“Today was actually a good day.” He and Tyler weren’t the only ones who’d thought so. “The worry part is just always there. It’s okay during the day when I’m busy, but at night...”
“You can’t shut it off,” he concluded for her.
“I managed for a few minutes tonight. But then it all came right back.”
“What was it about tonight that helped?”
She lifted her glance.
“You,” Rory said quietly. Of everything he had done for her in the past two days, everything he’d done in the weeks before, what he had done since yesterday had mattered to her the most. “You being here.”
Especially tonight, she thought. Tonight, for a while, anyway, because of him she’d been able to shut everything out and concentrate on nothing but the soothing sounds of the rain still pattering on the roof. Because he was there, because he had her back, because he had everything under control, for the first time in well over a year she’d had a day when she hadn’t had to make every decision on her own. She hadn’t had to worry about how she would get a tree home for her son, or get one out of her driveway. Or remove the one that had blocked the street. Because of him, they had heat and lights. And for that day, anyway, she hadn’t had to handle everything thrown at her alone.
Erik brushed the back of her hand with his thumb, conscious of the small weight of it where he held it on his thigh. The thought that he had somehow given her some measure of relief had just made it that much harder to let her go. Not until she was ready, anyway.
“Do you want to go downstairs?” he asked.
She met his eyes, looked away with a small shake of her head. “Not really.”
“Do you want to go back to Tyler’s room?”
Another small shake. “Not yet.”
“Are you cold?”
“A little.”
He knew what she needed even before he asked. He asked anyway. “Could you use a pair of arms?”
That was all he was offering. Just to hold her. This wasn’t about wanting her between her sheets. Heaven knew it wasn’t about self-protection. It was about giving her a break.
She didn’t have to say a word for him to know that his arms were exactly what she needed. But her quiet “Please” was all it took for him to rise and turn out the bathroom light. The night-light now filtering through the doorway cast the room in shadows.
“Come here,” he said, and tugged her to her feet.
Leading her to the side of the bed, he pulled the comforter over the sheets and propped both pillows against the headboard. He didn’t want her in the bed, just on it.
The distinction seemed just as clear to her as she snagged the wadded throw blanket from the foot of the bed and sat against the far pillow, hugging her arms around her knees when the mattress sank beneath his weight. With his back against his pillow he drew the throw over them both and pulled her knees toward him, his arm low around her back, his hand at the curve of her waist.
“How’s this?” he asked, coaxing her head to his shoulder.
He felt her sigh, the long, quiet leak of air leaving her nearly limp against the side of his body.
For a moment, Rory couldn’t say a word. She could barely believe she was actually where she had so badly wanted to be. It didn’t matter that his jeans felt rough against her bare calf, or that the contrast of his heat and the cool air against the back of her neck made her shiver. She could hear the heavy beat of his heart beneath her ear, could feel it where her hand rested on his hard, bare chest. It didn’t even matter that for some strange reason her throat had suddenly gone raw, making her quiet “Good” sound a little tight.
His chin brushed the top of her head as he settled himself more comfortably.
“Good,” he echoed, slowly skimming his hand over her upper arm.
She swallowed, then made herself take a deep, even breath. “Erik?” she finally said.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
A tired smile entered his voice. “For holding you?” It was hardly a hardship, he thought. She felt wonderful curled up against him. Small, feminine, trusting. The only difficult part was trying not to think of how curvy she truly was with his hand at the dip of her waist, inches from the curve of her hip.
Wanting distraction, he smoothed his hand back up her arm. The herbal scent of her hair teased him, filling his lungs every time he breathed.
“For all of it. But yes.” Her tone grew muffled. “For this, too.”
He wasn’t sure what all she meant. It could have been anything. He just forgot to wonder what might have meant so much to her when he caught the hitch in her voice.
He started to tip up her chin.
She wouldn’t let him. Instead, he cupped his hand to the side of her face, brushed it with his thumb and caught the moisture gathered at the corner of her eye.
His heart gave a strange little squeeze. “Hey.” Don’t do that, he thought. He could handle anything but tears. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Honest,” she insisted, keeping her head right where it was. “Absolutely nothing is wrong.” She tried to draw a deep breath, made it halfway before it caught. Swallowing, she tried again. “For the first time in...forever,” she said, because that was how it felt, “right now there really isn’t a thing wrong.”
Which was what had brought the sting behind her eyelids, she realized. Not because of sadness, fear or grief. But because of an amazing, unfamiliar and totally unexpected sense of relief. She knew it wouldn’t last long. That it couldn’t. It was just for now. While he held her. So just for now, relief was what she felt.
“Then why tears?”
Because of what you let me feel, she thought. “Because I’m tired,” was easier to admit to him.
She felt his lips against the top of her head. “Then go to sleep.”
“I don’t want to.”
