At first he’d felt so bad he hadn’t cared. But after the first couple pills he could feel his strength returning – too slow for him, but steady. And he wasn’t dead for God’s sake. He was a little drained from their ... exertions, but he sure could have managed to continue until he was drained in a much more satisfactory manner.
No wonder she ran away, with a lecher in her bed.
It was more than hour before she came back, with another pill, more water, and a dish of cottage cheese and peaches. God, he hadn’t had cottage cheese and peaches since he was a kid. He used to love it ... and she’d remembered.
He felt such an urge to wrap her in his arms and pull her down to the bed beside him, so her body nestled close against his, that his voice came out raw.
“I’m sorry I shocked you.”
Her chin went up, and she put the tray down with a thunk.
“Shocked me? What do you think I am, Grif? Some naive little girl? You think I never had sexual feelings? You think I never had temptations? Everyone thinks I’m such a Goody-Two-Shoes, but I have urges, too. I feel things, no matter what Dale might have told you about – ” The stricken look she sent him was like a kick to the gut. “Oh, God – ”
“Dale and I never discussed that, Ellyn. Never.”
She gulped twice. “It’s not that I can’t talk about those sorts of things – I can. I do! But ...”
“But you wouldn’t have wanted Dale talking to me.”
“No. I wouldn’t have.”
She sat in her chair, handing him over the pill, then the water. When he’d finished, she gave him the dish.
He’d almost finished all of that when she spoke in a soft monotone, absent the life and passion of earlier.
“Dale was leaving me. The night he left here, and had the accident. He said he’d given the marriage another chance, tried moving back here, and it just wasn’t going to work.”
He heard her words, understood the importance of them, but something about her tone made the hairs along the back of his neck rise. Carefully he set the dish on the bedside table. He’d heard her talk this way before ... but when?
“He’d met someone. Someone who gave him what he wanted, what he needed. What I couldn’t. He was going to San Diego to join her. Then the accident ... If I’d been able to hold onto my husband, he’d be alive now.”
And then he knew. He remembered the tone from when she’d repeated the viciously stupid things her mother had told her about herself – how she wasn’t sexy, how she needed to make up for her lack of physical attributes, how hopeless she was as the sort of siren Rose considered herself.
“What sort of damned crap is that?”
His anger widened her eyes, and when Ellyn spoke her voice was back to normal, even a trace tart.
“It’s the truth. It wasn’t a fairy tale marriage cut short by tragedy like everyone else views it. I don’t want to shatter their illusions, but I couldn’t ...” She looked down at her hands. “I didn’t want to pretend any more with you, Grif.”
He watched her, seeing the new strengths and the old vulnerabilities. Wishing she could see herself through his eyes. He almost smiled to himself then. She’d have an ego the size of Montana if she could.
“You don’t have to pretend with me, Ellyn. Not ever. Not about anything.”
Her chin quivered so slightly that someone not feasting on the sight of her would have missed it.
“Thank you, Grif. I knew you’d understand.”
* * *
Early the next morning Grif returned to the bed from the bathroom, almost stumbling over the duffel bag.
Curious, he pulled it up beside him and checked out Fran’s sensible choice of underwear, a pair of sweats and his toiletries. He pulled out a paper bag marked “Far Hills Market Pharmacy” in surprise. The surprise deepened when he opened it and discovered two multipacks of condoms.
...you and Ellyn are two consenting adults and I don’t see why you couldn’t...
Clearly Fran agreed with Marti. And was even less subtle.
He put the bag back, careful to fold over its top so its contents weren’t obvious to the casual observer.
It struck him that he hadn’t heard Ellyn stirring. He ventured down the hallway. He’d managed this trip once before without her knowing – sure she would object if she caught him.
She was curled on her side on the couch, sleeping.
He pulled the multi-colored quilt up so it covered her flannel-clad shoulder, then brushed two curling strands of hair back from her cheek. She stirred, making a mumbling sound, then settled again.
If he was smart, he’d turn around and go back before she woke and gave him a tongue lashing.
He sat in the overstuffed chair that gave him a good view of her, even in the thin, gray light.
I knew you’d understand.
He’d thought he did until she’d said that. But there’d been a significance to those words that made him feel he’d missed something along the way.
He had to think this through. He’d been trained too well in the necessity of anticipating what dangers might lie over the next hill, or around the next bend or under the next bush to go plunging ahead.
The first step was to gather the available facts. That wasn’t always easy with people, but sometimes there were hints.
Like yesterday when she’d looked at him that way, and made that ridiculous comment about being kissed out of pity. and he’d decided he had to show her how wrong she’d been.
Decided? mocked his conscience.
He hadn’t decided. He’d responded. Only afterward, putting together her words and remembering her expression did Marti’s words about Ellyn feeling unsure of herself filter through his haze of lust. Only then did anything close to thinking get accomplished.
And then she’d come in and talked about Dale leaving her. In the same tone she’d used the times she’d confided to him how her mother had belittled her.
