“What happened, honey?” he asked again, his voice as gentle as his hands had been. “I’ll call Payton if I have to, but I’d rather you tell me. All of it. Starting when you were a child.”
“Why?” Tory asked flatly. “I’m leaving tomorrow so it doesn’t matter.”
He looked at her, all of her, his eyes going from the sun-streaked silk of her hair to her slender, naked feet.
“I have to know,” he said simply.
Her hands tightened on his arm. Despite his gentle tone, she knew that he was every bit as determined as she had been about finishing her exercises. He meant to have his answers one way or another.
“Why?” she asked again, her voice soft, wary.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, running his left thumb delicately across the slim, tanned fingers holding on to his arm, watching the swift rise of gooseflesh up her arm as she responded helplessly to the caress. “Do you know why you come apart at my touch as though God had made you just for my hands, my mouth, my body?”
“Reever—” Her voice broke as he caressed her again. “Don’t.”
With a rough word he lifted his fingers from her. “Talk to me, green eyes. Maybe we’ll both find some answers.”
For a moment she bowed her head, not knowing how to handle the situation. It had always been like that with Reever, from the first time she had seen him. One look, one touch, and finally the kind of love she had never expected to feel.
But he didn’t return that love.
She shivered and her hands gripped the warm, braced power of his arm, remembering when he had told her. Hold on to me.
Did she have any choice?
She took several deep breaths and let them out slowly, as if preparing herself for the most difficult dive of her life.
“I’ve been swimming since I was six,” she said as she resumed working her knee, counting off time in her head like a metronome, concentrating on anything and everything but the warm, powerful man standing so close to her, “and diving competitively since I was ten. I’m a better diver than a swimmer. My specialty is platform diving.”
He saw the jeweled green flash of her sideways glance as she measured his reaction.
“Go on,” he said.
“Do you know what platform diving is?”
“There’s a television in the living room,” he said dryly. “We may be so far out in the sticks that the signals arrive a day late, but we do get them eventually.”
She smiled crookedly. “That’s not what I meant. When I say I’m a diver, most people think of springboards, not platforms. Of course, I use the springboard, too, but I like the platform much better.”
“Why?”
She hesitated, trying to put into words a choice that had always been instinctive. Like her response to Reever. Instinctive.
Irretrievable.
“Because every springboard, no matter how carefully it’s made to Olympic specifications, is different,” she said finally. “The diver is at the mercy of the equipment. It’s not that way with a platform. All that gives when you spring is your own body, your knees and your legs. That stays the same, no matter who builds the platform.”
He glanced sharply at her injured knee.
“Yes,” she said, understanding the question he didn’t ask. “I can’t dive anymore. Not for a while. Not like I used to. And,” she closed her eyes as her voice thinned to a whisper, “maybe not ever. I don’t know.”
For a moment there was silence as he thought of all the questions he wanted to ask. He didn’t want to hurt her any more, but he had to have more answers. He had to.
“Were your parents swimmers?” he asked after a time, wondering how she had been drawn to the sport.
“No.”
He hesitated. The only other time that she had ever mentioned her parents, it hadn’t been with pleasure. He could understand that. His own family life hadn’t been very pleasant, either.
“Did you always want to dive?” he asked, watching the taut lines of her face as she exercised her knee, feeling himself ache. It seemed like he had spent his life watching her green eyes darken with pain, pain that he had deliberately caused.
I can’t want her like this. I can’t.
Yet I do.
“I always had a good time at the pool,” she said after a long silence. “Before my parents were divorced, home wasn’t a happy place. My mother remarried very quickly. That made it better for her, but not for me. My stepfather…”
Reever felt Tory’s hands tighten on his arm, then relax. “You didn’t get along,” he said.
“We didn’t get along,” she agreed, her voice clipped. “He was very jealous of mother, and I was living proof of the fact that he hadn’t been her first lover.”
“So you spent a lot of time at the pool,” Reever said softly, remembering all the times he had ridden out alone over the land to get away from his father.
“The pool was the only real home I had,” she said matter-of-factly. “I had a natural talent for diving, but not as much as some of the other kids. As long as I worked harder than they did and won more competitions, I was seen as Olympic diving material. I could keep the work-scholarship that made my membership in the swim club possible. I could spend time at the pool instead of at home.”
Reever looked at Tory’s clean profile, the high forehead and slanting cheekbones, the soft mouth that was now held tightly against the possibility of revealing pain.
“Did you enjoy competing?” he asked, watching her closely, wanting to know, needing it with an intensity that he no longer questioned.
She hesitated, wondering how she could explain. She had taken so many things for granted before her injury, before the Sundance, before Reever. As he asked questions, she was finding answers that she hadn’t even been aware of before.
“Not really,” she admitted finally. “Competition was the price I had to pay for diving. Other kids didn’t feel that way. They only truly came alive during a competition when people watched and cheered.”
“But not you. It was the diving itself you loved,” he said, not guessing anymore. Despite her determination, he knew that she was basically too gentle a person to enjoy the kind of cutthroat competition that must have existed as she grew older and had to fight with other divers for footholds on the slippery climb to Olympic glory.