The slow shake of her head brushed her hair against his chest. Letting his fingers sift through that dark silk, he gave a small chuckle. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to miss you holding me.”
It had to be the hour, the lateness of it, the need for sleep himself. Or maybe it was his need to let her know he’d be there for her in the morning if she’d just let herself rest, but he didn’t question what he did as he slipped down, bringing her with him.
His lips grazed the spot on her cheek where they’d literally bumped heads that morning. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
Turning her face to him, she whispered, “Why not?”
He’d been about to tell her to go to sleep, that he wasn’t going anywhere. But with her sweet breath filling his lungs, the feel of her supple little body playing pure havoc with his intention, he leaned closer.
“Because you’ll make me forget why I shouldn’t do this,” he murmured, and brushed his mouth over hers.
Once.
Again.
“Or this.” He carried that gentle caress between her eyebrows, to the space where the twin lines formed when she was worried.
He cupped his hand at the side of her face.
“Or this.”
The admission vibrated against her mouth a faint second before he increased the pressure ever so slightly. His lips were firm, cool and far softer than anything that looked so hard had a right to be, but it was the feel of him tipping her head to gain the access he wanted that had her reaching for him herself.
Relief gave way to something infinitely less soothing. It barely occurred to her that this was exactly what she hadn’t wanted when she found herself opening to him, flowing toward him, kissing him back. She’d known what she would feel if she ever got this close to him again. And she’d been right. She felt everything she had when he’d kissed her before: that deep, awful longing, the yearning
to simply sink into his compelling strength, his incredible gentleness, and have him take away the ache in her chest. To relieve the void, the emptiness. Only now with her fingers curling around his biceps and his hand slipping to the small of her back, pulling her closer, the hollowness inside her seemed to be receding, and the emptiness felt more like...need.
When he lifted his head long moments later, his features had gone as dark as his voice. “I think you’d better remind me.”
Her own voice came as a thready whisper. “About what?”
He touched the first of the short line of buttons on her nightshirt. His fingers trailed down, found her soft breasts unrestrained beneath thermal cotton.
His lips hovered over hers. “Why we should stop.”
Surrounded by his heat, that warmth gathering low in her belly, her voice went thin. “I don’t remember.”
She didn’t know what he saw in her shadowed face when he lifted his head. Whatever it was caused his body to go beautifully taut before his hand slipped over her hip.
“Me, either. But if you do,” he warned, the low tones of his voice sounding half serious, half teasing, “stop me.”
She was about to tell him that wasn’t going to happen, but he lowered his mouth to hers just then and she almost forgot to breathe.
There was no demand in his kiss. Just an invitation to a heady exploration that was deep, deliberate and debilitatingly thorough.
Winding her arms around his neck, she kissed him back just a little more urgently. With him, because of him, she finally felt something other than alone and uncertain, or the need to be strong.
She’d been so frightened by her doubts, so afraid that what she’d thought had been real in her marriage hadn’t been at all. If she’d been so wrong about all of it, that meant she couldn’t trust her judgment about anything, or anyone, else. But he’d helped her see that she hadn’t been wrong about what had mattered most. And more important than anything else he’d taught her, he was teaching her to trust in herself.
She could love him for that alone.
The thought had her clinging a little more tightly, kissing him a little more fiercely. It hurt to know how much of herself she’d let others take away from her. But he was taking that pain away, too, allowing parts of her to come back, allowing feelings she hadn’t realized she still possessed to finally surface. For the life of her she had no idea why those thoughts made the back of her eyelids start to burn again. She just knew that at that moment, nothing mattered to her so much as the sense of reprieve she was only now beginning to feel. And the fact that it was he who had finally allowed it.
Erik caught her small moan as she pressed closer. Or maybe the needy little sound had been his own. There wasn’t a cell in his body that wasn’t aware of how beautifully female she was, and of how badly he wanted her beneath him. To him, she was perfect. Small, supple and infinitely softer than his harder, rougher angles and planes.
He would have just held her if that had been what she’d wanted. It would have about killed him, but he’d have done it. Yet, incredibly, she seemed to hunger for the feel of him as much as he ached for her.
Stretched out beside her, he drew his hand over the nightshirt covering her belly, letting it drift upward, pulling soft cotton away with it. He kissed her slowly, tracing her soft curves, allowing himself the sweet torture of finally knowing the silken feel of her body, the honeyed taste of her skin. He didn’t know what to make of the tears he tasted again at the corners of her eyes when he kissed her there, or the almost desperate way she whispered, “No,” when he started to pull back to make sure she was all right. Slipping her fingers through his hair, she drew him back to her, meeting him in a kiss that nearly rocked him to his core.
Gritting his teeth against the need she created, he skimmed the bit of silk she wore down her long legs. It landed somewhere beside the bed, along with his jeans.
