Key West by Stella Cameron

won’t desert you, Sonnie. Don’t expect too much of me, because I don’t have it to give anymore. But I’ll try to be a friend.”
    She remained on her stomach, but she raised her elbows and crossed her hands under her forehead. “If you’ll be my friend, I’ll live,” she said, and he heard her slipping into sleep. The lady might or might not need a shrink. What he’d just agreed to meant he definitely needed one.
    He stood up and looked down on her. Her back rose and fell gently with each sleeping breath.
    The top of her pajamas had hiked up, and the elastic in her pajama bottoms was so loose they had worked down low on her hips.
    Chris experienced a twisting in the region of his heart. Her narrow rib cage and tiny waist were almost childlike. The sweet flare of her small hips was not childlike. Her rounded bottom made him want to do things guaranteed to relegate him to the ranks of those who took advantage of perceived weakness. He had seen her nipples through satin and then silk, and her small breasts.
    This was not his type of woman. Maybe she was intellectually his type, only he’d never know that for sure. Physically she couldn’t be less like any female who had ever messed with his hormones.
    Running parallel to her spine, on the left side, was what looked like a surgical scar. The suture marks were still raised. Other scars, jagged as if the flesh had torn, had also been sutured, but he assumed there would be further work done to reduce them.
    There were burn marks on the top of her right buttock, disappearing into the indent between.
    Without intending to do any such thing, he stroked the backs of his fingers down her spine and spread his hand over the shiny web of burned skin. Nerves twitched, but she didn’t awaken. The vicious marks were an insult. She turned her face to the side and her dark lashes flickered. Α face that looked much younger than she had to be. No wonder playboy Frank Giacano had chosen her to be the one he came home to when he was bored with whomever his present girlfriend might be.
    Sonnie should never have been exposed to a man like that. Chris felt a blaze of protectiveness. She had said, “I won’t die for you.” Die for whom? She’d said she wasn’t sure her car crash had been an accident. But if she had any concrete reasons for thinking so, she’d given him no hint of them. Die for you.
    She hadn’t been joking when she asked him to move in here. And the damnable thing was that he wished he could.
    Tomorrow morning early, the minute he was sure all was well, he’d be gone. And he’d work out a way to disengage from her.
    He backed away, but instead of sitting in the chair where it was, he lifted it and set it down, very quietly, close to the bed.
    As he lounged there, the hours slid by. He had turned off the light, but there was enough moonlight, then early dawning light, to allow him to see her clearly. She murmured from time to time, and turned her head from side to side.
    When she rolled onto her back and came closer to him, he tried to make himself avert his eyes. Small she might be, but every line of her softly relaxed body affected him in ways that weren’t new, but were uncomfortable just as they were arousing.
    Αt last exhaustion fuzzed the edges of his mind. He rested his head on the mattress beside her hips. And carefully, so very carefully, he let the backs of his bent fingers rest against her ribs.
    The room smelled of jasmine, but Sonnie was a lavender girl, fresh and clean and inviting—too inviting.
    Consciousness fled, and in the last floating instant of comfort before sleep claimed him, he kissed her belly very lightly. And when he did enter the darkness, it was with his right hand spread over her middle, beneath her pajama top, and only a whisper from the gentle rise of her breasts.

 
    Eight
     
    There is a reason for everything. Α reason why I wake up again when sleep is my only peace. A reason why I stay alive, want to stay alive. I do want