She pushed him so he was on his back, surrounded by a curtain of her hair as she leaned over him. She climbed astride, smiling and humming a song he had heard her hum before. He’d commit that song to memory so he could replay it during every low, lonely moment of his life when she was gone.
Because she would go.
She hadn’t been kidding when she had said this thing with him and her was temporary insanity on her part. He could have told her that himself. There was no reason for her to want him the way she did other than error in judgment. He was dead inside, scarred all over, damaged to the core. The terrorists hadn’t just taken chunks of his body—they had murdered his soul.
She’d wake up and realize the dangerous game she had played—how close she had danced to the fire.
But for now, he was beneath a beautiful woman and she was undulating on top of him, allowing her breasts to stroke his cheeks. The world was beautiful from this vantage point.
“Why so serious?” she whispered, then she lowered herself onto his extremely-ready erection.
He answered with his thrusts.
She threw her head back. He reached up to cup her breasts in his hands, rubbing her nipples in slow, sensuous circles.
She responded with a quicker pace meant to drive him mad.
It worked.
Her muscles tightened around him at the precise moment that he lost his mind to her.
Slick with sweat—shit, he had forgotten to turn the heat down, and this was an aerobic workout if he had ever had one—she collapsed on top of him.
Her hair tickled his face. He rubbed her back, swirling his fingers in her sweat and fervently wishing he could be the man she needed. The man she deserved.
“Sorry about… everything.” He surprised himself with his low, whispered words. He wasn’t one to apologize. But he also wasn’t one to feel so strongly for another human.
“Already forgiven.”
She shifted her body to the side, leaving one leg draped across him. He massaged her thigh, admiring her soft skin and hard muscles. Legs of a dancer, which made sense since she was constantly dancing around this dreary world.
“I want to know about you.” Would the surprises ever cease? Even in his charming days, he didn’t remember ever asking a girl about herself. Granted, he had been a selfish teenager when he went into the service, but he thought he’d had a way with the women.
Idiot.
“You know about me.” She kissed his shoulder before working her way up to nibble on his ear.
“Have you ever been in love?” He held his breath, wishing for a way to turn back time and pull those ridiculous words back in.
She laughed. “Oh, dozens of times.”
He stiffened.
“But it was never real. I know that now.”
He wondered how she knew. What comet of knowledge had struck to teach her such a thing.
“I’ve always loved relationships. The whirly way we fall in love. The passion of learning about a new person—of experiencing their emotions.” She stroked his chest. “Of being part of their world. But it never goes well, and it never lasts. Because it’s never been real.”
He wanted her to say, “Until now.” She didn’t.
“Besides, my track record with men isn’t very good.”
“How so?”
“Oh, you know. The usual. Starts out great—romance, dinners on the beach, serenades by guitar.”
He hated, hated these guys. He hated that any man had ever romanced her. He hated that he never had.
“And then I always mess it up. I do something to make them angry. I push them until they do something that makes them hate themselves. The first time a man hits you is something you never forget. The look of surprise on their faces. It’s always the same. And I’m always to blame.”
His body stiffened to the point he thought he’d shatter in a million pieces.
“Men have hit you?” His words were measured, calm. Deadly. He’d find these men.
“I wasn’t abused or anything. Trust me, I could handle myself around these guys—they weren’t strong like you. Trust me, too, when I tell you that they always felt bad. It’s always been the finale of the relationship—they couldn’t look at me after they hit me. Well, one guy tried to keep me after, but I can’t exactly stay with someone when my personality makes them want to hit me, right?”
Her voice held no hint of pain or remorse. Matter-of-fact, as if she had shared something about a book she had read.
He turned on his side, hovering over her, holding her cheek in his hand. His hand that would never, ever hurt her. Or any woman. What the hell kind of weasel would hit a woman?
“There is nothing you could do that would make someone hurt you. A man who hits a woman is not a man.”
“Oh, believe me. I didn’t deserve it, I know that. But I made it happen. For sure.”
“No.” He swallowed past a lump in his throat. “You can’t make someone else lose control. That’s their issue. Not yours. Anyone can control their fists.”
“I think I used it as a technique for moving along. I tend to fall out of love as easily as I fall in. I get restless. I can be pretty intense. I push people, Ethan. You know that.”
“Yes, you push. Because you care. Because you empathize. But I’ve never, ever wanted to hit you. Nothing you say or do would ever make me want to hurt you that way.”
She pulled him over for a deep kiss full of longing and acceptance. A healing kiss. He didn’t open his eyes when she pulled away.
“Tell me your story, Ethan. I’ve been waiting.” She plopped back on the bed, nuzzling into her pillow and staring up at him.
He realized as he watched her chest rise and fall with every breath that he wanted her around. He didn’t want her to push him away. He’d never, ever hit her—that was the work of a weak, more-pathetic-than-even-him man—but he didn’t want her to fall in and out of love with him.
Just in.
Jesus Christ. When had that mystical thing called love entered the picture?
Fuck.
