by Teresa Hill
She wrapped her arms around his waist and wondered where they went from here. He wanted her, with a kind of desperate hunger that thrilled her, and he didn't want anyone else. But he'd just turned thirty-six to her twenty-one, and he was still Sam's brother. Some people would likely be shocked by that, regardless of the reality of the situation. Sam might still pitch a fit.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asked, his hand running lazily through her hair.
"You weren't there." She could get used to having him there, every time she reached for him deep in the night. She could get used to snuggling against his big, warm body and having him wrap his arms around her and waking up beside him every morning.
"I was just trying to figure out what I'm going to do with you," he said.
"What do you want to do?" she asked, stroking a hand down his chest, because if this was all she could have of him for now, she'd take it.
They could have a gloriously carnal affair, sneaking around in secret for as long as it lasted. It would give them a chance for the bond between them to grow, a chance to let him get used to the idea of them being together and maybe to let go of some of the guilt, of the sense that this was somehow wrong. Once it was out in the open, he'd have to make some decisions. She knew what she wanted, not just his body, but his heart, as well.
"What would you do, if you could do anything?" she asked.
"Wave a magic wand and make you about twenty-five. Of course, then I'd be forty, and you probably wouldn't want me anymore."
"Planning on falling apart when you hit forty, are you?" He'd be fabulous then. He'd always be that in her eyes. "Do you really think anything's going to change in a few years?"
If anything, the age gap would matter less and less.
"You have some things to do, Emma. Another year of college."
"No, I'm done in May," she said.
"What?"
"I haven't had anything else to do. I've been working as hard as you. The summers. The extra class load. It pays off. I'm graduating in May."
"As in... next month? That May?"
"Yes. I thought about getting my master's degree, but I just don't think I can go right into that. I talked to a couple of people I trust, and they all said it was a good idea to get in a year or two of work experience first."
"Counseling, right?"
"Yes. There's a shelter about twenty minutes from here, on the outskirts of Cincinnati. For battered women and children. They were actually excited by the idea of having someone with firsthand experience. If it works out, I'll be working with the kids, mostly. And there's a counseling center on campus that's interested in having me part time. Lots of college girls get beat up by their boyfriends, you know."
He nodded. "I think I heard something about that."
"I've been volunteering there for about a year. It's been good for me. I tell them my story, and they listen to me, because I've been through it. And I like being able to help them."
"So, you're all set."
"Except for figuring out what I'm going to do with you," she said.
But she knew what she wanted. She reached up and kissed his jaw. It was rough and shadowed with stubble, and she loved just being able to touch him when she wanted. She loved being this close to him.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him more fully, rising up on her knees and pressing her body to his. The sheet was caught between them in front, but came untangled in the back, leaving that half of her bare, which seemed to interest him.
He stroked her back, up and down. "You have the most incredible skin, and the way you smell... It's vanilla, isn't it?"
"Yes." A lotion she'd been using for years.
"I remember. From the second time I ever saw you. You walked into the kitchen straight from the bath. I smelled vanilla and wanted to nibble on you."
"You did?"
"Yes, right from the start."
"You did a pretty good job of hiding it," she complained.
"I didn't think I did."
"You kept me guessing."
And suffering. Oh, she'd suffered for him. But now she was in his arms. She kissed him, a soft, lingering, heated kiss, and ran her hands down his arms, down his sides, thinking to...
"What's this?" she asked. Her hand was on his right side, just above his hipbone. There was a raised ridge of skin she vaguely remembered finding earlier, when she'd been too interested in other things to ask.
He went still, staring into her eyes. "Old wounds."
She eased away to sit beside him, holding the sheet to her and looked. There was a ragged scar along his side just below his waistline, obviously old, but long, and she would have bet the cut had been deep.
She traced it with her fingertips. He was hardly breathing. "A knife?"
He nodded gravely.
"The guy who... the one you..."
"The one I killed." He said the words for her. "Did you forget, Emma? Forget who you were with? What I've done?"
"I know what you've done." She took his chin in her hand, making him look at her, when she knew he didn't want to. "I've always known. Do you?"
"Of course I do. There's not a day that goes by..."
"I'm not sure you do know. Joe told us the guy who jumped you had a knife. It looks like he used it on you. This is from him, isn't it?"
Rye nodded.
"It must have been bad." She turned her attention back to the scar, because it was easier to see this than the look on his face.
"Especially when they came into the treatment room in the infirmary and told me he was dead."
Emma shuddered at the thought of that awful day, mostly of what might have been. "And what do you think would have happened if you hadn't fought so hard that day? Do you ever think about that?"
"Morgan would still be alive. I wouldn't have spent years behind bars."
"Or you would have been dead," she said matter-of-factly.
Rye's gaze locked on to hers.
"Surely you've thought about that," she said, but she could see that he hadn't. "Rye, it's one of the first things they told us in the self-defense classes I took after that mess with Mark. If you're going to fight back, you've got to be willing to hurt the other person. You can't be squeamish about it, because if you go at it halfway, you're just going to make them madder. They're just going to hurt you even more. You have to hurt them enough to give yourself the time you need to get away."
