Brave by The 12 NAs of Christmas, Zoe Dawson Page A

getting that chest out of my
mind, those washboards, his powerful thighs and his…oh, man,
the part that made him so deliciously male. Well, that was just as
impressive as the rest of his ridiculously gorgeous body.
    I could
break Dakota down into body parts as if that was all there was to
him, but I was a woman and seeing a man like that…well it had
impact on a purely physical and hormonal level. But I had already
seen inside him, and I knew his heart was just as beautiful as his
physical appearance.
    He set
the plate of eggs in front of me, and my hand seemed to move with a
will of its own. I grazed his forearm, just a brush of my fingertips,
compelled to connect to him and thank him.
    I needed to touch him.
It was a compulsion I couldn’t seem to control. All of his
pain, all of his courage—all of him—just took my breath
away. I’ve never wanted a man more. But I shouldn’t just
go against his wishes. He wanted to be isolated; he’d come out
here for his privacy, and I’d crashed into it with a mission of
my own.
    I felt
ashamed that I would or could so easily forget my promise to Charlie.
He was depending on me. I was his hope and his prayer and his Pooh
Bear. I couldn’t fail him.
    Dakota
didn’t say anything. He just stood there gazing at my lips, my
eyes, roving over my hair. And although his expression never changed,
I felt his intensity. I was used to his face now, his male beauty,
and the tantalizing man behind those gunmetal gray eyes.
    But
after seeing him in all his…glory—I groped for
equilibrium and found that instead of steadying myself, I was the one
who was losing it. The memory of him lying on his side, the power of
his muscles, those tantalizing heavy lids relaxed over his dark
silver eyes, like the moon on a wild and cloudy night, just…
    Our
eyes met then, and for an instant it hung between us, the image of
him fully, and spectacularly naked. I felt my skin grow hot with the
memory. His mouth seemed tense with some unspoken emotion, and I
suddenly felt that I was precariously too close to him.
    Desire
flared in his eyes. But was so quickly gone, I wasn’t sure I’d
actually seen it. He was so unbelievably beguiling, focusing all the
controlled energy of him into a ray of light on my heart.
    “Eat
your eggs before they get cold. You’ll like them, being a Pooh
Bear.”
    I felt
a different kind of hunger, one I hadn’t known before my eyes
met his as he looked down and saw me on that ledge. A lesson in
passion he was teaching me by degrees, and the heat was rising, out
of my control.
    “Why
is that?”
    “I
made them with a little bit of honey. It makes them sweeter.”
    “You’re
sweet.”
    His
shoulders tightened, and after everything we had experienced
together, that withdrawal felt like a betrayal. Was I that closed,
too? Was I bottled up and wounded like he was? Was that why men
seemed to avoid me like the plague after a few dates?
    That
made me a little sick to my stomach to think that I put off other
people that way. Had my parents cursed me? Had they raised someone
exactly like them? It was as if that pain couldn’t be contained
in my body. As if the very thought of their apathy had been imprinted
on me just by association. It was almost too much to bear.
    “No,
I’m not,” he said. “Right now, I’m far from
sweet.”
    He left
then, and I watched his retreating back until he reached the end of
the hall and disappeared into the locked room I noticed earlier. I
wondered what was in there. Did he go there to flog himself, beat
himself up, get away from me and my sad, sorry attempts to help him?
    He was
an ocean and I was just a tiny boat on it. Why had I thought I could
make a difference in his life when I wasn’t sure I could even
make a difference in my own? And there was always Charlie and what he
had asked of me. Something that could be illegal, but which I thought
was the right thing to do. Certainly Charlie’s parents wouldn’t
think so.
    I
suddenly felt