Caleb by Sarah McCarty

every move. She was trapped. In a
nightmare. This had to be a nightmare. Only nightmares left a person with this
level of unsubstantiated panic.
    “Easy,
Allie girl. I’ve got you.”
    The
murmur filtered out of the darkness, extending a thread of hope through her
hysteria. Caleb. She was lying beneath Caleb. She tentatively reached up and
bumped her knuckles on the flat of his chest. She opened her hand and slid it
up over the hair-roughened surface until she found the solid curve of his
shoulder. A naked Caleb?
    Okay.
Maybe this wasn’t a nightmare. Maybe it was more of a fantasy. The heat of his
skin seared her breasts, her stomach, and her legs. She wished she felt good
enough to enjoy the intimacy, but the mother of all headaches was beating
behind her eyes.
    Caleb’s
sigh stirred the hair at her temple. She brushed the annoying tendril off her
forehead, a tangled strand caught on her first knuckle. She closed her eyes
briefly and worked at the knot. The damn thing held.
    It
figured. She finally had Caleb naked and horizontal and her hair was a tangled
mass of knots, she felt like she’d been run over by a Mack truck, and instead
of smelling like the expensive body powder she’d bought just for the occasion,
she smelled distinctly unexotic and overworked. Allie put a question at the top
of what she suspected was going to be a long list. How in heck had she managed
to screw up landing naked with the man of her dreams so badly? There was only
one way to find out.
    “If
you slipped me a roofie and had your way with my unconscious body,” she warned
him, “I’m going to geld you with a rusty knife.”
    “Why
a rusty one?”
    Nothing
in Caleb’s drawl indicated what he was thinking. She wished she could see his
face. “Because that would hurt more and maybe lead to a life-altering
infection, which you would so deserve for having fun without me.”
    Another
pause and then his chuckle ruffled her hair. The mattress beneath her dipped as
he shifted his weight. The fingers of his right hand worked between her skull
and the mattress, cupping her head with infinite care as if she’d break with
too much movement. The sheets rustled as he braced himself on his elbow. “You
can rest easy. Neither of us has had a good time.”
    A
shiver took her from head to toe, a faint prelude to the more violent one that
followed. Her head ached, her stomach roiled, and she knew, just knew, she
wasn’t going to like the answers to the frantic questions humming in her mind.
    “Should
I be treating that as good news or bad news?”
    His
thumb rubbed her temple. She closed her eyes as the sickening panic receded.
“You tell me.”
    “I
asked first.” It was very hard to lift her lids. “I need a bath.”
    Caleb’s
fingers pushed hers aside. “As soon as you feel up to it, you can have one.”
    Which
probably meant no time soon, considering that working the snarl had tested the
limits of her strength.
    He
demonstrated far more patience with the snarl than she did, untangling it with
a few painless tugs. In her current state of mind that was more of an
irritation than a plus. She didn’t need anything making her feel more inferior.
She batted his hand away. “How did I get here, Caleb?”
    His
hand dropped to her shoulder.
    “I
brought you.”
    “Why?”
She jumped when his fingers touched her upper arm.
    “Easy.”
Instead of withdrawing, his fingertips began slow distracting circles on her
skin. “You were hurt.”
    “By
what?”
    “Something
you weren’t expecting.”
    No
shit. She tried to remember and couldn’t. “And what exactly was that
something?”
    “Me.”
    The
answer lay between them like a living thing, writhing under the enormity of all
it implied. She tried to shrug off his touch. All she succeeded in doing was
stilling the movement of his fingers, but moving or not, Caleb’s touch was
deeply disturbing, creating a sense of connection between them, enhancing the
certainty of the rightness of lying