Rational thought disintegrated as sensation overtook him, and pressure built until he knew his explosion was imminent.
“Come with me,” he demanded.
“Yes.” She went stiff, her whole body arching wildy against him, and they came together with cataclysmic force.
The next two days were idyllic. Josie and Daniel played in the pool, talked about their pasts and made love.
On the third morning at the hotel, Josie woke up to cramps, and she turned over in the bed, moaning as pain shot through her lower back and abdomen.
She’d never understood how she could be so incapacitated by something women the world over experienced on a monthly basis, but debilitating pain and exhaustion accompanied her period pretty much every month. Thank God for ibuprofen. It had saved a mission from total meltdown failure more than once.
She crawled out of bed, knowing if she didn’t take care of things right that minute, she would regret it. A long, hot shower left her feeling only marginally better. She needed pain reliever, and she needed it two hours ago.
She rummaged through her bag and found the pads she’d packed in case of such an occurrence, but no ibuprofen. The curse that erupted from her throat would have shocked Daniel if he’d been awake to hear it. How could she have forgotten something so important?
She had her Glock, extra ammunition and a terrain map of Nevada, but no small white bottle of pain reliever.
Moving gingerly, she dressed in a long T-shirt and pair of bikini-style briefs. She couldn’t stand anything around her waist just yet, but considering her pain and the absence of anything to deal with it, she would have no choice.
Daniel woke up as she was pulling the T-shirt on. He smiled at her, looking all too sexy and more masculine than any other man she’d ever known. “Come back to bed, sweetheart. We don’t have anything we have to do today but be together.”
She would put paid to that attitude of togetherness soon enough. “I started.”
He looked blankly at her.
“My period.”
His expression cleared. “I guess we really were safe last night.”
“Yes.” She turned away and grabbed up a pair of shorts.
She might as well bite the bullet and get them on. She couldn’t go into town dressed in Daniel’s T-shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting dressed.”
“Why?”
“I need pain reliever. I can’t go shopping dressed in a T-shirt. There are ordinances for that sort of thing.”
He was off the bed in a heartbeat and taking her shorts out of her hands. “Lie down. I’ll get it. If you’re in pain, you shouldn’t be driving. What kind do you need? Do you need anything else?”
She stared at him, shocked by the quick succession of words out of his mouth. It wasn’t that Daniel never talked to her, but he sounded panicked, and that wasn’t like him. In fact, she could never actually remember a time when he had used that particular tone in her hearing.
His face creased in a frown of concern. “I really think you should lie down, Josette.”
“I’m having my period, not infected with a deadly disease.”
“You said you were in pain.”
She winced as her womb knotted in another cramp. “Yes.”
“I’ll take care of you.”
And that was what he did, literally putting her back into bed and tucking the blankets around her. He asked if the air conditioner was set too high, then if it was too low, and when she said it was just fine, his relief was blatant. Then he made her a cup of tea, sweetened it and insisted she drink it before he left to pick up her ibuprofen.
He came back an hour later with a grocery bag filled with chocolate of every kind and a single bottle of the pain reliever.
“They didn’t have any of the special woman’s stuff in the local grocery store, so I had to drive into the next town and go to their pharmacy.”
“I could have taken something else.”
“But it wouldn’t have been as effective.”
He was right. “What is the chocolate for?”
He looked sheepish. “My mom used to crave it once a month. I thought you might want some, too, but I didn’t know what kind you liked, so there’s a little of everything.”
She felt a smile creasing her face despite the pain in her lower back. “I like pretty much all of it. Thanks. For everything.”
He brought her a glass of juice from the minibar fridge and watched her drink it and take the pain meds. “Do you want me to order some breakfast?”
“No. Actually, I’m tired. I’d rather just sleep.”
Daniel nodded, looking a little haggard himself. They’d had a long night of making love, and it was still very early. She looked at the digital clock on the nightstand. No wonder Daniel had needed to drive to another town to get her meds. The local pharmacy probably wasn’t even open yet.
“Sleep as long as you need.” He picked up her now empty glass and turned to go.
“Daniel.”
He turned back to face her. “Do you need something else, sweetheart?”
“You look tired, too. Do you want to catch another couple of hours of sleep?”
“I can sleep on the couch in the main room.”
“It’s a king-size bed, Daniel. If you don’t want to cuddle, there’s still plenty of room for both of us to sleep in it.”
“I might touch you in my sleep. It could hurt.”
She couldn’t believe he was so worried about her. “I’m fine. Really. In a half an hour, I’ll be feeling a lot better, and I’d rather you slept in here if you want to.”
“But if I touch you…”
“I like sleeping with your arms around me.”
“Are you sure?”
Man, he would be a total case if he ever did get a woman pregnant. He’d probably want to sleep on the couch the whole nine months.
“Yes.”
He stripped down to his skivvies and then climbed into the bed beside her. He pulled her into his arms, careful to cuddle her without putting any pressure on her abdomen.
She slipped back into a blessedly pain free sleep.
Daniel curled Josie close to his body, the need to make everything right in her world overriding every other impulse at the moment. He couldn’t believe how much it bothered him to see her in pain. He’d witnessed atrocities he would die never sharing with anyone else, but the sight of Josie’s pale face that morning had been enough to give him the shakes.
And she’d thought he was going to let her go out and buy her own pain reliever. Was she insane, or just too damn independent for her own good?
Her sanity might not be in question, but he was beginning to think his was. How would he come to terms with the fact that he’d been disappointed to learn her period had started? A part of his brain he had not given daylight in years had played with the idea of having a baby with his former-soldier lover. Learning it was absolutely not a possibility made him face the fact he might have actually wanted it to be.
