creaked open and she hadn’t breath enough to reassure anyone she was perfectly all right, let alone him. ‘What the devil is it?’ Lord Farenze barked.
He pushed the door to behind himself and set his candle in the nightstick to peer more closely at the tousled wreckage of her once neat bed and the shivering wild woman staring back at him with all the terrors of the night in her eyes.
Some detached part of her knew she was behaving like a ninny, but she couldn’t wave away the terror that still made her heartbeat race and her breath gasp between parched lips as if she had just finished running a mile in her dreams.
* * *
Luke was glad he had sense left to listen for the sound of anyone else stirring, not sure if he was glad or sorry when he didn’t hear it. His daughter and Bran were too weary from their journey to wake easily and nobody else was within earshot.
‘A dream,’ she finally managed to gasp as if even that cost her dear.
‘I never heard one like it then, even in Eve’s wildest nightmares,’ he said and did what he’d wanted the moment she looked up at him with terror in her eyes; took her in his arms and dared the devil to do his worst.
‘Cry it out,’ he encouraged, feeling helpless against the fear still ruling her.
Eve was about six years old when some fool told her the truth about her mother’s death, dashed to oblivion at the bottom of a mountain road after a wild race to some would-be poet’s latest party only a fool would embark on in winter. He spared a moment from the feel of Chloe shivering in his arms to be glad Eve was over her night horrors and now slept soundly of a night.
For a long moment Chloe felt stiff and resistant in his arms then, with a great heartfelt sigh, she squirmed closer with a ragged sob she tried to stifle against his shoulder, as if she wasn’t allowed the luxury of tears. No storm of feminine hysterics could disarm him more. He could feel the shudders that still racked her body and the hand he rubbed across her slender back was meant to comfort. She stilled as if remembering who he was, then seemed unable to fight the security of another being close enough to push away her nightmares. Giving in to her need for human contact for once, she moulded herself against him so intimately her head rested on his shoulder and he felt the impact of her closeness through several layers of fine tailoring.
Feminine heat cindered all the distance he’d tried to put between them. The scent of warm, frightened woman teased his nose along with stray wisps of fiery gold hair that escaped the heavy plait down her back. She shivered and he reassembled the sense to recall it was January. Wrapping her in the bedcover, he murmured a promise not to leave her as he crossed to the fireplace and set his candle to the fire laid there. He must have words with her in the morning about why, when every other chamber on this floor had a fire to warm it, hers was as cold as charity.
Once flames were licking about the pine cones and sea coal, he went to the bed and picked her up, bedcover and all. It said much for her emotional state that she let him and still seemed to be staring sightlessly into some dire fate with horror in her wide eyes. He carried her to an old-fashioned chair banished from a more important bedchamber. You might as well sleep in a lumber room, Luke silently chided the shivering woman, then sat down with her in his arms, covering and all.
Despite a half-hearted shake of her head she clearly didn’t want him to go. She tucked a slender foot into his side to warm it when the bedcover slipped and it felt more intimate than a week of passionate lovemaking in another woman’s bed. Steady, he ordered his inner fool; she doesn’t see you as a rampant male, but a source of comfort. You could be anyone.
‘If you refuse to cry it out, at least tell me what frightened you,’ he urged and felt her squirm in protest at the thought of giving so much of her inner life away. He fought his predictable male response to the slide of supple feminine curves against his over-eager body and hoped she was too deep in shock to notice. ‘No? Then I’ll puzzle it out for myself, shall I?’ he suggested softly against the ear she hadn’t snuggled into his shoulder and felt her flinch.
She shook her head a fraction in denial and he heard her breath hitch, as if she wanted to scold him for bad-mannered prying into her private life,