by Noelle Adams
“Oh. But I...”
When I didn’t finish for a minute, he prompted, “But you what?” It sounded like he really wanted to know.
I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to ask for it. I didn’t want to want it, since I was sure it wasn’t right.
But I did. And I needed it so badly I had to put it into words. “If it’s all right with you, I’d kind of like...I mean, would you mind holding me. For a little while.”
He let out a little groan and lowered himself into the bed beside me. Then he pulled me into his arms, and I burrowed against him.
“Just tell me if you get uncomfortable,” he murmured against my hair. “And I’ll go sleep on the couch.”
His arms were wrapped around me tightly, and it was exactly what I needed. I released my breath, and I thought it was a sigh but it came out as a moan instead. His chest was bare, and I’d never been near him when his chest was bare before. But it felt nice and firm and warm and not threatening at all.
We didn’t talk for a while, just lay wrapped up in each other.
I shifted against him occasionally, so he must have known I was still awake. Then out of the blue he said in a thick voice, “I’m not going to date any more other women.”
I jerked in surprise at the voice and at the sentiment. “But—”
“I’m not going to do it. I know you think it’s for the best, but it’s not. It can’t be right—not if it hurts both of us so much.”
When I processed the words, I started to shake against him, since I was so confused and so upset, thinking we’d just fall back into the same holding pattern again.
“I tried, Diana. I promise I tried. I went out with eight different women this month, and I wasn’t remotely interested in any of them. They were all perfectly nice, but it made me kind of sick to be going through the motions. It wasn’t fair to them, and it’s not fair to me. I’m not going to do it anymore. The only woman I want to be with is you, and I don’t think that’s going to change.”
“But we can’t be together,” I choked, my cheek pressed against his chest “We already went over it. We can’t be together.”
“We are together. We’re already together. Whether or not we have sex, we’re already a couple. This isn’t changing anything. It’s what we already are.”
“But you need a woman who can give you everything. You’re not going to want to live your life without sex.”
“You need to stop worrying about that. We’ll figure things out as we go along. I’ll decide what I want and need, and right now what I want and need is you.”
So I started crying again because I wanted it—I wanted him—so much. He seemed to recognize why I was crying because he just held me tighter and didn’t ask what was wrong.
“So we’re okay?” he asked at last. “We can be together, this way at least?”
I nodded against his chest because I just wasn’t as selfless as I wanted to be. “Yeah. We can be together.”
He groaned and tightened his arms around me, and I felt a little better. If he was so immensely relieved and happy about it, then maybe I wasn’t doing the wrong thing.
***
I woke up choking on a scream as a nightmare bombarded me, foreign voices saying nasty things, a table edge hard against my stomach, rough hands all over my body, moving me, hurting me. Other things hurting me too.
I fought the hands, trying desperately to get away. I was soaked in sweat, and adrenalin pumped hard through my body. I was so terrified I couldn’t breathe.
“Diana,” a voice said. An American voice. “Diana, wake up, baby. Wake up.”
I was vaguely aware that this voice didn’t fit the dream, but the hands were still all over me and I had to get away. One of my fists flew up and blindly found a target.
I heard a grunt at the impact.
“Diana, it’s Gideon. It’s me. It’s a dream. Wake up, baby.”
I finally broke through the dream with a ragged gasp, sitting up straight in the bed and gasping for air.
Gideon was sitting up beside me. I saw the outline of his body in the dark room.
As the adrenalin surge lessened, I started to tremble helplessly. Just like I always did. “Sorry,” I gasped. “Sorry. Did I hit you?”
“Come here, baby,” he murmured, pulling me down under the covers again and pulling me into his arms. “What can I do?”
“Do you mind if we turn the TV on? The noise sometimes helps.”
“Sure.” He reached over to flip on the television and sports came on. “What do you want to watch?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just the noise I want.”
He flipped from sports to the news and then to a channel that played old sitcoms all night and left it on that. Then he wrapped me in his arms again. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I said through the trembling. “Why won’t the nightmares go away?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He was stroking my hair and my back now. “I wish I could make them go away for you. But I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Eight
The next morning, I woke up fuzzy and disoriented. It took me a full minute to even figure out where I was.
When I realized I was in Gideon’s apartment, I sat up straight in bed, the covers falling down to my hips. He wasn’t in the bed or in the room, and he must have turned the television off at some point the night before. The blinds were closed, so it was still fairly dark, but I could see from the edges around the blinds that it was morning.
I’d been a complete disaster last night—as much of a failure as a person could be—but Gideon still wanted me. I wasn’t sure how to wrap my mind around that fact.
But the morning felt better, righter, than the day before. Because we were together.
I was just processing this incongruous fact when Gideon came back into the room. His hair was in wild disarray, and he still wore nothing but a pair of low-slung pajama pants. When he saw I was awake and sitting up in bed, he smiled. “Do you want some coffee?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
I’d been darting my eyes between him and the covers because his lack of clothes made me feel awkward but I didn’t want him to know. I told myself to get a grip when he left to get me the coffee.
