With the impenetrable black closing in on her, there was no way she could even begin to think of adding the weight of a layer of blankets on top of her body. It would be like throwing dirt on top of herself.
As if the draperies had sealed them in an airtightcontainer, she struggled for her next breath. It felt like the dark little box was closing in on her, getting smaller and smaller with each breath she took.
Thinking to distract herself, she rolled to her stomach and flattened her face against the mattress.
That worked no better. If anything, it was worse. The linen cloth tangled in her legs and felt much more like a binding now than the toga she’d imagined earlier.
This was likely all she had to look forward to if she couldn’t return to her own time. Night after night in cold, drafty castles, using a stone bench toilet and shutting herself into a dark little tomb to sleep. And that was a best-case scenario.
Moment by moment, the panic built, like fingers tightening around her throat. Her mind filled with images of long-dead bodies wrapped in linen, hidden away in airtight boxes to preserve them.
But she wasn’t ready to be preserved.
“I don’t think I can do this.” She sat up, twisting onto her knees. “I absolutely know I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
Any of it. “I can’t breathe in here. I need out.”
Desperation peaked. Completely disoriented by the dark and the panic, she flailed her arms in search of the drapery opening, stopping only when she smacked into Colin’s shoulder.
He was on his knees next to her, holding her, when the trembling began. She collapsed against him, shutting her eyes against the encroaching black void.
“It’s this dark little box. It’s closing in on me!”
“Calm down,” he ordered, his voice low and soothing. “I’ll help you.”
She heard aswishof fabric and swiveled her head in the direction of the noise.
Thank God!
The wavering light of the fireplace shone through the break in the draperies, and she scrambled toward it like a drowning man toward the water’s surface. Just like that drowning victim, she gasped for air as her feet hit the floor. Her arms locked around her middle and she bent at the waist, hanging her head forward to take in great gulps of air as if she’d just reached the end of a marathon run.
“You’ve a problem with enclosed spaces?”
Colin was at her side, his large, warm hand rubbing up and down her back. She could only nod her answer.
“You should have told me. Here.” The hand at her back urged her toward the fire and down onto the rug. “Sit. Relax. Yer going to be fine now.”
Of course she was. Out here in the open, in this big room, with all this space and all this air, she could feel her heartbeat slowing to normal.
He rejoined her, sitting down at her side and pulling her close to him before he draped a blanket he’d taken from the bed around their shoulders.
“There,” he comforted. His arm tightened around her as he pulled her head to rest on his chest and, with only a small shift of his body, he lay back, drawing her down with him. “Try to close yer eyes and get some rest.”
Rest? With the adrenaline she’d just pumped through her system in that panic attack? Not hardly. Not for a while. And certainly not with his heart pounding under her cheek and the heat from his chest searing her palm.Searing her leg, too, now that she laced it over the top of his.
“I don’t think I’m sleepy anymore.” With her body ensconced in his embrace, she was about as far from sleepy as she could imagine.
Not that her imagination wasn’t busy picturing other activities.
“If no sleep, what would help you to relax?”
She bit back the groan that question brought to her lips and shifted against him, trying for something approaching comfort.
“We could talk,” he offered. “Would you like that? When my brother Drew and I were but lads, we’d lie in our beds and tell each other stories to see who could put the other to sleep first. We could—”
“Nope,” she interrupted.