The lines of Tory’s face softened as her eyes focused on something that only she could see. “Yes, I love diving. There’s nothing like it. When I stand on that platform and gather myself for a dive, nothing else exists. No arguing parents. No unpaid bills. No loneliness. No pain. No exhaustion. Nothing but me and the platform and the pool shimmering below. I used to think if I did everything perfectly, I would hang in the air forever, wholly at peace, as graceful as a leaf floating on the wind.”
Her face changed again, older now. She smiled sadly, lowered her right foot to the floor and let go of Reever’s hard, warm forearm.
“Thanks, I’m done,” she murmured, wincing very slightly as she put her full weight on her right leg.
“Ice?” he asked.
She sank onto the bed, peeled down the elastic knee brace and prodded her knee a good deal less gently than he had. “It’s not that bad, really. A little swelling, but it won’t get in the way of my packing.”
His expression darkened. “I’ll get you some ice.”
She started to say that it wasn’t necessary, she could get the ice herself or do without it, but he was already gone. With a sigh she unstrapped the weights, pulled off the brace and stretched out on the bed.
Within a few minutes Reever was back with an ice bag. When she would have sat up again, he put his hand on her shoulder, holding her down gently.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “You look pale.”
She opened her mouth to tell him that i
t wasn’t because of her knee, but caught herself. He would want to know what was bothering her. He would ask questions, questions that she really didn’t want to answer—questions he really wouldn’t like the answers to.
In the end she simply moved over to make room for him to sit on the bed, afraid to argue and end the rare moment of peace. She wanted it to continue. She wanted to take from the Sundance more than memories of anger and humiliation. She wanted—too much.
The contrast between his big, warm hand holding her leg and the healing chill of the ice bag was like nothing she had ever felt, disorienting in its intensity. Her breath came in hard.
“Does that hurt?” Reever asked quickly, his eyes searching hers.
“No.”
He looked at her for a moment longer.
“Really,” she said, her voice soft. Almost helplessly she added, “You have very gentle hands.”
An expression close to pain tightened his face. He didn’t like remembering how not gentle he had been to her, much less why.
“How did it happen?” he asked for the third time.
She grabbed the question like the lifeline it was.
“Ten meters is a long way to fall,” she said. “If you land wrong, you can hurt yourself. I wrenched my knee trying to do a triple somersault off the platform. That was a year ago. I came back from the injury, and then one night I slipped in the kitchen at the end of the late shift. I fell with my knee under me at a bad angle, tearing hell out of everything. I had surgery the next day.”
“How long ago?” Reever asked, moving the ice bag to the other side of her knee.
“About two months.”
He went very still. “Do you mean you were going to walk nineteen miles to town three weeks after your knee was operated on and not say a word to me about it?”
She smiled sadly. So much for Reever’s gentleness, but it had been lovely while it lasted.
“People have won marathons three days after knee surgery,” she said calmly. “Besides, the doctor told me not to baby the knee. Walking is excellent, easy exercise.”
“Sure, as long as you’re not carrying thirty pounds of badly balanced junk that turns your hands into raw meat,” he retorted. “And then Billy chasing you over rough country. I should have broken his neck.”
Her eyes snapped open. The grim lines of Reever’s face told her how deep his rage was. Yet when he spoke, it was only to ask another question.
“What did you mean about the late shift in the kitchen? Does the swim club cook for its members?”
She couldn’t help laughing. “It wasn’t quite that much of a home.”
He waited impatiently, the flat line of his mouth a silent threat.
She closed her eyes again, feeling like crying. It had been so nice not to have him angry with her.
“As soon as I turned sixteen,” she said tonelessly, “I moved in with three other girls. I got a job at a local coffee shop, first as a waitress, then also as a cook. I worked the late shift because it didn’t interfere with my training.”
“You worked nights when you were sixteen?” he asked roughly, hardly able to believe that her parents had allowed it.
“Believe me, the stove didn’t care how old I was.”
“God, the drunks must have—” He bit off a savage curse as he thought of Tory subjected to an endless string of drunken men trying to sober up for the drive home after the bars had closed.
She shrugged. She had hated the drunks, but there had been no help for it. She had needed the job.
“How long do you have to rest the knee before you go back to diving?” He tried to make the question calm rather than harsh, but he didn’t quite succeed.
“The doctor said two or three months. If the knee isn’t back to full strength by then, chances are it never will be.”
Although her voice was calm, he could feel the sudden tension in her body when she spoke about her knee. For a moment his hand tightened over the smooth flesh of her upper thigh. Slowly his fingers relaxed, as though by a deliberate effort of will.
“Did you hurt your knee again today?” he asked, his voice strained.
“I zinged it once or twice,” she said carefully, “but nothing—”
“You little fool,” he snarled, not letting her finish. “I would never have let you walk back if I had known that your knee was—”
“Whatever happens to the knee is my fault, not yours,” she said, cutting across his angry words. “As you’ve pointed out a hundred times, I’m clumsy.”