I was never that kind of woman. A mouse to start, a bit of a tomboy later, then a haphazard housekeeper, and, as a wife –
She didn’t know ... Good lord, she didn’t know ...
She truly didn’t know what it cost him to stop from making love to her yesterday. She didn’t know what kissing her in the school parking lot had done to his body. She didn’t know what her offer of herself and her love all those years ago had done to his heart.
“I think I do understand now, Ellyn.”
She stirred again at his whispered words, so he kept his pledge unspoken.
And now I’ll make you understand – and believe.
Hell, all he had to do was tell the truth.
As long as he didn’t let himself forget that he wasn’t the kind of man to give her what she deserved – a home, with a great husband and the right kind of father for her kids.
* * *
Ellyn took advantage of Grif’s sleeping late to plant seeds for early season crops in a protected corner of the garden he’d dug for her. When she came back in, she was surprised to see how much time had passed.
After washing up, she headed for her bedroom. The bed was empty, and there were the remnants of a sandwich she hadn’t made on the bedside table.
Before she could do more than observe those facts, the bathroom door opened to a clean, damp, shaved male dressed only in clean boxer shorts.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I thought I was getting showered and shaved so I felt human again.” He grinned, but he also leaned a shoulder against the support of the doorjamb.
She went to him, putting her shoulder under his arm and wrapping her arm around his waist as she had that first day.
“And,” he added in a tone blended of amusement, peevishness and something else, “I thought I was getting back to bed on my own.”
Peevishness was generally a sign that a patient was starting to recover. And being impatient with his weakness was a clear sign Grif was getting back to himself. She felt the steady pulse of his hear
tbeat against her. That was another good sign, one any nurse would appreciate.
“I didn’t use up your stuff,” he said, as if she’d complained about his using the soap and toothpaste she could smell on him. “Fran brought me everything I’d need. Everything ... I could want.”
His tone changed on those last words, and she noticed his pulse picked up. Maybe he’d overdone it with this foray out of bed.
“I’m glad, but this was very foolish of you, Grif.”
“I’m too much of a burden on you.”
“No you’re not. You’re hardly leaning on me at all, and anyway, here we are. You want to lie down or sit?”
“Sit. And that’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
She shifted around and bent to help lower him in case his legs were weak.
And before she knew what was happening, she was on her back on the bed, one of his legs across hers and his torso looming over her as he held himself up on one elbow-locked arm.
“Grif! What are you doing?”
“Getting some things straight between us. Not generosity, not pity, not you kissing me. Me kissing you.” He brushed his lips across hers, innocent and light. Then he lined her bottom lip with the tip of his tongue, darted it against the seam of her lips, and innocence fled. “Me wanting you.” He shifted against her, and she felt the proof of that against her thigh.
“But ... but men can ...”
“Yeah, men can. But I’m not. Look at me, Ellyn.”
“But ...” That word held a couple decades’ worth of being so sure what his feelings were, and weren’t. “But you said ... Not to care about you, you said – ”
“That wasn’t a lie. You shouldn’t care about me.” He gave those words a fierceness she didn’t understand. “I didn’t lie then. Unless it was letting you think I didn’t want you – because I needed you to think that so you’d walk away. If you’re smart, you’ll walk away right now.”
“That summer ... That night. You – ” She studied his face above her. “ – you wanted me?”
“I wanted you so bad my hands shook with it. And God knows my body ached with it. You must have known.”
Maybe she had. At some level. But she’d been so utterly inexperienced and unsure that she’d discounted instinct. “But ... then, why...?”
“I knew it couldn’t work out. Not the way you deserve.”
“Because you’d be leaving? Because you were starting your career?”
“That was some of it. You were so young. And so innocent...”
“I was a bumbling idiot.”
“You weren’t and you aren’t. You’re ... you’re Ellyn.” A lifetime was in the way he said her name. “I wanted to make love with you then. I want to make love with you now.”
Maybe if he’d pushed she’d have resisted. But this ... she had no heart left to resist because it was all in her throat.
His lips touched her throat, as if he sensed that. “Make love with me, Ellyn.”
She touched his cheek, then his lips. He caught two fingertips with his mouth, flicking his tongue across them, then sucking. She replaced her fingers with her lips, and it began. It continued.
Amid the wonder and strangeness of a first time was the bedrock of decades, of rides and confidences and sharing and silent understanding. They fumbled with the newness, her shyness when he drew her top over her head, his so capable hands struggling with the button on her jeans. But they also burned with it. His jolt when she ran a fingernail lightly across his nipple. Her moan when he slid his hand inside her open jeans and gently cupped her.
There was time for gentleness. Her kiss to the small of his back where a bullet had gouged from some encounter his duty wouldn’t let him talk of. His voice and hands when she tried to cover the silvery threads that tied her to child-bearing.
She spread her hand across her breasts. “Having babies ...”