“Talk to me. Please.”
He fell back to his pillow, exhaling before allowing his brain to revisit the past.
He had sworn he’d never speak of it. He’d never give power to the thugs who captured him. The terrorists who stripped him of his pride, his skin, and his humanity.
The monsters who turned him into a beast.
“Why are you so angry with your family?”
Her words, gentle and calm, had him picturing family barbecues and portraits. Vacations and love. Family was different to him. It was traitors and neglect. Back stabbing and power trips.
Apathy.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes.” She propped herself up on her elbow. “I do.”
After the hell he had put her through since first meeting her, he owed her this one thing.
All she asked from him was his story.
How hard could it be to open up to her? Maybe she’d run. Maybe once her curiosity was satisfied, she’d be done with him. Maybe that would be for the best. He could return to his quiet, undisturbed life in his personal cave.
“Stop me when you get bored.” He pulled her into his embrace and kissed the top of her head. If he had to relive the horror, she had to be attached to his side.
“I’ll never get bored with you.” She kissed his chin. “You’re far too interesting.”
He took a deep breath, still unable to grasp the fact that this woman found him interesting.
“Okay, how’s this for interesting. I was born in Healing Springs in—”
She playfully swatted at his chest. “Not that story, though I do want to hear all of that, too. Start in the middle of the action.”
The smile in her voice made him smile.
An unfamiliar feeling for his cheeks.
He could do this. He had to do this. For her.
“Haven’t you heard this around town already? Or online? It was all pretty pu
blic.”
“I haven’t heard a thing, other than the basics of you being a POW. I refused to listen to anyone’s account—I wanted you to tell me when you wanted me to know.”
The torturers may not have made his heart quit, but her sweetness might actually make the damn thing burst into a million pieces in his chest.
That would teach her…
“You’re too good for your own good,” he murmured, inhaling the jasmine scent of her hair.
“Quit the flattery and get to the action, mister!”
So he did.
He gave a summary of his childhood—his overbearing father who was only around to dictate, his weak mother who drowned her worries in valium and Vodka, the expectation that he would follow his father’s footsteps in the family business. The impulsive decision to really piss off his father by joining the military right out of high school rather than majoring in business at his father’s Ivy League alma mater. The disowning that followed.
“And to think, people actually worship money.” She sighed.
“Yeah. They wouldn’t if they had it.”
“Glad I’ve never had it.” She shuddered against him.
“Now we get to the good part.” He paused. He could do this. He had never spoken of what happened (aside from the military debriefing), but he had to. For her. For himself.
Deep breath.
“Being wealthy and cocky didn’t offer as much protection as I would have thought when it came to military service.”
He went on to detail the event—the attack that killed his entire unit, the horror when he awoke from his unconscious state to find that he had been taken by the insurgents. Chained to a wall.
“Turns out the guys over there aren’t fans of cocky ‘pretty boys.’ My face was the first thing they cut up.”
Simplicity tightened her grip on him, and he found the sensation oddly comforting, considering he had avoided human contact since his return.
“They thought I had military intelligence to share. Tried to assure them that I had no intelligence, and they could ask my father if they doubted me. Being a smart ass earned me this.” He pointed to a long scar across his ribs. “Telling them they didn’t do it right earned me this.” The other side.
“You’re so brave, Ethan.”
He laughed, derision burning his esophagus.
“Brave isn’t the word I’d use. Stupid? Now that’s a more apt description.”
Warm drops of moisture fell on his shoulder.
He lifted her chin with a finger.
“Don’t cry for me, Simplicity. I made it home. A lot of people don’t.”
She sniffed and closed her eyes, seemingly trying to calm herself.
“I just hate that you had to go through all of that. Did you ever wish you had died with your unit?”
“Hell yeah. But never as much as when they told me they had tried to ransom me and the offer was turned down.”
Ah, cut to the heart.
“I mean, I had known my father had issues with me. But to leave me in a cave getting tortured daily when he’s sitting on billions? I wasn’t even worth a measly twenty million to him?”
“That’s awful, Ethan. Truly awful.”
“Yeah. It sucked. But what can you do? The man loves his money.”
“How did you get out?”
He had to struggle to hear her question—her voice had disappeared.
“About six months in, the guards stopped paying such close attention. Probably figured since I was no more than a bag of malnourished bones and full of festering wounds, I wouldn’t be any trouble. Figured if I stood any chance of surviving this thing, I’d have to take the opportunity to escape. I got away, but as I was preparing to collapse behind an abandoned building, I tripped on a young girl who had been hurt. I don’t know if she had been shot or hit by shrapnel, but her leg was bleeding and she couldn’t walk. Now in case you decide the next part makes me somehow heroic, let me clarify that the only reason I carried her to safety was because she looked up at me with those big, brown, puppy dog eyes and didn’t say a word. She looked at me like we were in the same boat. I guess we were. So I lifted her up and she pointed the way to her mother. They lived in the worst sort of poverty, yet they took me in. I gave basic first aid to the girl, and the mother hid me away for four or five days.”
