“I’m very independent, Ian. I could have handled it.”
But he hadn’t taken the time to notice or consider that. And now it was too late. “What are you going to do?” he asked, dreading her response because knowing Jaci, she most likely had something in the works.
She ran a gentle finger over his red knuckles. “My standard answer is ‘I won’t be forced into marriage’.”
He liked that answer.
“But I don’t know.” She turned in her chair, rested her back against the wall and stretched out her legs. “Twenty-five million dollars could do a lot of people a lot of good.” With a shrug she added, “I guess it will go to charity either way.”
“That money should go to you. You deserve it.” After all she’d been through, she’d earned it. “You should get to decide how it’s spent.”
“In a perfect world,” Jaci mumbled.
“Promise me you won’t rush into anything.”
She didn’t respond, just sat there staring at her feet.
Before he could stop them, the words, “And if, in three months, you haven’t found a man you want to marry, I’ll marry you,” tumbled out of his mouth. And you know what?
Although he had no idea how he’d pull off a marriage and meet his commitments to four other families that lived two hours away, he didn’t regret them.
“Ah, yes.” She stood. “All it took was twenty-five million dollars to make Mr. Why-the-Hell-Would-I-Want-to-Get-Married want to get married.”
She threw his words back at him. The money didn’t even make his list of top twenty things he found most appealing about Jaci. “I’ll sign a prenuptial agreement.” He didn’t want or need her money. He’d work as many jobs as necessary to meet his financial obligations on his own.
She seemed to consider it...for all of five seconds then shook her head. “It’ll never work. I don’t appreciate being reprimanded and interrogated like a child.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
He stood, crossed his arms over his chest and glared right back. “Then stop sneaking around and taking unnecessary risks like one.”
Stalemate.
“You chose me, remember?” he pointed out.
“Well things have changed.”
Of course. “My leg.”
She jerked her head in his direction. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve changed. You’ve become moody and bossy and overbearing.” She averted her eyes. “And aggressive,” she added quietly.
Ian let out a breath. “I’m sorry for that display,” he said. “I lost control. Yes. But I aimed for the cabinet. I need you to know you are totally, one hundred percent safe with me. Always. I would never, ever hit you, Jaci. I’m...going through a bit of a rough patch.”
Her stubborn expression softened. “P.T.S.D.?” she asked.
He nodded, relieved to finally have it out there and to see understanding and compassion in her beautiful blue eyes.
“You taking your medication as prescribed? Because if you are you need your dosages adjusted.” She ended on a sarcastic note.
“I’m not taking any meds.” He’d refused, didn’t want to spend his days in a state of zombie, dependent on mood altering drugs. He needed to take back control on his own.
“In therapy?” she asked.
He rubbed the side of his head and let out a breath. “After tonight I think I may need to start up again.”
She gave him a small smile accompanied by a set of raised eyebrows and a head tilt. “Ya think?”
“I’ll call my therapist from rehab for a referral first thing Monday morning.”
“Good decision.”
“Then you’ll consider it? Marrying me?”
“If I can’t find anyone else,” she clarified, studying him. “You’re okay with being the husband of last resort?”
Since he had no intention of letting her marry anyone else, “Sure.”
“Maybe you’d better investigate all the particulars before you offer to sacrifice your freedom so willingly.” She walked to the oven, picked up the dishtowel hanging over the handle, and wiped down the immaculate counter, placing her back to him. “We’d have to stay married for at least five years.”
His first thought: Five years wasn’t near long enough. “I’ll find a way to work it out.” To be there for the wives and children of his men while eking out some happiness and contentment for himself. As long as Jaci agreed to share his time with four other women. Which would have to be addressed at some point. But not tonight.
She turned to face him with a smirk. “Not quite the level of enthusiasm I’d hoped for in a potential if-I-can’t-find-anyone-else suitor.”