“You are never more beautiful than when you’re pregnant.” He kissed her belly, now passably flat, then used his tongue to trace a line from the inside curve of her breast, holding aside her hand, reaching the tip, and circling there with tongue and lips. “How could you be anything less than beautiful now?”
Hot tears pricked at her eyes, but something hotter pushed her hips up against him, demanding, asking.
He ran his hand down her naked body to brush across the curls between her legs, and her moan would have embarrassed her if she had not seen such fierce pleasure at it in his face. He slid a finger inside her and the lines on his face etched deeper as she met its rhythm. Without releasing her, he rolled to reach a hand into the open duffel beside the bed, and came out with a package of condoms.
She didn’t realize she’d raised her brows until he leaned over her and pressed a kiss to the underside of each arch. “I didn’t have these. Fran must have put them in. She must have thought I might have use for them.”
“Fran! Oh, no. Then she thinks – ”
“Ellyn.” The dark strain in his voice stopped her words. “This is the time, but it better not be because of Fran or anybody else except the two of us.”
“Time?”
“For you to say you want to stop ...”
She stiffened involuntarily. “Do you want to stop?”
He kissed her, slowly sliding his tongue against hers, as his finger pressed a fabulous friction inside her. “Like I want to cut my arm off.”
She tried to smile when he ended the kiss. “Then it’s a good thing Fran packed for you. Do you ... may I help you?”
He growled and shifted away just enough to rip open the packet. “Not this time.”
Her entire body pulsed at that implicit promise of a next time. And then there was nothing but him as he moved over her, between her legs. Beyond the tension and desire, she saw the edge of desperation in his face, felt it in the tautness under her hands. She would have calmed it away, soothed him, if she hadn’t felt it, too.
Driven to take what had been so long denied, afraid to have it end after so much waiting.
She pressed her fingers into the hard muscles of his rump, and opened herself to him. He slid inside her with a slowness that showed its cost in the shudder of his muscles and the longing ache of hers.
When he nearly withdrew and would have started a second slow, tormenting stroke, she curled her fingers to press her nails into him and raised her knees.
He held over her an instant, his eyes on hers.
“Grif.”
She saw the taut self-control snap, felt the plunge of his body into hers. And then there was nothing except the two of them. Separate bodies moving against each other in order to be together, straining and guiding and tantalizing each other to reach that one moment, one place, one sensation, one ...
The starburst caught her hard and somehow unprepared, radiating from the center of her in a series of continuing starbursts until each atom glowed with the charge and shimmered with the heated colors.
Head back, Grif went rigid and still above her, a bead of sweat sliding down his throat, dropping from his collarbone to her heart. Then the starburst shattered the tension in his muscles, as she felt him pulse inside her, and she gathered him into her arms.
* * *
He woke to find her gone from his bed – her bed, he reminded himself.
Their bed. The phrase stole into his mind and wouldn’t be dislodged by logic or discipline.
It had certainly been their bed last night, he told himself as he sat up. They must have used every square inch of it – as well as two more condoms. Touching, caressing, loving, stroking, climaxing.
He’d pay for this down the road, and pay hard with memories that would both sustain and torment him. But for right now, he was – for once – going to think of right now.
Right now and their bed.
He was almost allowing himself to enjoy the implications when she appeared at the doorway. Fully dressed with another of those big shirts topping gray leggings, her hair curling more tightly as it would if she’d had a
shower in the past hour. And not inclined to meet his eyes.
Her gaze slid over the portion of his body exposed above the sheet he’d retrieved after the last time they’d pushed the covers to the floor. The direction of her look shifted lower, and he felt a stirring in his groin that made him want to moan. Again.
Pink tinted her cheeks, not entirely masking the sleepless shadows under her eyes, as she looked away. But he’d already seen what he wanted to see, a flame adding gold to her brown eyes.
“We need to talk, Grif.”
Enjoyment fled. “Okay. Come back to bed, and we’ll talk.”
“I ... I think I’ll sit here.”
She pulled the battered chair up and took her place, as if she was still the nurse and he the patient.
“Go ahead and talk, then.”
At The Heart’s Command: Chapter Ten
Ellyn didn’t approach it head-on. Head-on collisions could do a whole lot of damage.
“I talked to Meg and Ben on the phone.” He knew they were at Fran’s, so she didn’t have to explain. “I told them they could come home tomorrow afternoon.”
“And you don’t want them to know that you and I have been sleeping together.”
So much for avoiding head-ons.
She parted her lips to dismiss “sleeping together,” which sounded so much more enduring than the single night – no matter how amazing – they’d had. The look on his face stopped her – that was just the argument he wanted to have.
“I don’t want them hurt,” she said instead, knowing that was unfair, because it was an argument Grif would never dispute. “I don’t want them confused. They’ve been through enough.”
“I understand. I know you want the best for Meg and Ben. You want a man who can be a great father to them. And some men aren’t suited to family life.”
Especially men who were still little boys themselves, like Dale.
It took her a moment to recognize the possibility that his thoughts had followed a different path.
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