It had taken her days to find the courage, the strength, to sit up and push those covers down look at herself. And it had taken her hours to stop feeling nauseated each time she looked after that.
Oh, over time she had learned to use her prosthesis, to walk with little more than a slight limp, to wear clothing that hid from the world the fact that she was no longer a complete person. She actually had gone through a period of grieving for her lost leg much the same as she had gone through a period of grieving for her lost husband. Her geologist sister and brother-in-law had come home from Oklahoma to visit, and they had been the first to see her with the prosthesis on, other than the hospital staff and her mother. And she remembered the look in her brother-in-law’s eyes.
She knew he’d been wondering how he’d feel if it were Kathy who had lost a leg; would he still be able to go to bed with her? For the first time she saw some good in her having lost Lance, because how would she have felt if he had looked at her as her brother-in-law had, with awful, horrified speculation in his eyes?
Her brother, four years her junior but wise in ways that always had amazed her, had been the first one to put it into proper perspective for her. He’d said a lot of things, but the one thing she remembered most was that if she’d known that the choice was between her left leg from the knee down, and the life of the fifteen-year-old boy she’d flung herself across just in time, would she rather have lost the student?
Of course, put like that, the loss of her leg paled into insignificance.
Many of her fellow teachers had come to visit her, and nearly all of her students. As she limped into the hospital corridor, practicing, learning all over again how to walk, she had seen the looks of pity. And when she had gone back to school, it had been even worse. She couldn’t teach physical education when it was all she could do to stay upright, and she accepted that. There were other classes she was qualified to teach, but it was the counseling she couldn’t handle. How could she adequately counsel hurt or frightened or maladjusted children, when she herself was so miserably maladjusted and living in constant terror?
But what hurt the most was when she had overheard herself referred to as the teacher with the wooden leg, and a couple of kids calling her “Peggy” short for “peg-leg” behind her back.
Mermaiding was a watery haven, where no one even guessed that she had about as much grace on the land as did a sea lion.
She saw Mark returning, wearing a pair of dry shorts, and discovered she still wasn’t ready to talk to him. She ducked under once more but she was tiring and knew it. She couldn’t hold her breath and stay down as long as she’d been able to ten minutes ago and it was getting harder and harder to make her thighs and abdominal muscles swing her tail around.
She popped up to gasp a breath and heard something land close beside her. She blinked until she could see, and discovered a small bottle with a paper rolled up inside it floating near her. She clutched it in her hand, staring at it, afraid to open it, afraid to look up, but when she did look up, Mark was gone again. All that remained was the note.
Intrigued, she opened it and carefully took it out with her wet fingers.
No more games, Mermaid. When you’re ready, holler. I’ll be listening. I love you.
Jillian swam back to the edge of the pool and then went to the steps at the shallow end. Hitching herself up, she sat there for a long time, thinking, feeling the water running out of her hair and down her back, feeling love and fear and hope and desire all warring within her. She lay back on the hot slates of the pool deck and stared at the green branches of a tree against the deep blue of the sky, remembering the look on Mark’s face when she had told him.
Had it been shocked horror over the fact that she was incomplete, less than a whole woman, or had it been shocked horror that the woman he loved had been injured so grievously?
There was also one other possibility that she had to face. Could he have been horrified because she thought so little of him, put so little faith in the strength of his love? If she had learned that he was disabled, would it make any difference to her? Would she love him less? Want him less? No. And if he had thought that of her, she’d have been more than horrified. She’d have been hurt and angry and wouldn’t have wasted nearly is much time pandering to him as he had pandering to her.
Slowly she sat up. She wanted to holler. That was what he’d said to do, but her throat was tight with fear, and all she could manage was a soft plea. “Mark?”
He materialized. Crouching at her side, he didn’t touch her. He just said, “I’m here, Jillian.”
“Will you please help me out of this suit?”
“Sure,” he said huskily. “Just tell me what to do.”
“At the back there’s a strip held down with Velcro. Under that is a zipper.”
He put his arms around her, lifted her as he stood, and started to walk. Her startled gaze flew over his face. “Where are we going?”
“Inside. When I get you out of this suit, Mermaid, I am going to make mad, passionate, and very thorough love to you until you are so fully convinced that no matter what kind of accident might have befallen you, I love you and want you to know I find you the most captivating, beautiful woman on earth. And because that’s what you are to me, the moment I get you naked, I’m not going to be able to wait, and I thought we might be more comfortable in my bed.”
Opening her eyes, she put her hand around his face and turned it so he had to meet her gaze.
“Where the shades can be drawn and the lights turned off and the covers pulled right up high?”
He looked at her and shook his head. “For your sake, if that’s what you need, I’m willing to have it that way, but I hadn’t thought of that, Jillian.”
“Hadn’t you, Mark? Aren’t you even a little bit afraid that you might not like what you see?”
He smiled confidently. “Nope. Not for one minute.”
Tears flooded her eyes. “Well, dammit, it worries me, let me tell you.”
“I know. And I wish it didn’t. And I also think that in the not very distant future, it’s not going to worry you any longer.” He bent his head and touched his lips to hers. “And now, can we go to bed?”
