But it was as if she understood his pain.
It was as if he understood hers.
They rolled off the carpet, back on. Rolled under the soft yellow pool of a lamp’s glow, then back in the shadows. It was a good thing she’d been living relatively frugally, because there wasn’t much furniture to collide with—still, she would have been more careful with him if he had just let her. For a man who needed no more bruises, he seemed singularly uninterested in anything but greedily sipping up every tactile sensation, every sound, every taste, every cry from her he could earn or cause.
You’d think the guy had just figured out what was worth living for.
She had fears. She had seriously sound fears and worries. But she simply had to give them up. When he loomed over her, her bare legs wrapped tightly around his waist, she could no more have denied him than stopped breathing. There was joy in his eyes. Intense frustration, need sharper than a knife—but joy, too.
That life-shouting zest that only sharing with another could conceivably inspire.…
She took him in. Closed her eyes, lifted her mouth for his, lifted her hips for his and shimmied until he Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
was seated inside her like in a tight, smooth glove. He let out a growl like a lion just freed after years in the zoo. She let out a murmur like a kitten thrilled with her own power.
For an instant they hovered, holding that moment when he was deep inside her and they were meeting each other’s eyes.
And then they flew. Both rocking to the same rhythm, beating to the same music, riding the same emotional mountain crest. Sweat gave a sheen to his skin, gilded hers. A phone rang somewhere. A car backfired. The refrigerator ice maker clattered a new round of ice cubes.
But not in their world. She held on, eyes squeezed tightly shut, feeling release pulse through her like a jolt of sweet, hot electricity. Feeling Fox pulse through her…like a jolt of love so hot, so sweet, that it sucked her in and under to a whole new emotional place.
And then she sank back. As he did. Both tried to remember how to breathe normally again.
Minutes ticked by.
She didn’t fall asleep, she didn’t think, yet it seemed when she opened her eyes, time must have passed, because there was a sweatshirt covering her and Fox was lying on his side, one arm anchoring his head, his other hand drifting through her hair. His eyes had lost that fierce hot intensity and instead simply looked moody dark and fathomless.
“I let the monsters out,” he said.
She glanced up, to note both puppies—with wet feet—had taken the best seat in the house while the humans were still on the floor. More moments passed while she absorbed a huge, crazy feeling of total well-being and simple happiness. It felt right, his being with her. Felt perfect, their making love together—like nothing in her life before.
“Hey, you,” he murmured, and nuzzled a kiss on her temple.
“Hey, you, back,” she whispered.
“Phoebe,” he said soberly, “I didn’t know that could happen.”
“Sex?”
“You’re laughing…but yeah. Sex. I really, really didn’t know if it would happen for me again in this life.”
She sobered, too, then touched his cheek. “What happened to you in the Middle East, Fox?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you do.”
He hesitated. “I lost me. Lost my belief in myself, my judgment, what I valued about myself. As a man.”
“Because of…?”
“It doesn’t matter why.” Again he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “What matters is that I Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
honestly wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to make love again.”
She flushed from the toes up, on the inside. From the core of her heart, she’d wanted to help heal him. “I hate to tell you this, big guy, but you gave me signals more than once that your body parts were interested and functioning just fine.”
“A hard-on is one thing. Following through is another. And feeling—really feeling—is another.” His mind seemed to suddenly change directions, because he went still. “But it’s bugging me, Phoebe. That making love wasn’t exactly…fair.”
She swallowed. “We’re having a few regrets, are we?”
“This is the South, red. My mom didn’t raise any sons to take advantage of women.”
“You didn’t take advantage of me.”
“Yeah, I did.” Mop, as if figuring out the humans were finally, finally returning to real life, scooched over next to his bare hip and resumed the napping position. “I hadn’t had sex in a long time. You went totally to my head. That’s not an excuse. But itis what happened.”
“I invited what happened.”
“You didn’t invite getting involved with a guy whose head is screwed on backward. Who has no life, at least temporarily.”
“I knew you were on a recovery track, Fox. Nothing happened that I wasn’t allowing to happen.”
“That wouldn’t count worth beans with my mama, let me tell you.” He was joking, doing the Southern gentleman thing. But he’d stopped playing with her hair, stopped touching her. Stopped staying in touch with her. “You’ve got a right to more than I offered you, Red…but it’s not that easy for me to come through. At least not yet. I need to think—a ton—before even trying to talk more about this. For tonight…I’m going home.”
“Yes. I assumed you would.” She didn’t freeze inside. She’d never—once—assumed that he’d stay after making love with her. It was just sex they’d had. It wasn’t a relationship. It was what it was, and there was no hurt spiking its way into her heart.
“For the record, though…I’m going to try your recovery program.”
“Good. I think it’s worth trying. It’s all stuff that’s good for you.”
“It may be. You haven’t had a wrong idea about my state of health yet—even if you’ve been aggravating the hell out of me.”
“You’re awfully easy to
