After he came back from doing that, she’d washed up some, and taken it upon herself to rummage in his pack, for she’d found one of his cotton T-shirts, put it over her otherwise naked body and curled up in the center of the bed. While she’d tangled one of the sheets up in her legs, in her repose she’d already kicked one leg free, and he could see the lovely length of it from the ankle to the hint of bare backside beneath, the shadow that led from the crease of thigh to sex. The sight of her there, the one bed, where he could be next to her, his body spooned behind her . . .

A few days ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated to enjoy the scenery to the fullest, or become part of it. But though he’d worked hard on her station, getting up to speed on things, he’d been running from demons. The nightmares were back in force. He woke twice in her arms, screaming and bathed in sweat. After that, though she didn’t like it, he’d gone off and slept in the barn when she didn’t need him. No one could hear him there.

It shamed him. The bush could absorb his pain, a silent witness that passed no judgment on weakness. When a man was around blokes, his boss or especially a pretty woman, he didn’t act a wobbly wuss. He should be back in the Outback, had known it, but she’d made him give his word he’d accompany her on this trip, knowing he wouldn’t go back on it. They had that in common, damn it all.

She tried to get him to talk about it, but he always turned it to the things they needed to do on the station, or halfhearted flirtations.

So far, she hadn’t pushed it, but he could feel her watching him closely. She was too downright in her opinions to let him get away with this for long, and it increased the sense of trapped desperation.

He thought about getting a beer, but put that off for later. He sure as hell didn’t feel up to talking to Bob alone. Instead, he unrolled his swag, stripped off his shirt and lay down on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. When she shifted, he lifted his head to see her hand passing over the bed, fore and aft, her eyes still closed.

Dev? You can come up here.

I know.

A quiet moment. Then, a different tone. Dev. Come up here.

His body felt weighted with a dark exhaustion, but when her hand slid across the mattress, drifted over the edge, the fingers with the hint of curved nails fluttering at him, he found himself rising and coming to her side. Only then did she open her eyes and look at him, but she turned over on her back, those lovely legs uncrossing, shifting apart and then coming back together as she turned away. As she did all that, the cotton shirt drifted higher up her hip, giving him more of a view of her arse, as well as the dark smudge of her nipples beneath the thin cloth as it stretched over them.

Hold me. I want to feel you behind me when I sleep. Leave your trousers on, except the belt. Give that to me.

It was indescribably seductive, the sultry cadence of her words filling his mind, the provocation of the images. He couldn’t explain how his mind shut down when she spoke to him like that, but he suspected she knew it. Was she compassionate enough to know it helped? That sometimes he responded to her the way the aborigines had taught him to respect the power of stillness? Just giving himself over to it.

He slid behind her. Of course, she already had him hot and hard, so he didn’t intend to apologize for that. When he pressed his hips up against her bum, cradling her with his knees, she wiggled, settling herself firmly on him, making him stifle a groan.

The belt, Dev.

He’d forgotten about it. Reaching between them, he unbuckled it, slid it free, and doubled it up. Curious, he handed it over her arm.

She twisted her body enough to take it from him, then slid the tongue through the buckle until it was a cuff, looping it around his wrist. She wrapped the tail around her own forearm, threading it through her fingers, and then turned again, his arm over her so she was snugly curved into his body, her hips putting tantalizing heat on his erection again.

So you’ll stay tethered to me in my sleep, bushman. You rest with me today. You’ve rechecked the vehicles. We’ll worry about anything that needs worrying about when we rise. Sleep with me now. Just sleep.

You’ve made that very hard, my lady. Difficult.

She chuckled as he corrected the entendre, and did a slow, seductive circle over his groin that had his hand clenching in its cuff then, finding her wrist and circling it with his fingers, as if he were manacling her in his own way.

Sleep, Dev. Just sleep.

He couldn’t. He wouldn’t let himself wake her with his fears. But then she started humming, a soft, quiet tune he couldn’t place. It had the rocking cadence of a lullaby. She reached back, found his face, and then began to stroke his hair at his temple, over and over, a soothing rhythm as the song continued, lulling him and his cock into drowsiness. He had the sweet soap smell of her hair, fragrant and light as feathers, against his lips and nose, where he had them pressed into the back of her head, alongside her ear. Her body pressed into his, giving him coolness and heat at once. And that soft singing, a little off-key, but soothing as well . . .

You’d make a good mother, love. . . . Gentle as a doe, fierce as a lioness.

