Surrender the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

acquired under his command. It had been her salvation in captivity, her solace in isolation.
    She leaned over, meaning to pick up the empty cups, but instead found herself reaching for him. Rationalizing that she was merely checking for fever, she placed her palm on his forehead. Her fingers seemed to move of their own accord, smoothing back the damp hair as she’d wanted to do earlier. Only when her fingers began to trail down past his temple did she realize what she was doing.
    Guilty and not a little unnerved, she pulled her hand away, expecting him to open his eyes that very second and deal her a verbal blow. McCullough never missed a chance to exploit a person when he—or she—was at his most vulnerable. But his eyes remained shut.
    Allowing a sigh of relief to ease past her lips, she grabbed the cups and the near-empty water pitcher from the bedstand and headed for the door.
    Just after the door clicked shut, Jarrett opened hiseyes. He stared at the door for a long moment, then shifted his gaze to the ceiling. He tried hard not to picture how she must have looked as she bent over him, caressed him.
    It had been a caress, a touch profoundly different from the ministrations she’d performed up to that point.
    Her angry accusation—that he wouldn’t understand her—played over and over in his mind.
    “You’d be surprised, Rae Gannon,” he whispered. “I understand far more than you think.”
    Shadows were creeping across the bedspread when Jarrett woke up. He ran a quick update of his injuries and lifted his head, telling himself to be satisfied that the dizziness and fever seemed to have gone, even if the pain hadn’t.
    That was just too bad, because he had to find the bathroom. He wasn’t about to call for help, his earlier confrontation with Rae be damned. He refused even to consider how she had managed that caretaking chore over the last few days.
    What he couldn’t seem to get out of his head was her quiet voice harshly criticizing while her callused hands tenderly caressed him. She’d even entered his dreams. He scowled and clamped his jaw hard as he rolled onto his aching shoulder. She wouldn’t be any more thrilled with that knowledge than he was. Not that he ever intended to tell her.
    The pain cleared his head immediately, but his gratitude was minimal. When his breathing was steady, hepushed himself upright and carefully shifted his legs over the edge of the bed. His thigh was well wrapped and there was no sign of bleeding.
    He gripped the heavy wooden chair beside his bed and levered himself to a stooped-over stance, careful to keep his weight on his good leg. The shock of being upright again caused the shadowy room to dip precariously into blackness and sparkles to dance around the edges of his dimming vision.
    At that point the idea of not calling for help started to seem more than a little foolish. But he gritted his teeth and pushed through the dizziness until he was reasonably sure he was seeing only one of everything.
    Relying heavily on the furniture for support, Jarrett made his way to the old oak bureau. Breathing became a chore, partly due to the pain, the rest to the tightness of Rae’s wrapping of his ribs. If he’d had any spare strength at all, he’d have torn the tape off.
    Congratulating himself on his progress, telling his bladder that five feet per minute was plenty fast enough, he bent his head and took several stabilizing breaths. It was at that moment that the door behind him swung open.
    He instinctively looked in the mirror atop the dresser he was leaning on. Two things were immediately apparent. One, Rae had entered the room without knocking; and two, bandages aside, he was totally naked.
    “What in the hell are you doing out of bed?”
    “Going to the bathroom,” he answered, disturbed to find his voice still had a rusty, unused sound. “You always enter a room without knocking?”
    Casually, as if staring at naked men were a daily routine, Rae leaned against the