“Mark...no drawn shades. No turned-out lamps. No concealing sheets and blankets. N-not for my sake.” She swallowed hard and drew in a deep, unsteady breath, and he watched her chin jut out as if anticipating a blow. “For my sake, do it here,” she said, aware that her teeth were chattering. “T-take me out of my suit right here. In, as they say, the...the light of the noonday sun.”
“Do they say that?” he asked conversationally as he sat her down again on the side of the pool and fumbled at the back of her suit.
“I don’t really know.” Her voice shook. “But I thought it sounded impressive.”
“Oh, it did.” The zipper slid down, revealing the slick of a skin tight black bathing suit. “Very impressive.” He peeled the neoprene suit down to her waist, and she lifted up so he could slide it off her thighs and down over the rest of her on the surface masking her deformity. She sat there in her black bathing suit, looking straight ahead, her face pale, her eyes dark with fear and pain.
Mark stripped out of his shorts again and dropped down to the lower step with her, taking her taut face in his hands, feeling her clenched jaws, and seeing the stark terror in her eyes.
“Do you know that I love you?” he whispered. She nodded, unable to speak.
“Do you know that I want you the way I’ve never wanted anyone before?”
She only looked at him, feeling doubt and hope and love all tangled up inside her again. With infinite care, he bent and brushed his lips over hers, just touching them. Then once more he kissed her, with only a hint more force. The tip of his tongue brushed over her lower lip, and a shiver went right through her as her nipples tightened, sending urgent messages to the very heart of her. She drew in a shaky breath and lifted her hands to his chest, letting her fingers rest on the thick I mat of hair that lay
wet and glistening with beads of moisture. “That...that must be pretty close to the way I want you,” she said shakily as rainbows danced before her eyes.
She met his mouth with her own, her arms sliding around his torso to pull him close, closer, until her breasts were against the hardness of his chest. It was grand. It was wonderful. It was the way it was supposed to be.
He rocked her against his body, rubbing his skin over hers, and then slid one hand down under her bottom, lifting her until she floated onto his thighs.
“Mark...” she said with a sob moments later, gasping for breath as she rested her forehead against his chest. “How can you do that to me with just a kiss?”
He took her hand and moved it down until it curled around the hardness of him. “How can you do that to me simply by smiling?” he asked, and then groaned as her fingers tightened, and she stroked the long, heated hardness of him until he snatched himself out of her grasp. “Stop, love, it’s too fast.”
While she contented herself with discovering the hard little nipples that hid within the swirls of hair on his chest, he slipped her bathing suit down to bare her breasts, dipping his head to take first one then the other nipple deeply into his mouth. His hands encircled her slim waist, leaning her back in the water so that her hair floated in a soft cloud all around her shoulders. Standing on the lower level of the shallow end, he pulled her up until her thighs were around him, and bent to her breasts again.
“Mark.” Her soft moan was made half in pleading, half in protest. “What if... will anybody come?”
“You can bet someone is going to come,” he laughed, “and more than once, if I have anything to say about it.”
She laughed, too. “That’s not what I meant!” And suddenly everything was right.
“But not right away,” he added. “Not for a long time, my darling. We are going to make this last and last until I have given you every drop of pleasure you can stand.”
As he returned to her mouth, covering it with his own and plunging inside with his tongue, he caught two fistfuls of cloth and dragged her suit off her. When she felt the cool water and his hands caressing her buttocks, she thought she would faint from delight. His fingers knew exactly what to do, and in moments she was sure she’d received the last drop of pleasure she could stand—but still he showed her again and again that there was more and that she could take it, that she wanted it.
Just as his hands knew what to do, his mouth knew where next to kiss her. Eyes, ears, throat, the hollow of her elbow, the under-sides of her breasts all received attention. And when he sat her on the second step once more and dipped his head underwater, he parted the tops of her thighs, parting them so that his darting tongue could send her into a frenzy of passion.
She pulled him up before he drowned and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
“You are so beautiful,” he said moments later when he could breathe again. Lifting her astride his lap, he held her breasts to his cheeks, rubbing them gently with his slight stubble until she was crying out for him to stop.
“Mark, love me, please,” she said, shaking so hard that she couldn’t even cling to him anymore, so hard that he had to hold her to him to keep her from drifting away. “I need you. Please, Mark, love me now.”
With both hands, she captured him and drew him to her. He lifted her and drove inside her with one thrust, and then they were one, staring into each other’s eyes as the slow, stately dance began.
Chapter Nine
IT WAS LIKE FLYING through water, slow and sweet and graceful, as they moved together, creating rushing sensation like nothing she had ever experienced, a deep, inner storm that flooded through her in ever-increasing waves, shaking her, rocking making her cry out with the intensity of it. Closing her eyes, she flung her head back. He drew one of her nipples into his mouth while she it drew him deeper within her body. He was all hard pulsing power, filling her, fulfilling her as her muscles tightened around him. It seemed it would never end as Mark rode the swirling currents with her, soaring high, plunging low, then rising again until they shuddered together in joint spasms of ecstasy that carried them over the top and let them coast slowly down to a quiet shore.