He came back with two cups, and I took mine gratefully. “Do you mind opening the blinds so it’s not so dark in here?”
I watched as he opened the blinds and the morning light shone into the room, shone on him. I’d always known his body was beautiful, but this was the clearest I’d ever seen it. His broad shoulders curved down gracefully into arms with rippling biceps and a strong back that tapered to a lean waist and hips. I could see the curve of his ass beneath the fabric and the flat planes of his belly from the side.
He looked golden in the morning light—his hair, his face, his body. But I couldn’t look away from the varied, intricate tattoos that laced over his back.
He’d had the tattoos on his forearms removed, so I’d simply forgotten about the fact that he’d been covered with them before.
Evidently he still was.
Just like a couple of the Albanians in that house.
I almost choked on my coffee as I fought through the flash of nausea.
“It looks like a nice day,” he said, still looking out the window as he drank his coffee. “If you feel up to it, maybe we can do something outside. Maybe take a hike?”
I couldn’t stop looking at the ink covering his upper arms and back, fighting through my reaction. When he turned around, I saw he had more on his chest.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, his forehead lowering.
I tried to focus on his face, but my eyes kept dipping down. “Nothing. Sorry. Yeah, a hike would be fun.”
He obviously didn’t believe my denial. He watched me for a moment, as my eyes drifted down to the largest stylized image on his chest. It looked like an animal of some kind. The first man who had raped me had a snake on his neck.
“Shit,” Gide
on breathed. “It’s the tattoos.”
“No,” I began, my hand jerking and almost slopping my coffee. “It’s not—”
I couldn’t even finish because he was striding over to the dresser and pulling a t-shirt out of a drawer. He’d started to pull it on when I said again, “No! You don’t have to cover them up.”
“They bother you,” he said, the t-shirt half on. “I’m not going to let anything about me upset you like that.”
“They don’t. I mean, they won’t. I just forgot about them. I haven’t seen them since...before, and they surprised me. But please don’t put your shirt on.”
He still looked dubious, but he pulled the shirt back off.
“You can come back to bed with me if you want,” I said, since he just stood in the middle of the floor, watching me. “Unless you want to get moving on the day.”
He took his coffee and came over to the bed, where he propped up on a couple of pillows. “Are you sure?” he asked, studying my face.
“Yes. I’m sure. I’m not punishing myself or anything. I was just taken by surprise. I wasn’t thinking of you as having them, so... I guess, if I thought about it, I maybe assumed you’d gotten them removed like the ones on your arms.”
“I thought about it, but it’s such a long process, and there are so many. It just didn’t seem worth the trouble. But I can get them removed if you need me to. I don’t want anything on my body to trigger bad memories for you.”
“You don’t have to get them removed. Seriously. Do they...” I almost didn’t ask the question, but then I decided to risk it. “Do they trigger bad memories for you? Of when you were...you were acting like one of them?”
He sighed and reached out a hand to brush my hair back from my face. “They used to. Sometimes. That’s why I got the ones on my arms removed. I didn’t want to see them every time I wore a short-sleeved shirt. But now I think I’ve just gotten used to them. They’re just what I expect to see when I look at myself.”
“Go around looking at yourself naked a lot, do you?” I asked, with a quiver of my lips. Just talking about it was making me feel better.
He laughed outright. “Absolutely. I’m a fine specimen of a man, you know.”
His voice was dry. Obviously ironic. I put my coffee on the nightstand and scooted closer to him. “You are a fine specimen of a man,” I murmured.
I pushed back some lingering resistance and reached over to trail my fingers over his chest, very lightly. I felt like my fingers were trembling a little, but I didn’t let that stop me.
I felt the smooth skin, the scattering of hair, the peak of one of his nipples, and then I brushed along the largest tattoo.
I made sure not to hesitate or change my expression. I knew his eyes never moved from my face, and if I’d shown even the least reluctance, he would have put a shirt on immediately and then made appointments to get them all lasered off.
But I didn’t want him to have to do that for me. I wanted him to know how much I appreciated and admired him exactly as he was.
His breath hitched slightly as I brushed my fingers back to his nipple. “Is this language Albanian?” I asked, moving my hand up to the words with lettering I didn’t know spanning in spaces just above his collarbone. “
“Yeah. Just generic words like ‘strength’ and ‘honor’ and stuff. We had whole brainstorming sessions with the team about what kinds of tattoos I should get.” He gestured toward the tattoo on his bicep. “The double-headed eagle is the coat of arms for Albania. I was supposed to be a guy really committed to his roots.”
“Some of them look higher quality than others.”
“Yeah. My cover had me in prison for several years, so a lot of these are supposed to have been done in prison.”
“What about this one?” I asked, stroking the line of his chest down to the large stylized animal on his chest. “Is it a tiger?”
“Yeah.”
“Why a tiger?”
“It’s an animal that hides and then strikes.”
I thought about this and then looked up at his face, my hand resting on his chest. “That’s not you, Gideon.”