“You want enthusiasm?” he asked, backing her into the counter and pressing his body to hers. “Take me to bed,” he whispered in her ear. “And I’ll show you enthusiasm.”
While he waited for her to accept his offer, a renewed sense of excitement and hope circulated through his system. Maybe he wouldn’t have to give up his future after all.
She looked up at him. “No promises.” She stepped away and held out her hand palm up. “But I’ll consider your offer. And if you’re okay with us having sex while I figure out what I’m going to do, let’s go.”
Ian took the hand she offered and used it to drag her to her bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AS TIRED as she was after what’d turned out to be a five hour roundtrip drive to drop Millicent Parks at a rest stop on the Thruway, where she met a nameless, faceless contact who would transport her on the next leg of her journey to begin a new life—outside the reach of her well-connected husband, Jaci experienced a resurgence of energy while being hauled down the hall by Ian.
It’d been difficult to say goodbye to Aunt Mill, one of the few positive constants in her and Jena’s lives since childhood. Jaci welcomed the opportunity to cleanse her mind of sadness over yet another loss. To replace the eruption of remorse over not doing more to help her mother that occurred each time she facilitated a wealthy woman’s escape from her powerful husband, with a state of sex-induced, mind-erasing euphoria that Ian had proven so proficient in providing.
He pulled her into the bedroom, closed the door behind them, and opened his mouth to speak. Jaci reached a finger up to touch his lips. “No talking,” she said. She didn’t want to explain where she’d been or why she’d arrived home later than expected. She didn’t want to discuss Millicent or Mr. Parks, the benefit or her family, marriage or her future or the dozens/hundreds/thousands of women—the ones currently making use of her crisis center’s services and the ones she had yet to meet—who were or would one day be dependent on her for a better life.
Tonight Jaci wanted only to feel. The heat of Ian’s large naked body pressed to hers. The completeness when he filled that empty place inside of her. The satisfaction of being wanted. The safety of his strong arms. The illusion of being cared for. Loved.
Jaci lifted the bottom hem of his shirt and Ian pulled it up and over his head. She flicked on the light. “I need to see you.” His chest wide, the muscles defined, his nipples too tempting to resist.
“I thought you said no talking.” He caressed her head as she teased his right nipple with her tongue.
“You no talking.” She licked a path to the other one. “I can say whatever I want.”
Without argument—or another word—he removed her shirt and bra, lifted her to his mouth, and did indeed demonstrate considerable enthusiasm in welcoming her bare breasts to the party. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. Five years of this would be A.O.K., if not for all the other stuff that’d shifted him from lone occupant on the Definite Marriage Possibility list to the ever growing You’d Kill Each Other in Under a Month list.
This wasn’t working. Too much thinking. Not enough doing. Jaci loosened her legs and let them fall from his hips. Not that it mattered since he was plenty strong enough to hold her up without assistance. “I want down,” Jaci said. Ian slid her slowly in the
direction she sought, maintaining her breasts in full contact with his chest, until her feet touched the floor.
En route, Jaci slipped her finger below the waistband of his jeans and popped the button. He wasn’t the only one adept at disrobing the opposite sex one handed. But when she started to lower the zipper he stopped her with his big hand over hers. “Let me get the light,” he said.
Because he didn’t want her to see his leg. True, it would be easiest to let him plunge the room in darkness so they could fall onto the bed and make some headway in her pursuit of the rapture she craved, without delay. But that wouldn’t help Ian come to terms with his injured leg, or show him she accepted his body, as is, and he could feel completely comfortable dropping his pants in her presence.
She tried to maneuver her hand beneath his grip. A futile endeavor.
He held her firm, stood unmoving. Determined.
Well, Jaci had a pretty strong determined streak of her own. And since she routinely found herself at a significant disadvantage strength-wise, she dipped into the bag of womanly attributes she so frequently accessed to get her way and chose cunning. “Make you a deal,” she said, then kissed his chest, set her chin on a soft tuft of hair, and looked up at him. “You give me ten minutes of unrestricted access to your body, to do anything I want, and I’ll grant you the same in return.”