“Sweetheart?”
Languidly Jillian rolled her head on his wet chest. “Hmm?”
“Are you all right?”
She snuggled her face into the hollow between his shoulder and his neck, tasting him, smelling him, loving him. “I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again.”
“I know I won’t.”
“So much for courage,” she said, still hiding from him. “So much for the light of the noonday sun.”
“I think that was originally about mad dogs and Englishmen going out in it, but not necessarily naked.”
“Um-hmm. I guess so.” Still she felt ashamed of her cowardice. She loved this man. Why was it so hard to show him all of herself, all of her naked, imperfect self?
“Jillian, I understand, you know. This must have been very difficult for you. It was the first time, wasn’t it? Since—”
Silently she nodded.
He smoothed her wet hair back from her face, kissed the top of her head. “Do you know how honored I feel that you’ve given me so much love, so much trust?”
She felt a sob rising up in her chest and choked it down. Now was not the time for tears. That time was past. It was a time for rejoicing, and she lifted her face to his, her eyes aglow.
“I love you, Mark. Did I tell you how much I love you?” Then, shy again, remembering that she had said those words over and over just moments before, she dipped her head once more and hugged him tightly.
He chuckled. The sound was deep in his chest and rumbled pleasantly against her ear and filled her heart with gladness. “It seems to me that I did hear you mention it a time or two. But you’re free to say it as often as you like.”
“You won’t get bored with hearing it?”
“I won’t get bored with anything you do.” He lifted her face and looked at her. “You’ve made me very happy, Jilly. Is it okay for me to call you Jilly? I know your mother does, but...”
“All my family does, Mark.” She touched his face and brushed her fingers over his lips. “I mean, all the rest of my family.”
When she awoke in Mark’s bed, she knew many hours had passed. Through the open drapes, she could see that twilight had faded the sky to white and inked in the trees as black silhouettes. She was tangled in the sheet he’d pulled over them after they’d made love again. One light burned at the bedside, and in its pale glow, she could see he wasn’t in the room. She sat up, and called Mark, but there was no reply, so she got out of bed and with the aid of a chair, went into the adjoining bathroom where they had showered together earlier. He had left her a note saying that he’d be back soon. No word of where he’d gone, just that he’d be back. Oddly enough it was all she needed to know.
Smiling, she saw that he had left out another white terry robe for her. How many did he own? She still had that first one at her house. She took a quick bath and wrapped herself in the warm, thick garment, which came only to her knees. Her eyes widened and her heart started to hammer when a door slammed somewhere in the house and she heard Mark’s footsteps approaching.
“Jillian?” He had seen the empty bed. “Jillian, where are you?”
She opened the bathroom door and stood there, holding onto the knob, watching him cross toward her, a suitcase in one hand, and a world of love in his eyes. Slowly she breathed again, not realizing until then that she had been holding her breath, waiting for some kind of reaction from him—one that never came.
His gaze swept over her from the top of her head to the tips of her single set of toes, and still all she could see in his face was the warmth of love that made her complete even in her own eyes and suffused her with gladness.
“Hi,” he said, and kissed her until she was dizzy.
“Where have you been?”
He grinned. “Mmm. I like t
hat. You sound like a wife already. It’s going to be wonderful having someone care about where I go and what I do and when I come home. And, since I have permission to marry you, you have my permission to sound like a wife.”
She had to laugh. “Of all the evasive, sneaky answers I’ve ever heard, that beats them all. You still didn’t tell me where you—What do you mean, you have permission to marry me? Whose?”
“Your mother’s and your daughter’s. Your mother packed some things she thought you’d need tonight. I’ve already checked. She packed a couple of things you won’t need, too, but she meant well.” He lifted her with one arm and carried her to sit on the bed where he handed her the bag and her prosthesis.
After a moment of sick-feeling horror, she met his calm eyes, saw no disgust, no revulsion. Then, slowly, she reached for the prosthesis, complete with articulated ankle and running shoe, and strapped it on to her thigh.
“You’ll find the other shoe in the bottom of the bag,” he said. “You get dressed. I’m going to fire up the barbecue.”
After a long moment, she grinned. “Now you’re starting to sound just like a husband. Bossy. Domineering.”
Leaning casually in the doorway, he looked her and down as if imagining her without the thick bathrobe covering her. His gaze made her tingle. “Just getting in practice,” he said with a grin, then asked, “When?”
Drawing in a tremulous breath, she said, “Yesterday?”
He laughed. “I’ll work on it, Mermaid. I want it to be that soon too.”
“Talk about a whirlwind romance!” Jillian, who perched on the arm of a chair in the living room of their Seattle home, set the phone down with one hand while the other stroked through Mark’s thick hair. “Do you know who that was?”
He smiled. “Well, the impression I got is that it was your mother, and that she’s getting married. I can’t say I’m surprised. That day I went there to get your things for the night, I discovered that Edward had canceled his dinner date with his daughter because he’d finally met his match in Scrabble and didn’t want to leave. I take it they’re well-matched in other ways, as well.”
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