Love in the WINGS by Delia Latham Read Free Book Online Page B

true, but his mind-movies were more memory than dream, and they were his cross to bear. Not hers.
    “Torture is the perfect word. You sure you want to hear this?”
    “Well, now that you’ve piqued my curiosity, it wouldn’t be nice to leave me dangling, would it?”
    She laughed softly. “OK. You asked for it.” And she dove straight into her dream world. “It’s always in this big building—a barn, I think.”
    Corbin’s mouth went dry. “A barn?” he croaked. He hadn’t intended to interrupt, but dreams about barns struck such a painful chord, he’d spoken without thinking.
    “I think so.” She frowned. “Corbin, are you OK?”
    “I’m fine. Keep talking, I want to hear.”
    She held his gaze for a few seconds that felt like forever. Was she looking into his soul? He breathed a silent sigh of relief when she finally broke that eye-hold and walked on.
    “Well, OK, I guess. Where was I? Oh, the barn. Sometimes I enter from outside because I hear voices. Other times, well, I’m just there , inside the barn. The scenario is almost exactly the same every time; I just see it from different perspectives. Once it was like I was looking down on it from above—maybe the hayloft or something, I don’t know.”
    “So the dream setting is the same. Your entrance varies.”
    She offered a wan smile. “You are a good listener.”
    “OK, whatever.” He rolled his eyes. “What’s inside the barn?”
    “A boy. He’s maybe—”
    “A boy.” Again, Corbin broke in without meaning to. “There’s a boy in the barn.”
    Was Aria having dreams about him? The thought galled him. It was bad enough that she witnessed his humiliation and abuse in his own dreams. God, please, don’t let her dreams go there too!
    She nodded, apparently not hearing the horror in his croaky voice. “Yeah. He’s about thirteen, I think. Could be fourteen or fifteen, though—I’m not much good at guessing ages.” She paused to send him a cute little self-deprecatory twist of her lips. “He’s dressed only in his underwear, and his wrists and ankles are bound—tied with a rope, and they’re scraped raw. His back—” She stopped and covered her face with both hands. Her shoulders heaved with silent sobs. “His back is an angry mess of raw, bleeding flesh.”
    Corbin tried twice before his voice worked. “Let’s take a break.” He took her elbow and guided her off the trail toward a picnic bench in a small clearing nearby. Once seated, he wrapped one arm around her shoulder and tucked her close to him. “You don’t have to keep talking if this is too hard.” Please stop.
    “No, I…I need to talk about it, I think.”
    God, give me strength. I can’t believe what I think I’m hearing.
    “All right. Then just take your time.”
    “OK. So I’m in the barn, watching this all play out. There’s a man standing over the boy. He’s drunk—he has a bottle in one hand and some kind of leather strap in the other, and he’s…” Her voice hitched, and she closed her eyes, as if to block out the hideous vision. “He’s beating the poor kid and yelling awful things about—” She broke off, and her shoulders grew still beneath his arm.
    He’d told her he didn’t believe in angels. He knew what she needed to say, and why she hesitated.
    “About angels.” He said it for her, and her surprised, tearful gaze widened and fixed on his own. “He says the angel told him to beat the devil out of the boy.”
    “H—How…?” She raised a trembling hand and touched his cheek. “Corbin? How do you know that?”
     
    ****
     
    The raspy prickle of a five o’clock shadow tickled her fingers, made them want to dance across his face, to become intimately at home with the strong curve of his jawline, and the precise shape of his lips. The bottom one, a little fuller than the top, begged to be caressed.
    Aria pulled her hand back and slid it under her leg for safekeeping. But she held his gaze, probed it with her own, searching