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She tried to move and found she couldn’t—couldn’t remember how to make her limbs work. Her face felt stiff and drawn downwards, her shoulders aching from the rod of tension braced across them. Her head was throbbing, her stomach was queasy, and her eyes were burning in their sockets—not tearful, but hot and dry.
She heard the faint sound of gushing water, recognised it as a shower, but that was about all. Time ticked by, the quietness of the room having no effect on her whatsoever. Her hands hung limply at her sides, the fingers feeling oddly heavy. Her mouth drooped downwards too, as though a weight was tugging on each corner.
She continued to stare blankly at the chair.
Rafe came back, coming to an abrupt halt when he saw her. The smell of clean, male soap permeated the air around them while he studied her through narrowed, faintly worried eyes.
‘Shaan.’ he said her name carefully.
She didn’t turn—couldn’t. She heard him, but couldn’t seem to respond. The heaviness had transported itself to her limbs now, dragging down on them, holding her like a huge block of wood pinned securely to the ground. And her head felt heavy, the very top of it feeling as though someone was pressing forever harder down on it, trying to push her into the carpet beneath her feet.
Rafe came over to her, the clean smell of soap strengthening as it came with him. It was a very strange feeling, this paralysing weightiness which was disabling everything but her senses. They still seemed to be working fine: her sense of smell, of hearing, even her sense of touch seemed intact, as he reached out to grasp her chin, lifting her face so he could study it.
She saw him frown, saw the grey eyes darken in concern. She saw that he had showered, his dark hair was lying slick against his head now. She saw he had changed into a pale blue shirt and casual linen trousers that fitted cleanly on his trim waist.
‘Are you going to faint, by any chance?’ he murmured enquiringly.
Yes, she thought, I think perhaps I am. And she closed her eyes at the exact same moment that she swayed towards him. He caught her, muttering and cursing as he lifted her into his arms, and once again she found herself being carried by this man who had ruined her life, through to the next room and over to a huge emperor-sized bed, where he laid her before disappearing into what could only be the bathroom, judging by the sound of water running again.
He came back with a glass of water and a facecloth. He put the glass down on the bedside table, then sat down on the bed beside her to apply the cloth to her clammy brow.
His touch was gentle, the cloth deliciously cool and refreshing; his thigh where it rested lightly against her own was strangely comforting.
‘You remind me of a doll,’ he informed her drily. ‘A rather fragile, very temperamental clockwork doll who’s had her key removed.’
Dragging open her eyes, she managed a weak smile for him.
He smiled too. It was a rare sight, something she had never seen him do before, and it changed the whole structure of his face, softening its aggressively male lines and adding an extra dimension to his persona that she found rather perturbing.
Why, she didn’t know, and she frowned as she closed her eyes again.
‘Here, I want you to take these…’
Her lashes flickered upwards to find that Rafe was now holding the glass of water in one hand and two small white pills in the palm of the other.
Shaan stared at them for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No,’ she refused. ‘I don’t want sleeping tablets.’
‘These are not sleeping tablets as such,’ he assured her. ‘They’re simply some very mild relaxants you can buy over the chemist’s counter without a prescription. I use them to get me through long plane journeys,’ he explained at her dubious expression. ‘You won’t sleep unless you want to, but they will help you to relax. You’re as strung up as piano wire, Shaan,’ he added gently, and touched the back of her hand.
It was shock. Not so much his touch, but the sudden realisation that both her hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides. Her arms were tense, her shoulders, her neck, her legs—all locked in a tension so strong that she was literally trembling under the pressure.
‘And anyway,’ he added softly, ‘you aren’t being given a choice…’
And before she could do anything about it he had pressed her chin downwards and popped the two pills into her mouth.
She almost choked on the water which quickly followed the pills. ‘Sorry,’ he apologised at her accusing look. ‘But you need to be bullied a bit right now. It will save you from having to think for yourself.’
Yes…she had to agree with that. Thinking meant hurting, and at the moment she was hurting enough—more than enough.
On a sigh that seemed to come from some deep, dark place in her, she let her eyes close again, shutting him out—wanting to shut it all out and just let the pills do whatever they were supposed to do.
It was shock—the delayed kind of shock you hear of people experiencing where they get hit by a car then get up and walk away, only to discover they should not have been walking anywhere because they were so badly injured.
That was what she had been doing since Rafe had arrived this morning to smash her whole world apart. She was one of the walking wounded, not quite ready yet to face what had really happened to her.
Which meant when she did find the courage to face it she was going to fall apart. And when that happened she could well find herself involved in a second accident. One which trapped her so completely that she would not be able to walk away even if she wanted to.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this, Rafe,’ she murmured worriedly. ‘It isn’t right. It isn’t—’
‘I thought we’d just decided that I was going to do all the thinking,’ his quiet voice interrupted. The hand still covering one of her clenched ones, squeezed gently. ‘Trust me, Shaan,’ he murmured. ‘And I promise you I won’t let you down.’
On a sigh that signalled the end of her small burst of spirit, she retreated into malleable silence again.
Rafe remained where he was for a few moments longer, watching her. She could feel his eyes on her and wondered dully what it was he thought he was seeing. A pitiable creature called his brother’s jilted bride? Or that other Shaan, the one who had been so completely overwhelmed at their first meeting by his clear dislike of her that the person she really was had literally shrivelled up in his presence?
‘Do you dislike me so much because of Madeleine? Or because of my mixed blood?’ she heard herself ask, without really knowing she was going to say it.
Still, his response brought her eyes flicking open. ‘What—?’ he rasped. ‘Did I hear you correctly? Were you just accusing me of racial prejudice then?’
She hadn’t meant to offend him, yet seemingly that was exactly what she had done. ‘You hated to touch me,’ she reminded him. ‘Or even to look at me if you could avoid it. What else was I supposed to think?’
‘Well, not what you did think, that’s for damned well sure!’ He got up, and she felt oddly lost without him close to her. ‘You actually believed me crass enough to dislike your relationship with my brother because of your mixed race?’
He was obviously having difficulty taking that in.
She closed her eyes again, too trapped in this feeling of muscle-locked apathy to do much more than smile ruefully at his resentment.
Because the real point was, if it wasn’t her mixed race, then what was it he didn’t like about her? Because there was definitely something.
‘Get some rest,’ he said gruffly. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’
Yes, later, she agreed silently as her muscles began to slacken out of the tension-lock that shock had held them in. They could discuss all of that later…
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