Ghostwalker 02 - Mind Game

careful of other people’s feelings. She always gave up what she wanted for everyone else.” There was a hint of belligerence in her voice.

    Of course she would pounce on that. He nearly groaned aloud. Lily . The one person Dahlia remembered fondly from her childhood. “I love Lily. I do. It’s just that she’s a woman.”

    “ She’s a woman ?” Dahlia kicked at his boot. “What does that mean? I happen to be a woman. What’s wrong with women?”

    He grinned at her, a flash of his white teeth in the darkness. “Now I’m the one who’d like to change the subject. Lily’s a courageous woman, Dahlia, and she’s married to a man I consider my best friend. Without her, I might not be alive. She saved all of us with her courage. Believe me, I not only feel a great deal of respect for her, but also affection.
    She’s just so damned hard to talk to.”

    “And that’s because?” she prompted.

    His grin widened into a smile. “Because she’s a woman, obviously.”

    That earned him a small laugh. Dahlia wiped at more of the mud. “I’m almost afraid to meet her,” she admitted. “She was the one person I built up as larger than life. I needed her to be real, and because I was a child, so young, the memories wanted to fade, so I made up things about her.”

    “If you’re worried the real woman won’t live up to the one you created, she will. Lily’s a very special woman. She opened her home up to all of us, provided medical help for Jeff, who’d suffered a seizure and a stroke. She’s worked tirelessly to help us build enough barriers to go into the world without an anchor for short periods of time. The hope is eventually we’ll all get strong enough to have families and live in the world like normal people.”

    “I’ve thought about that term so much over the years. Normal . It’s such a little word, yet it means everything.”

    “It means nothing at all,” he contradicted. “There is no normal. Define normal for me, Dahlia. We’re all normal and yet abnormal.”

    Now that the action was over and the night had closed in, Nicolas was becoming all too aware of her. He directed the boat off the river and up a canal heading toward the very heart of the bayou. All the while, his gaze kept straying back to her. She was tired and needed rest desperately. She was soaking wet and streaked with mud. It didn’t matter. His discipline was beginning to fray around the edges. His self-control was losing the battle with the demands of his body.

    She glanced at him, a quick, under the lashes look that said volumes. The harder he tried to keep his thoughts from turning sexual, the more he fantasized. He knew he wasn’t containing his sexual energy very well, but there was something about the way the boat rode over the water and the night enclosed them.

    Dahlia sighed loudly and tapped her fingers on the bottom of the boat. “You have three distinct thought patterns. Violence, food, and sex. Not necessarily in that order. And why your sexual energy would be a million times greater than violent energy, only a therapist could tell you.”

    There was more than a little humor in her voice, allowing some of the tension to ease out of him. “Don’t you think that’s a good thing?”

    “I think you’re seriously disturbed. Don’t you ever just want to curl up in bed and go to sleep?”

    “I thought you were action oriented,” he teased.

    “I thought you were sane.”

    But she was looking at him. He could feel her gaze moving over his body, a silken sweep that left him as hard as a rock. The boat chugged lazily through the canals, carrying them through a grove of trees. The branches swept the surface, long dangling arms of green to brush across his shoulders. Moonlight spilled onto the water, a silver ball shimmering in the depths.

    “I love it out here. Does that make me sane?”

    “Yes.” There was pleasure in her voice. Warmth. She yawned. “I wish I had more clothes. I’m tired of being wet and muddy.”

    “I was trying to get you to the point you didn’t think clothes were strictly necessary.”

    She laughed softly and drew her knees up to her chin. “Really? And how long have you been planning on getting me naked?”

    “Since I caught a glimpse of your bare bottom. The image is there, Dahlia, forever in my mind, and weak man that I am, it isn’t going away. You didn’t help matters when you unbuttoned your blouse either.”

    “How very reassuring. Are you about