The woman continued to sleep peacefully. After a while, as he warmed by the fire, his own agitation and worry began to fade. He spread a blanket on the floor beside the bed and stretched out to wait for morning.
MIRA
Mira dreamed of falling,falling very far, and a pair of strong arms breaking her fall.
It started out like other dreams she sometimes had in which her boat's controls had been replaced by the stick of an Army Black Hawk helicopter. The helo plunged under her, the sickeningly familiar feeling of losing altitude. She had never actually been shot down in reality, but she had imagined it so many times that it chased her into dreams, even this many years after her tour of duty had ended. Her vivid imagination turned into reality in her subconscious mind.
Then someone caught her.
Even her sleeping mind had no real way to explain it, transitioning from the imaginary helo crash to something else entirely in the strange, disjointed way of dreams. She couldn't see him clearly. But she could feel him lifting her up, carrying her safely away from the wreckage. He laid her down somewhere soft, and she was aware of being warm and safe and dry.
Dry?
This awareness penetrated Mira's dream. She wouldn't be wet in a helicopter crash. But shehadbeen wet; she had been lost in a storm. She had nearly drowned.
Someone had saved her.
She opened her eyes.
At first all she saw were the low, smoke-blackened beams of a wooden ceiling. She turned her head slowly to the side. Her wondering gaze traveled across log walls, shelves made of boards containing canned goods and dishes and folded linens, a small wooden table with a single chair and a candle burning low in a jar on its edge, and an iron potbelly stove.
She sat up a little, pushing herself up on one elbow to see better, and noticed the man sleeping on the floor beside the bed. Mira jumped. He was so very quiet that she hadn't realized he was there.
He was rolled up in a blanket, covered except for a naked, muscular shoulder, a spill of dark hair, and a single bare foot. Lying on floorboards, he didn't seem uncomfortable; he was sleeping deeply. He had rolled with his back to her and his face toward the door of the cabin, as if—she couldn't help thinking—he was prepared to protect her against anything that came in.
Mira sat up carefully and slowly. There was no escaping the conclusion that she was inhisbed. The narrow wooden bed frame was built for one person. There was a thin mattress, a single pillow, and some blankets piled on top. It was all clean, but had a musky male scent.
Mira looked down at herself. She was wearing her T-shirt and underwear. The rest of her clothes had been taken off, and she saw them draped to dry beside the stove.
She felt like a mess. Everything was stiff and scratchy with salt. She plucked at her T-shirt and then patted her matted hair, which had come partly out of its braid and dried into a tangled slab.
Once again she looked over the side of the bed at the man on the floor. She wanted to see more of him than just a sun-bronzed shoulder and a spilling tangle of hair. She remembered things, half-glimpsed flashes that might have been from her dream or from reality. Green eyes: she remembered that very clearly. And she remembered strong arms holding her, while she wilted against a firm, muscular chest.
She also remembered a ... whale?
Surely that parthadto be a dream. But it was no less clear than the rest of it. Mira frowned down at the bare shoulder and blanket-wrapped bundle next to the bed. She had been bumped up to the surface, buoyed and helped by the sleek, black-and-white shape of a killer whale.
She would have to figure it out later. Right now, she was very hungry, and she wanted to get up and find out where the storm had carried her. She carefully tried to put a bare foot out of bed without touching the sleeping man on the floor.
She wasn't sure if it was the movement or some small noise she had made, but he abruptly jerked awake and went from sleeping to sitting up in a single instant.
Mira froze.
It wasn't fear. It was a strange mix of curiosity, compulsion, and desire.
He was naked to the waist, and she hadn't been wrong about his strong, muscular body. There wasn't a scrap of fat on him anywhere, just lean muscle rippling beneath light bronze skin dusted with curls of dark hair. His face was broad and handsome, with a nose that was just a little crooked as if it had been broken once. Dark hair framed high cheekbones and a strong jaw.
His eyes were just as startling green as the ones in her dreams. They weren't pure green, but rather had a ring of dark brown around the iris and fine threads of amber and gold. Summer forest eyes, striking and pure.
For a moment the two of them stared at each other, as if he found her as captivating as she found him. Then he stood up suddenly, and she was entranced all over again by the flowing, rapid grace of his movements.
The blanket fell away, making Mira intensely aware that he was wearing nothing but a pair of beat-up jeans slung low enough over his hips that a scatter of dark curls showed above the waistband.
"Dane," he said. His voice was deep and rough, as if he didn't use it much.
"What?" Mira asked dazedly, wrenching her gaze to his face.
"Dane," he repeated. Then he seemed to run it back in his head and realize that some explanation was called for. "My name. I'm Dane."