He closed his eyes and looked away, pain etched across his face.
"Rye, it's me," she said. "Tell me. Please?"
"There was..." His voice broke, and he started again, struggling for air. "We were locked up together. There was nowhere to go. No way to get away."
Emma nodded. She'd guessed that part. "So it was either him or you. Did you think he would have let you go? Did you honestly think you had a choice?"
"I don't know what I had," he said. "He was a bad kid. A scary kid."
She glanced back down at that scar, thinking of the knife going a little deeper or slashing into him again. His heart. His lungs. Anywhere on his beautiful body. It would have been so easy.
"He attacked you, and you fought back," she said. "I know it must haunt you. But if only one of you was going to come out of that alive, I can't be sorry it was you. And after having someone come after me the way Mark did, after being that scared and feeling that vulnerable—"
"Don't," he said, taking her face in his hands, pressing his cheek to hers. "Don't think about that."
"No. I have to. We never talked about it, but I want you to know, because you might be the only one who really understands. I would have done anything to stop him, anything I could have. He knocked you out, and you didn't move for the longest time. I thought he'd killed you that day, and then I thought he was going to kill me. He was that out of control. If I'd had a gun, I would have shot him. If I'd had a knife, I would have used that. I would have done anything to keep him from hurting you or me any more than he already had. I should have told you this a lon
g time ago, but you wouldn't talk to me, and you didn't want to see me."
"It wasn't that, Emma."
"Then what was it? This?" She touched the scar once again. "Everything you've done? Everyplace you've been?"
"All of that," he said.
And then she knew what to say, what he had to hear, and it was the truth, too. He couldn't argue this with her. He had to listen.
"If I'd fought back that day against Mark. If, in the end, he was dead, would you have blamed me for that? Would you have thought less of me?"
"No."
"If I'd gone to prison for it?"
"No," he insisted.
"And how is that different from what happened to you?" she asked.
He didn't say anything to that, looked dazed and sad and very much alone.
"You wouldn't have blamed me. I know that," she said. "I know what you went through must have been awful. I know it changed you. I know you lost years of your life. But it's over. Let it be over, Rye. Let me love you." And love me back, she thought. Please love me back. "It's time you forgave yourself. It's time to get on with your life, time for you and me. It's our turn. I know you want that."
"I've wanted a lot of things," he said raggedly.
"Well, this is one thing you can have. You can have me. And all of my love. For all of your life. I'm right here. I've always been here. All you have to do is reach out and take me."
She didn't think he'd do it, because she didn't think the words had sunk in yet. She knew forgiveness—especially of one's self—was a long, lonely road. But there was nothing to keep her from reaching for him. He was here, after all, and so was she. Tonight was theirs.
She turned to him, raised up on her knees, and then straddled him, the sheet caught between them for a moment, his arms hanging by his side. She wound hers around his shoulders, pressed her entire body to his, and kissed him deeply.
"I know you want me. And I'm right here."
She kissed his closed eyes, his forehead, the roughness of his jaw. His hands came up slowly, along her calves, her thighs, tugging on the sheet, bunching it together in his hands until he pulled it from between them, the afghan coming after it. He flung them toward the corner, and then she was naked in front of the fire with him.
His hands cupped her bare bottom, pulled her thighs apart, and settled her over his lap. "I don't know how you can stand to have my hands on you."
"I love having your hands on me."
She wriggled against him, heat to glorious heat. He was hard again, and in this position, she was totally open to him, could rub up and down along the length of him.
He groaned. "Like that, Emma. Just like that."
He kissed her deeply, hungrily, and then he lifted her up a bit and shifted beneath her until he was pushing inside of her once again, showing her with his hands on her hips what he wanted her to do. This way... This way it was up to her to set the rhythm, to tease him by rising up until he was barely inside of her and then wriggling her hips until he pulled her back down. She liked teasing him, liked pushing him to the point where he demanded more.
Her body fell into a natural rhythm, long, smooth strokes, rocking against him. She didn't intend to show him any mercy at all, not after how long he'd made her wait for this, for how much he'd made her suffer.
"That's it," he said. "Take me."
She didn't. She made him wait. His jaw tightened, and she knew she only had as much control as he was willing to give her. She sank down upon him once more, taking him so deep. His hands tightened on her hips, gripping them in a way that spoke to the kind of tension filling his body.
"I'm done, Emma. I'll beg. Right now. Take me."
He urged her into a fast, hard rhythm, pulled her down and wouldn't let her pull back. He thrust up into her as best he could, and then she felt it one more time, that glorious pulsing sensation, taking over her body and his.
She buried her head against his neck and put her arms around his shoulder and just held on. He cried out and filled her completely, left her weak and spent in his arms.
She kept thinking it had to feel less overwhelming, that surely sooner or later she wouldn't feel like just for a moment she'd absolutely died or ceased to exist or left the planet. But this was power and intimacy on a level she hadn't truly understood before.