He gulped, not sure he could go on.
This was the worst part.
Simplicity wrapped her arm around his waist and held on tight, which was good since the temptation to get up and run to his workout room was overwhelming.
“Anyway, the assholes found me and took me back. Released a video. A SEAL team rescued me the next day, no thanks to the man formerly known as my father.”
“What happened to the girl?” Simplicity croaked.
“She was killed. Her mother was killed.”
“Oh my goddess.”
“Yeah. It sucked.”
“Ethan, I don’t know how—”
“Please don’t pity me. I couldn’t handle that from you.”
“I have not an ounce of pity for you, Ethan.” She propped herself up again and studied his face. “I’m marveling at your strength. How do you go on after all that happened to and around you?”
“I live to torment my father with my very existence.”
She gasped, but he couldn’t hide the truth from her. The truth of the monster he was. The monster he would always be.
“That’s why you stayed in Healing Springs even though you hate it here.”
“Yup. You’ve got it. That’s the only reason I ever leave my house—because I want to be a constant thorn in his side. It burns him up to know that his kid is both pitied and shunned. Imagine a Witherford being pitied?” He laughed again, but not from merriment. “It’s too good of an opportunity to pass up. He offered to buy me a nice mansion somewhere, but that simply translated to, ‘Let me ship you off to a remote, exotic land while assuaging my guilt for being a fuck up of a father.’ So I bought this little place with some of my trust fund that my grandfather left me, and I live like a pauper just to piss him off.”
“Can I ask one question?”
“Of course you can. My story is all yours now.”
“Were they—the mom and girl—did you see them killed?”
Her voice caught on her words, prompting him to rub her neck.
“Sure did. They made certain of it. Actually, they planned to make me watch their rape and torture, but the mother managed to get a hold of a gun and shot her daughter and herself. I only wish she had shot me, too.”
Simplicity said nothing, but her body shook and tears streamed over her reddened cheeks.
“How do you…cope?”
“You asked for one question.” He kissed her forehead, wiping away her tears with his free hand. “Don’t go pushing your luck.”
He purposefully kept his tone jovial—so jovial, in fact, that he didn’t recognize his own voice.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He kissed her swollen lips, hungry to drown himself in her. He pulled away before he lost himself, punctuating the kiss sentence with a peck on her nose. “I cope by keeping busy. Loud music, a punishing workout, and flowers.”
“Flowers?”
She perked up then. How did he know she’d love to hear this little revelation?
It occurred to him that not only had he told her his horror story, but he had also let her in on something no one else knew of him.
“Come with me.”
Ethan hoisted himself off the bed, forgoing his clothes. If she wanted to walk around naked, he might as well join her. Hell, he couldn’t get more naked than he had become via his storytelling. He had bared it all—and she had a full subscription to all of his scars.
“Where are we going?”
Her long hair bounced in waves over her shoulders before settling over the round top of her breasts.
“It’s a surprise.”
“Do we need to get dressed?”
“Nah. The roads are closed. Blizzard is still in full effect. Besides, you know I don’t go anywhere if I can help it.”
“True.” She brightened the room with her smile, since the clouds had dimmed the sunlight.
She wrapped both of her arms around one of his as he led them down the hall, through an unused bedroom, and into his greenhouse.
“Oh. My. Goddess. How did I not know you had this place?”
She let go of him as she twirled down one row of the vast greenhouse he had built onto the side of his house. The thing was almost as big as the house, and was hidden from view of the street. It was his own secret paradise, and he had never wanted to share it with anyone before. He had struggled with allowing himself to have something that could bring him pleasure, but if he didn’t have something to get him out of his head from time to time, he’d have gone on a psychotic rampage a long time ago.
Though he had believed this greenhouse was the most beautiful place in the world, Simplicity made it more beautiful.
“Who takes care of this?” She held her arms out, reveling in the warmth.
“Me.”
“You?”
The disbelief in her voice made him laugh.
“And did you just laugh? Like, an honest-to-goodness laugh?”
He captured her by the waist as she ran toward him.
“I guess I did.”
“Whoa. I think I died in that blizzard last night.”
His momentary flirtation with happiness fled at the thought of her dying.
“Where did that smile go?” she asked, stroking his cheeks in an attempt to elicit a response.
He kissed her.
“How is it so warm in here?”
“I have heat pumped in for when the sun doesn’t do the job. Keeps the snow from mounting on the glass, too, so the whole thing doesn’t cave in.”
“Ooh, smart. Can I look around?”
“Of course.”
He released her and watched as his wildflower met his carefully cultivated garden.
He was tempted to rip every flower out by its roots and plant wildflower seeds instead. Daisies and dandelions and cosmos. In honor of Simplicity.
“They are so beautiful. And the smell in here—” she inhaled with great enthusiasm. “Absolutely heavenly. Can I live in here? Seriously. I’ll even get a job and pay rent!”
Loving a Wildflower Page 11
