the time, however, was spent covering groundwork and I really sunk my teeth into that. I knew very well what it was like to be down and at a disadvantage. If Parker noted my underlying vehemence, he didn't comment on it. When Gideon showed up at my apartment later that evening, he found me soaking my aching body in my bathtub. Although I could tell he was fresh from a shower after his own workout with his personal trainer, he stripped and slid into the bath behind me, cradling me with his arms and legs. I whimpered as he rocked me. "That good, huh?" he teased, catching my earlobe in his teeth. "Who knew rolling around for an hour with a hot guy could be so exhausting?" Cary had been right about Krav Maga causing bruises; I could see a few shadows blooming beneath my skin already and we hadn't even gotten to the hard stuff yet. "I might be jealous," Gideon murmured, squeezing my breasts, "if I didn't know Smith was married with children."
He stood motionless, waiting for me to climb down. I tried, but my muscles wouldn't respond. My arms and legs stayed locked around him while my head spun uncomfortably. "Bella?" he asked, anxious now. "I think I need to lie down," I gasped. "Oh, sorry." He waited for me, but I still couldn't move. "I think I need help," I admitted. He laughed quietly, and gently unloosened my stranglehold on his neck. There was no resisting the iron strength of his hands. Then he pulled me around to face him, cradling me in his arms like a small child. He held me for a moment, then carefully placed me on the springy ferns. "How do you feel?" he asked. I couldn't be sure how I felt when my head was spinning so crazily. "Dizzy, I think." "Put your head between your knees." I tried that, and it helped a little. I breathed in and out slowly, keeping my head very still. I felt him sitting beside me. The moments passed, and eventually I found that I could raise my head. There was a hollow ringing sound in my ears
have always used to get their emotional effects. Certain images or tableaux have an automatic emotional impact on us, felt in the organs of our bodies. A tableau is a figure or several figures in a setting, enact ing some primal scene that either affects us intuitively, on an almost animal level, or that has become charged with emotion because of long tradition. T h e Last Supper, images of the M a d o n n a and child, and the Pietà depicting Christ's mother cradling 355 T H E W R I T E R ' S JOURNEY ~ T H I R D EDITION Christopher Vogler her dead son's body are all emotionally loaded religious tableaux. Similar images with equal force existed in earlier cultures, like the Egyptian goddess Hathor nursing her child or Isis tenderly assembling the scattered pieces of her dismembered husband Osiris
annaabi.ee 