It left her even more vulnerable than ever.
He'd always had her heart.
Now he had her body, as well.
* * *
Later, he took her back to his bed. She woke the next morning curled up to his side. He was lying on his back, her head against his chest. He was slowly stroking her hair. It was so sweet, she didn't want to let go.
"Do you have class this morning?" he asked drowsily.
"Yes, but not until ten."
"We need to get going, if you're going to make it."
She held him tighter. "But I don't want to move."
"All right. I'll get up. I'll get dressed, and while you're in the shower, I'll make breakfast and then take you back. How about that?"
"I don't want to go back."
He laughed. "You've only got a month. You can stand it for a month, can't you?"
If, at the end of that month, she got him, she could. Was that what he was saying?
And how did this work exactly? This morning-after stuff. He'd told her it was terribly rude to just run out without saying a word. He'd told her there were things he wanted to say, and here it was, morning again.
"Emma?" he said, sitting up in the bed, leaning over her to kiss her softly.
"Yes. That's fine." For him to get up and fix her breakfast, then deliver her back to campus. Was she agreeing to that? Or to being away from him for another month?
He rolled out of bed and walked naked into the bathroom. She turned and watched him go in the glorious light of day, watched that subtle play of muscles in his thighs and hips as he walked, the narrowness of his waist and the width of his shoulders, the muscles in his arms.
It was an amazingly intimate moment, him leaving the bed, leaving her here, wrapped up in the covers and the warm spot he'd created for her. Her skin still tingled and she was so aware of the fact that she wasn't wearing a stitch. She loved stretching out beneath the sheets and curling up into the spot he'd just vacated. She thought she could still feel the imprint of his hands and his mouth on her body, and the altogether pleasant smell of sex clung to her and hung in the air.
So, did what happened last night make him hers now? She certainly felt like she was his. What would a grown woman do in this situation? One of those women he'd refused to take to his bed?
She still couldn't believe he hadn't. Not to say she doubted his word. Just that... Well, he was a man. As a group, they seemed quite able to divorce any true emotions from the whole process of sex. Certainly, the ones she'd met had been quite willing to bed her, all emotions aside. She was quite happy that he couldn't keep his emotions out of it, and that he hadn't wanted anyone but her.
He was out of the bathroom a moment later, a towel hanging precariously around his waist. "All right. Up," he ordered. "I'll see if I can find all your clothes and bring them to you."
She blushed at that. They were littered across the hall by the front door. She got into the bathroom and showered quickly, trying not to lose herself in the lingering scent of him, his soap, his shaving cream, his cologne. The whole place smelled of him.
Her body felt different beneath her own hands, her skin sensitized all over, and she was a bit sore. He'd warned her about that, but she hadn't cared at the time.
She got out of the shower, found her clothes in a stack outside the bathroom door, and hurriedly dressed. He was downstairs dishing out scrambled eggs and bacon, and it made her think of the meals they'd shared when she'd first met him.
She'd worried that they'd never again share even the small intimacy of a meal together, and now here she was, fresh from his bed, from the most incredible night.
She ate her breakfast, enjoying the qu
iet sense of companionship, enjoying just being in his presence. She had missed him terribly over the years.
They finished the meal, cleared the table, and then she stood in his kitchen, looking here and there while she tried to figure out what to say.
"What do you think?" he asked, leaning casually against the makeshift counter, which was no more than a slab of plywood.
"Hmm?"
"About the kitchen?"
"Oh. It's... What are you going to do in here?" It was much like the rest of the house. Everything was in place, but he hadn't chosen any colors or patterns.
"Rachel has some yellow, smoked glass she's trying to talk me into for glass-front doors on some of the cabinets. And she's offered to do a hand-painted pattern on tile for the area between the upper and lower cabinets. What do you think?"
"That sounds nice. She did a scrolling vine pattern in a kitchen for some people who live out on River Road. It was pretty." Not too feminine. He wouldn't like that, and he was good in the kitchen. He'd want a place where he felt comfortable.
"She mentioned something about that," Rye said. "I'll have to look at it."
"And the cabinets? What kind of finish?"
"I'm seeing a lot these days of either really dark stain or off-white glazes?"
He said it like he could be swayed one way or another. "I like the look of the antiqued-white glazes. Or the very pale, cream finishes are nice. They have a nice, warm feel to them."
He nodded. "Pale cream glaze, it is."
Emma's foolish heart started beating faster. Surely, she'd read too much into the casual exchange. She'd teased him about having trouble figuring out what he wanted for this house, about whether he was ever going to finish it, and honestly, it looked like he hadn't done anything since she was last here.
Sam was always talking about how hard he worked. There'd been a time when every spare moment went into this house. As busy as he might have been, he could have found time to finish some things here over the past two months.
Unless he didn't want to finish them on his own.
She'd always been afraid he'd bought this house for someone else—for another woman—but it was obvious now that he hadn't.
And he wanted to know what she'd do to finish out the kitchen....