That got his attention.
A risky proposition, yes, because a lot could happen in ten minutes. But it would be well worth it if, in the end, she achieved two desired outcomes. One: Ian realized the sight of his fully naked body would not disgust her or send her running from the room. Two: Ian felt more at ease with the changes to his physique. For that she’d gladly sacrifice a few minutes of the control she’d fought so long and hard to gain.
“I get ten full minutes,” he clarified. Jaci could almost feel the vibration of his frenzied plotting regarding how to best make use of those minutes, his mind scrolling through dozens, heck, this was Ian, hundreds of sexual scenarios. Arousal flooded her system in excited anticipation of which one he’d choose. “No matter what,” he said. “You run out of here, I drag you back, shut the light, and still get my full ten minutes.”
“I’m a nurse, Ian. I have yet to come in contact with a wound or injury I couldn’t handle.”
Decision apparently made, he moved her hands away and unzipped his pants, exposing a giant erection straining the white cotton fabric of his briefs. Jaci’s mouth watered. No reason the unveiling couldn’t be enjoyable for both of them. She went down on her knees at his feet, pulled back the elastic waistband and licked the tip, tasted the heady essence of his arousal, and instantly craved more. She slid his underwear and jeans down over his butt, exposing the full magnificence of his manhood, standing thick, and tall and proud like him.
Jaci palmed the base, adjusted the angle, and took him into her mouth. She swirled her tongue, reveled in his taste and the feel of his soft yet firm skin sliding in and out, before she swallowed him deep.
Ian worked his fingers through her hair to her scalp and let out a deep moan.
A wonderfully erotic sound.
Jaci squeezed a butt cheek in each hand and urged him forward, again. When he moved she used his preoccupation to lower his pants to mid-thigh. He stiffened. She resumed focus on his pleasure, cupping him in one hand while moving the other up and down his shaft in tandem with her mouth.
He relaxed.
Until she eased the pants down to his knees and moved her mouth to hover over his left thigh. “Is it tender to touch?” she asked.
“In some places the skin is hypersensitive. I wouldn’t say it hurts, but it feels oddly uncomfortable. In other places I have no sensation at all.”
Before casting her gaze down his leg, she kissed his anterior thigh ever so gently and hoped he felt it.
Still on her knees Jaci leaned back. Ian shifted his stance sending his pants to the floor and stood with his hands behind his back. Ready for inspection. Careful to maintain a neutral expression, she began her assessment, immediately understanding why medical personnel were cautioned against treating loved ones in a professional capacity. Where in the course of her work she would evaluate a wound objectively and without emotion, what she saw sent a painful, breath-halting pang through her chest.
This man standing before her wasn’t a post-op open reduction internal fixation of the femur or a non-healing ankle ulcer in need of daily dressing changes. He wasn’t a patient to be treated with clinical detachment and professional distance—not that she’d ever truly mastered either.
He was Ian. Her friend. A man she cared about and admired, way more than she wanted to admit, way more than was safe for her heart. A man whose lower extremities bore the markings of the significant and horrific physical trauma he’d endured.
Do not cry. Don’t you dare cry.
Two legs, left and right, once perfect in form, now ravaged and flawed.
Mentally prepared to see only his left leg disfigured, the sight of deep reddish purplish donor skin graft sites on his right leg took her by complete surprise. A large rectangular area on his inner thigh stretching from groin to knee, one on his outer calf extending from knee to ankle and two smaller rectangular patches horizontally parallel to each other mid-thigh.
The pain must have been excruciating.
As gently as she could, she kissed each one.
“Five minutes,” Ian said quietly.
