Guarding the Princess(60)

Brandt unzipped Dalilah’s sleeping bag, untied the sling he’d replaced after their shower, then quickly opened her shirt and placed the heated stones in high heat-loss areas—under her armpits, groin, next to her neck. He wrapped her up, zipped the bag closed, made sweet tea, then knelt beside her and held her head up.

“Drink,” he urged.

She started sipping, but still no color returned to her skin, no warmth. Tongues of panic licked deeper. Brandt set the mug down and took her face in his hands, looking directly into her eyes. “Dalilah, listen to me. You’ve got moderate hypothermia. If it gets any worse, we’re in serious trouble, and we have no way of getting medical help out here. I’m getting into that sleeping bag with you.” He unzipped the bag again as he spoke, moving fast to snuggle in beside her so as not to allow any more heat to escape.

Ensuring the hot rocks and bricks were in position, he zipped them both up inside the bag and slid his arms into her shirt, pulling her body close against his naked one, wrapping himself around her.

“I know it’s not comfortable,” he whispered. “But it’s a hell of a lot better than freezing to death.” He wriggled in closer, hooking his leg over her, drawing her tightly against him as he found the best and snuggest fit against the curves and dips of her body. He drew part of the sleeping bag up over her head.

Brandt had always had a high metabolism, had always given off tons of heat. Unfettered by clothes, it came off him in waves now. Insulated in this high-end, and thankfully large sleeping bag, along with the heat radiating from the hot rocks, he started to cook. And finally he could feel her body warming.

Emotion burned into his eyes. He held her tighter, rubbing her arms gently, wrapping himself around her, enveloping, protecting. And as he lay there with Dalilah in his arms, as the fear began to slowly abate inside him, something raw and powerful and long dead awakened in its place. Protective instinct. It stirred now inside Brandt with the quiet ferocity of a sleeping dragon being roused from hibernation. And it came with a powerful desire to nurture, to hold. And to be held in return. It was raw, and it made him vulnerable.

It made him want something he hadn’t wanted in years. A partner. A lover. Commitment. A sense of future shared.

Brandt closed his eyes, aching with the pain of the sensation, and with remorse—for almost failing Dalilah. For failing Carla. For having lost his faith in love all those years ago because of his ex-wife, Yolanda, and his brother.

He kept rubbing her arms gently, and when he felt the shivering stop, her body softening against his, sweet emotion blossomed through his chest.

Brandt placed his fingers against her neck, feeling for her carotid. Her pulse was strong again, steady.

“Warmer?” he whispered against her ear.

“Hmm,” she murmured. “Tired. Very tired.”

“Sleep, Princess,” he whispered tenderly against her ear.

She fell into a deep sleep, her curves pressed into his, her breathing going deep and rhythmic. Brandt felt tears pooling in his eyes, and he let them wet his cheeks as he breathed in deep, snuggling closer, breathing in her scent—a fragrance of flowers from the shampoo she had used under the waterfall.

And for a moment he was suddenly vaulted way back to his youth, when he met the first woman he’d ever loved. A woman he knew he would marry from the instant he laid eyes on her. When she did accept his proposal he was king of the world. Everything was possible, right was right and wrong was wrong and the future was as open and infinite as the Botswana sky above him.

Dalilah stirred in his arms, moving closer, and the firm, soft, rounded warmth of her breasts pressed against his chest. Her lips were so close to his, parted.

Brandt glanced down at her mouth, imagined kissing her again. Heat pooled, low and dangerous, in his groin, and arousal stirred.

Here he was, naked and holding in his arms a woman he wanted, physically, but couldn’t have. A woman he dared believe he could actually come to love, but one he had to deliver safely for marriage to another man. He moved his hand down her splint to touch the ice-hard stone on her finger. The diamond that bound her to another.

He needed to remember this.

She’d made her choice. She was a princess, he a washed-up merc scarred by too many battles.

But deep down in his gut, Brandt now knew that saving Dalilah—someone he now cared about—could actually be his salvation. If he could protect Dalilah, where he hadn’t been able to protect Carla, maybe it would free him from the loop of his past.

If he could feel love for this woman, yet keep focus and his hands off her, Brandt knew suddenly, instinctively, this would be the gift she gave him. Freedom from his crime of the past. But in order to get there, he did have to give himself permission to feel again. He had to be vulnerable.