His mouth flattened beneath the thick black of his mustache. His ice-gray eyes glittered fiercely at her. “You keep pushing, little cat, and you’re finally going to make me mad.”
“Really?” Tory asked bitterly. “How will I know the difference? Will you wear a sign?”
He uncoiled in a single swift movement that ended only when she was stretched full-length beneath him, pinned to the bed by his weight. Yet even then he avoided hurting her knee by settling his leg between hers so carefully that she didn’t even know what had happened until she took a deep breath and felt him from her shoulders to the soles of her feet.
“You innocent little fool,” he breathed, his voice ragged as he lowered his mouth to hers. “You just don’t know when to stop, do you?”
“Reever—”
“Sorry, honey. I warned you. It’s too late now.”
“No,” Tory said, turning her face aside despite the emotion that had darkened her eyes to emerald. She wanted his embrace with a wildness that frightened her. “I’ll come apart when you touch me, and then you’ll pull back and cut me to ribbons because I’m so clumsy that I turn you off. I can’t take any more of that,” she said desperately. “Please, I promise I’ll never talk back to you again. I’ll leave first thing in the morning. I can’t take any—”
Her frantic words ended in a gasp as his teeth fastened lightly on her earlobe. He laughed softly at her response and traced the sensitive rim of her ear with his tongue until she shivered, and he laughed again, triumphantly.
“Sweet little virgin,” he whispered, biting her ear with gentle care despite the hunger slamming through him with each heartbeat. “I didn’t stop making love to you this afternoon because you turned me off. God,” he groaned, moving his hips slowly over hers, both easing and increasing the ache of his aroused flesh, “even when I was a kid, I never had a woman turn me on as fast and hard as you do.”
Her eyes widened and she shivered helplessly as she felt the hard, strong, beautiful length of his body caressing her.
“I don’t mean to,” she said. “I don’t even know how to. I just—”
The words ended in a throaty moan as he thrust the tip of his tongue into her ear, sending a sunburst of sensation twisting through her.
“Yes,” he gritted, feeling her response like it was his own. “You just come apart when I touch you, that’s all. Knowing you’re a virgin, knowing you would melt and run for me like hot, wild honey—” He stifled a groan. “It’s killing me, little one. I should be shot for even kissing you, but I want to do more than just this. I want to slide that nightshirt up your beautiful, innocent body and let you feel my hands and mouth everywhere, all over you, every hot, sweet bit of you. God, green eyes, you can’t even imagine the things I want to do to that untouched body.”
He heard the tiny, wild sound she made, felt the involuntary arching of her body beneath him as his words set fire to her.
“Don’t,” he said hoarsely, holding her still, forcing himself not to stroke her body with his own. “I can’t sleep at night for wanting you, but I won’t take your innocence and give you only experience in return. A girl should at least hear I love you from her first man, whether it’s true or not. I can’t lie to you that way, Tory. That’s why I’ve done everything but beat you with a whip to drive you away from the Sundan
ce. From me.”
With an aching sound he brushed his open mouth over her trembling lips, tasting her with tiny touches of his tongue even while he spoke. “I sat on that damned ridge this afternoon and I watched you through the glasses and I hated myself for hurting you like that. I watched you walk all the way back to the ranch, and I wanted you until I felt like knives were turning in me.”
His breath washed warmly over her lips as his tongue dipped lightly into the corners of her mouth. “It tore me apart to watch, but I had to know you were all right. I wanted to go to you, help you, and I knew if I went any closer, I would take you down into that soft grass and love you until you didn’t know where you were, who you were, until you could touch me and not know whether it was my skin or yours you were feeling, my body or yours, because we would be so deep in each other that it would be like dying and being born all over again. It’s never been like that for me with a woman, but I know it would be like that with you. I know it, and it’s tearing me apart.”
The small, involuntary sound Tory made ate at Reever’s control.
“Oh God, don’t,” he said raggedly, caressing her face with his lips, his tongue, his teeth. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound. I thought I could trust myself, but I can’t. Not with you. And I’ll hate myself if I take you. You deserve a gold ring and sacred vows. I can’t give you that, sweet little city girl. We’re all wrong for each other that way. But I couldn’t let you leave tomorrow thinking I was cruel. Every time I had to hurt you, I bled. I’m still bleeding.”
A shudder went the length of her body. She closed her eyes, releasing a bright shimmer of tears. She remembered with terrible clarity what he had told her—when he married a woman, she would be just that, a woman. Not a young, clumsy city girl.
The thought was a razor slicing through her, making her bleed in ways she couldn’t name. She knew that she would never love another man as she loved Ethan Reever. She loved him, and she was leaving him.
She would never know what it felt like to give herself to the man she loved.
“Have I ever asked you for anything but a job?” Tory said with aching quiet, her voice shaking, her tear-bright gaze holding Reever’s. “This afternoon, did I push your hands away and say that you couldn’t touch me until you gave me a gold ring and told me that you’d love me until you died?”
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