He’d left his billfold on her nightstand. Some miracle of common sense made him drag himself from her long enough to fumble for the small packet inside. He’d barely rolled their protection over himself when she curled into him, seeking him as he sought her.
The intimacy of gentle exploration had created its own tormenting heat. What they created as they moved together now, his name a whisper on her lips, had him thinking he’d never be able to get enough of her before that heat turned white-hot and he was barely thinking at all.
Chapter Ten
Rory burrowed deeper under her comforter. A delicious lethargy pulled at her, coaxing her back toward sleep. But she heard voices. Male ones. One sweet, the other deep.
Sleep was suddenly the last thing on her mind.
Tyler was awake. Erik was with him. Through the two-inch-wide gap he’d left between the door and the jamb, she could see the light from Tyler’s bathroom faintly illuminating the hall. The gap in the curtains next to the bed revealed a thin sliver of gray.
It was daylight. That meant it was somewhere after seven-thirty. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept that late.
She threw off the covers. Nearly tripping over her nightshirt, she snatched it up and moved to the door. They were just disappearing down the stairs, Tyler in his pj’s, Erik in his undershirt and jeans. From the conversation, it sounded as though they were discussing breakfast. Specifically, which one of them got to slice the bananas.
Minutes later, thoughts of how she’d practically fallen apart in Erik’s arms adding to the anxiety of wanting to hurry, she’d pulled herself together enough—in the physical sense, anyway—to head into the hall herself.
Slipping a blue corduroy shirt over a cotton turtleneck and yoga pants, she could hear her little guy as she reached the first step.
“Can I help you work today?” he asked. “An’ can you help put my train around the tree?”
The low tones of Erik’s voice drifted up the stairway. “I think all I’m going to do out there this morning is check the gutters. It’s too dangerous for you to help.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a long way up there.”
“How come you need to check ’em?”
“Because I need to see if the weight of the ice pulled them from their brackets.”
“Why?”
She heard a deep, indulgent chuckle. “Because if they’re not lined up right, the rain will pour straight off the roof instead of draining to the downspouts and get you and your mom all wet.”
Her foot hit the bottom step just as she heard a pondered little “Oh.”
Tyler hesitated. “Can we do the train after, then?”
Across the entry, she could see Tyler sitting in front of the lit tree, the blanket she’d covered Erik with last night wrapped around his shoulders. Expectation beamed from his little profile.
Erik sat on the edge of the hearth, his gray undershirt stretched across his broad shoulders as he closed the glass doors on the growing fire.
“I’ll have to see how it goes, but I don’t know that I’ll have time for that, Ty.” He picked a stray bit of bark from the stone beside him, tossed it onto the logs in the curved wood basket. “Now that the rain’s melted the ice, I need to finish here, then get to my own place.”
“You’re going home?”
There was no mistaking her son’s disappointment at that bit of news. She heard it in his small voice, could practically feel it in him as she watched Erik look up at her an instant before Tyler turned and looked up himself.
Shoving her fingers through her hair, partially undoing what she’d managed to arrange with a few random strokes of a brush, she found it infinitely easier to meet Tyler’s sad little face.
“Good morning, sweetie,” she murmured, bending to give him a hug. “How did you sleep?”
“Good,” came his usual, though decidedly disheartened, reply.
She nudged back his hair, wanting to ease away his sudden seriousness. What Erik had done hadn’t been deliberate. There had been nothing but kindness in his voice as he’d explained why he wouldn’t be staying. But the painful proof of how her little boy could come to rely on him, could even come to love him, only added to the confusion of wants and uncertainties tearing at her as she kissed the soft, tousled hair at the crown of his head.
“I’ll help you with your train later, okay?”
“’Kay,” he reluctantly replied.
“So, what’s up down here?” she asked him and, as casually as she could, straightened to meet the caution in Erik’s smile.
He rose himself, all six feet plus of him, and came to a stop in front of her.
His gray gaze skimmed her face. Slowly assessing. Unapologetically intimate. “The plan so far was to turn on the tree, then build a fire.” His eyes held hers. “Then what, Ty?” he asked, since the child hadn’t answered his mom.
“Breakfast,” came the slightly more enthused reply. “And cartoons?” he added hopefully from below them.
“And coffee?” Erik asked with that disarming arch of his eyebrow.
“Definitely coffee,” she agreed.
Grabbing the remote, she punched in the channel she usually only let Tyler watch as a treat. With him on his way to the sofa with his blanket, she headed for the kitchen, Erik’s footfalls behind her matching every heavy thud of her heart.
She pulled the carafe from the coffeemaker, turned to see him watching her from beside the sink.
Holding the carafe under the faucet, she turned the water on.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked, her hushed voice muffled further by the sound of running water.
“Because I was already awake. When I heard him in the bathroom, I figured he’d come looking for you, so I intercepted him before he could. I thought you might not want him to find us in bed together.
Her Holiday Prince Charming Page 18