Of course he’d be keeping time. Jaci studied his left leg, letting her eyes travel along a network of healed, zipper-like suture lines of varying shades of pink to red, winding from ankle to upper thigh, around a patchwork of healthy-looking skin grafts. The leg itself was noticeably thinner, with textural irregularities, hypertrophic and widened scarring, and numerous asymmetrical defects. But aside from a few areas of dry, flaky skin, both legs seemed to have healed nicely.
Jaci looked up to see Ian’s eyes focused on hers. She stood. “You are standing unassisted on your own two legs. Granted, they’re not as pretty as they used to be.” He knew the truth as well as she did, so why sugarcoat it. “But a person is more than the condition or sum of his physical parts. What makes you special is what’s in here.” She reached up to touch his temple. “And what’s in here.” She placed her other hand over his heart.
“It’s finding Maria’s boyfriend a job at a local bodega,” she said. “Then volunteering your services and your S.U.V. to help them move into the apartment above it.” She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. “It’s going out of your way, despite being in pain, to help me, my patients, their families and neighbors after the worst end-of-summer storm to hit the area in a decade. It’s you getting angry and being a total pain in my butt because you’re concerned about me.”
“Because I care about you,” he said, finally hugging her back and kissing the top of her head.
About her body, maybe. “I care about you, too,” Jaci admitted. Really cared about him. “But I could do without the overprotective big brother crap.”
“Believe me when I tell you,” he moved his hands to the button of her slacks. “What I feel for you is not at all big-brotherly.” By the time the words were out he was sliding her pants and panties down her legs. “And shazzam.” He sounded back to his old self. “Your time is up and mine has begun.”
“I may need a few minutes—” he bent down and kissed her before she could share the most important part of that sentence “—to get back in the mood.” Unlike him, the heavy emotional toll of the past few minutes— He scooped her up and carried her to the bed, lay down on top of her and deepened the kiss. His lips smooth, his tongue plunging into her mouth while a hand fondled her breast and his thigh settled between her legs. And well what’d’ya know? Just like that she was back in the game.
He lifted his head just enough for their eyes to connect. “Do you trust me?” he asked.
An innocuous enough question, if not for the fact they were naked, and the need for trust most likely indica
ted an excursion outside usual and customary bed play. Four words she didn’t hear often in her current situation, and when she did, four words to which she always responded, “No.”
But she did trust Ian and believed she was safe with him. And she had promised him ten unrestricted minutes. So, “Yes.” She tried to glance at the clock to see a start time, just in case, but a pillow rested on top of it. Had he done that on purpose? “Hey, I—”
He jumped off the bed so abruptly and turned her so quickly it robbed Jaci of speech. Then he pulled her to the edge until her head fell backwards over the side.
Standing over her, his legs slightly spread, he looked down and asked, “Comfy?”
Yeah, if she ignored the blood accumulating in her brain. But her upside down view of the underneath side of his male member sparked an interest in just what he had in mind. She nodded. Good man that he was he slid the tip of his erection along the seam of her lips, not making her wait to find out.
“Open up.” She did. “If you want me to stop just tap my leg.” She nodded. Apprehensive, yet gung ho to try something new. With Ian.
Her position opened her throat and elongated her neck—her airway—and Jaci understood why she would need to trust him. He started off slow, filling her mouth, pulling all the way out then slowly sliding in again and again. Jaci upped the ante lifting her head to meet him, her lips, cheeks, and tongue active participants.
He groaned. “This is one instance when reality is so much better than fantasy.” He thrust deep, tapped at the back of her throat, held completely still.
Jaci didn’t panic, knew he wouldn’t leave her without air for long. In truth she liked this test, this reminder that she had full confidence in Ian as a lover.
He pulled out, breathing heavy. “Bend your legs.”
She did. He leaned over her body, grabbed her behind each knee, and draped one leg then the other over the backs of his elbows. In the process he lifted her butt off the bed, opened her wide, and brought her most private parts a few scant inches from his mouth. Thank goodness she hadn’t skimped on the waxing in preparation for last night’s event.
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