He gave me a little smile. “I think maybe it is.”
“I don’t think so.”
We lay together in silence for a few minutes, me stroking his chest and him stroking my hair. Then he asked, in a different tone, “Did you want to talk about last night?”
I swallowed hard, since the flashes of memory from the night before made me feel a little sick. But he deserved my honesty—as much of it as I could face—so I said, the words stilted. “I didn’t want to be with that...that guy.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“It was like it wasn’t even me. I was just so upset about...about...”
“About me? Being with Maria?”
“Yeah. I know I had no right to be upset, since I told you to date. But I couldn’t stand it. And I couldn’t stand never being able to be like that myself. I wasn’t thinking. At all. But I guess maybe I somehow tried to force myself to...” I shuddered. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t found me.”
“I knew you were upset. I should never have left you on the sidewalk by yourself.” His voice sounded rough, the way it did when he was getting emotional.
“It wasn’t your fault! It was all me. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
His arm loosened, and he raised himself slightly on the pillow. I looked up at him and saw his face was dead serious. “But I did. I...” His face twisted slightly. “I canceled on you Friday evening on purpose. I was feeling frustrated and selfish and...I guess, kind of desperate. So I was pulling away from you on purpose. I kept myself from calling you all week. I wanted for you to realize what it’d be like if I wasn’t around. I wanted you to get jealous about the idea of me with someone else. I thought...oh, Christ, it’s awful, but I somehow thought it might prove something. I wanted you to be upset.”
I stared at him, surprised but not really angry, since he looked so guilt-ridden. “So you didn’t have other plans on Friday?”
“No. I didn’t have plans. I sat at home all evening, thinking about you. I don’t know what I was thinking. I saw your face last night when you saw me with Maria. I knew how you felt, how much it hurt you. It was exactly the way I would feel if you were with another man. And I knew then I’d accomplished nothing but hurting you, and I’m so sorry for that.”
I shook my head, trying to process what he’d said. “No, I don’t think you did anything that bad. You didn’t hurt me on purpose.”
“I did. I justified it by saying it might prove we should be together, but hurting you can never be right. I was just being selfish. And I can’t help thinking, if you weren’t already upset about my pulling away, you wouldn’t have reacted so...so dramatically last night.”
“Oh.” I closed my eyes, so his expression wouldn’t distract me as I sorted through what he’d just said. He was actually right about that. I’d been so on the edge last night from his distance throughout the week that it hadn’t taken much to push me over. “But it was still my fault. And you’re going to have to do a lot more before you hurt me as much as I’ve hurt you.”
“You haven’t hurt me,” he insisted. When I started to argue, he continued, “Not ever on purpose. I know you’ve always given me as much as you possibly can.”
I slid my hand up to his shoulder. “I wish I could give you more.”
“Well, I wish I could give you more too. So we’re in the same boat.”
I smiled at him, since he seemed so pleased with his answer. It felt like we’d resolved something important, and I tucked myself under his arm again.
“I was really jealous,” I admitted, after a minute of just lying together. “When I saw you with Maria last night. I don’t want any other woman to be with you. No one but me.”
He brushed a kiss against my hair. “Good. No one but you, it is.”
I smiled, enjoying a sense of relief, of satisfaction—one th
at didn’t feel as wrong as it would have the day before.
“And just to be clear, no other man gets to be with you either, right?”
I gave a huff of laughter. “Right.”
“Good.”
Feeling a swell of feeling for him and wanting to answer it in some way, I leaned down and pressed a soft kiss on one of the inked words on his chest. He brushed back my hair, which had fallen over onto his chest, and then lifted my head so he could very lightly kiss my lips.
It didn’t last long enough to make me nervous, and it was nice. Made me feel close to him.
“Your hair is a little out of sorts this morning,” I teased, smiling and reaching over to smooth down some of the strands that were sticking straight up.
He chuckled. “I’m not sure you should be talking about someone else’s messy hair.”
I gasped and jerked my hands up to my own hair, which I could feel was wildly tangled and probably looked awful. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded. “Is it bad?”
Laughing, he pulled me back down into the crook of his arm. “It’s beautiful.”
“You are such a liar.”
“But I always tell the truth about you.”
I felt strangely touched by his words and pressed another little kiss on his shoulder. I was starting to idly stroke his chest again, strangely mesmerized by the images, when my eyes drifted lower and landed on a very noticeable bulge beneath the thin fabric of his pajama pants.
My hand froze, and my whole body tightened. His arousal was very obvious, although he didn’t appear to be bothered by it.
“Are you okay?” he asked, in a different voice. I knew he’d realized what I’d noticed.
“Yeah. Are you okay?” I felt jittery and anxious, but not nauseated the way I’d expected at such an obvious sign of sex.
“It’s just an erection.” He sounded mild, careful.
“I know. But you can’t do anything with it, so I don’t want to torture you or anything.”
He let out a breath of amusement and tilted his head down to press a kiss into my hair. “I’m not in a tortured state quite yet. I think I’ll be okay.”