Her hand paused briefly, then continued, but she made no reply. Just bade him with her touch and lullaby to sleep, to give himself over to her and dreams, willingly bound to her by the strap that held him to her. He knew she’d be following him into dreams, for he’d observed there was a certain lassitude to her when the sun climbed into the sky. In fact, her hand was already slowing, her voice drifting into a vaguer hum that eventually moved into his mind and then dwindled away, leaving him with the muted sounds of the desert beyond the window and Bob’s pub below, all in all a comfort that promised a brief respite from nightmares.

After sundown, Dev got his beer and information from Bob on the road conditions, including what effect a recent dust storm out this way had had. Danny browsed through the adjoining store while the men got a quick supper.

“Elle down at the Marsten’s Creek has been radioing about you,” Bob said. “You want I should let her know where you ended up?”

Dev considered that as he watched Danny make a few additional clothing selections. “Yeah, Bob. But if you don’t mind, don’t mention anything about my lovely boss on the open airways if you can. She doesn’t like folks to know about her comings and goings.”

“No worries, Dev. Trouble always follows a sheila like that one.” Bob gave Dev a wink, slid him another beer, seeing Dev had drained that one.

Dev picked it up, gave him a salute. “I’m going to go out and check our fluids and lines.” He’d checked them earlier, as Danny had said, but a second check wasn’t amiss. Plus, he also wanted to check the ammo in his rifle and pistol. Traveling with a vampire required some extra precautions.

“Right-o.” Bob cleared his throat, making Dev stop in midturn. “Not sure if you’d heard, but Terry put a bullet in his brain a couple weeks back.”

Dev put the beer down. “Crikey. His wife there?”

“Naw. She left him, taking their girl, about two or three months ago. Went back to town.” Bob shrugged, but his eyes were somber. “Word was she could take the Outback being so empty and desolate, but she couldn’t take the same from Terry.” Danny had chosen that moment to come into the bar from the mercantile, ignoring the speculative looks of the men not part of their group. He hadn’t been able to contain his internal reaction, and of course he knew she was monitoring him pretty close these days.

He’d accuse her of being overly clucky, but in truth, sometimes that sense she was there offered him the balance he was trying to reclaim in himself.

“Friend of yours?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah. At one time. We fought together in the war, early on.” Dev lifted the bottle, took a draught from it, wiped his lips with the back of his knuckles. Danny could pick it out of his brain, but their men were sitting close, looking curious, and he had to work with those driving back. “After the militia, I signed up as a digger to the 39th battalion, part of the Maroubra force that worked the Kokoda Track. But Terry got caught by the Nips. He was part of that mob held up in Thailand, forced to build the railway for them. Messed him up a bit.”

The murmurs of the stockmen behind him were part sympathy, part banked ashes of old angers. No one had forgotten the six thousand who’d died in the Japs’ POW camps, or the things done to them. Dev drained that beer, slid it down to Bob with an abrupt movement. “Probably just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Terry hadn’t been able to find silence again. A man had to find it, or the noise would drive him mad, so mad his only escape was a bullet in the brain.

From the startled look on Danny’s face, he knew she’d heard his thoughts. To hell with it. Turning on the ball of his foot, he went back out the pub door, muttering about checking the vehicles. Bob let him go without another word. Dev knew he understood, being a WWI digger himself. Plus, Bob’s son had died in the war, twenty feet away from Dev.

Kokoda Track had been rough. Hot, nerves-on-edge work. So many dead, casualties of battle and disease, the mosquitoes bringing a death all their own. Being in Europe had been one thing; he’d talked to the battalion mates who’d done that. But this was different. They were protecting the border of Australia, not as Imperial soldiers for the Crown, but as Oz’s sons. A real threat of invasion brought something forth in many of them, a protective, warrior fierceness different from how they’d used it in Europe. This was their ruddy home. And no one was taking their home.

So they fought, day by day, for every single yard. The Japs came within a stone’s throw of Port Moresby, but by God, they pushed them back to the coast. The losses had been incredible. But for all that, all the horror he’d seen, Dev had been a free man. Terry had faced captivity, starvation, disease, and the irreparable cost of buckling under the enemy’s will.

Men came home from war, lived out their lives. But Terry had died in that POW camp, his spirit gone. What had come home to his wife was a shell. Dev knew it, because he’d been that shell even before he stepped foot on his first battlefield. He’d gone to the front line seeking death, but he wanted to take the whole goddamn world with him when he went. He’d wanted the taste of blood.