As if sensing a disturbance somehow, Benedetto turned, his eyes lancing her instantly.
“Kate?” He quickly took in her brow that was beaded with sweat, her skittish eyes and alert expression. He paced towards her like some kind of game cat; a leopard or panther. “What is it?”
She swallowed and angled herself away from him, reaching for her water glass. “A stupid nightmare,” she said simply, sipping the cold liquid with relief. Her body was warm. “Did I say something?”
His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. His weight depressed the edge of the bed as he sat.
“What is it that causes your eyes to look like that?” He murmured, staring into her soul as though he could see all of the pieces that formed her person.
The glass was cold in her hands. She held it for something to do, trapping the condensation in her palms. “What do my eyes look like?” It was an evasive response and they both knew it.
“You look like a tiny mouse about to be swiped at by a large cat.” A frown tugged at his lips. “And you look very young.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not that again. I’m twenty-two.”
He discarded her assertion. “I mean you look … vulnerable. Afraid. Why?”
She wasn’t vulnerable. Nor afraid. She was strong and independent.
She was free.
Her smile was reassuring, though it was ghosted by memories she didn’t like to focus on. “I’m neither, I promise. I just have an overactive imagination, that’s all, and my dreams have always been realistic. As a child I used to sleep walk, sleep talk. You name it, I was a weird kid.” She shuddered, to show that time was long gone.
Kate couldn’t have known, of course, that her childhood was of particular interest to him, for it was a marker to the past she shared with Augustine.
“Did you have therapy to stop this?”
Ten lashes if you dare get out of bed tonight, Katherine.Her expression was inscrutable. “Of a sort.”
If you make a single noise, you will not eat for two days. Understand?
“What does this mean? Of a sort?”
“It means I learned not to sleep walk. Nor to sleep talk. I learned to sleep normally, and if I couldn’t, to stay quietly in bed as though I were.”
He nodded slowly, though it seemed a strange way to have dealt with the poor sleep habits. “How did you learn?” He prodded.
“A torturous process,” she winked as though it were a joke. And because she couldn’t help herself, she reached out and ran her fingers over his hand. His skin was sodark, like burnt sugar. She knew his tan was all over, as well. How had he spent the summer? On a yacht somewhere?
That didn’t seem right. Though he was virile and active, she knew how hard Benedetto worked. His tan was more likely gathered by moving from his constructions sites around the globe rather than any vanity sun bathing.
“Why are you still awake?” She asked, shy suddenly.
Because he hadn’t been sure he could sleep beside her. Because he was literally climbing in bed with the enemy, and it felt foolish, cynical, cruel and wrong. And in the midst of that, it felt so excruciatingly right.
“It is still early, for me.”
She frowned. “It’s after midnight.”
“Si.” His eyes were drawn to her face as if by a magnetic force. “What was your dream?”
She dropped her gaze instantly and ran her thumb up the side of the glass. “I don’t remember,” she said after a beat-too-long.
“Why do you not tell me?”
Her sigh was barely a sound. “Have you ever noticed that some things gain power from speech?” She blinked her enormous blue eyes to his face and he startled for the sense that Augustine was looking back at him. With a noise of frustration, he stood from the bed and prowled to the balustrade on the balcony beyond. The night air was a cool rush over his half-naked body. He inhaled the evening deep in his lungs, waiting for calm to return to him.
But it didn’t.
