She let him lead her down the hall to the bathroom and as she admired his muscular back and broad shoulders, she relived what had just happened between them. In all her years of being with men, none of them – not in porn or in life – had put her pleasure first, before his own. That gave her pause and she stopped walking. He turned and looked down at her, a frown starting to crease his forehead.
“You OK, baby?”
“Yes. I just –” She shuffled her feet. “I was just wondering, what about you?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Me?”
“Yeah.” She gestured at his jeans, where the outline of his hard cock was clearly defined. “I mean, what about… you?”
“Ahhh.” He smiled, ran his rough fingers through her hair. “I’m gonna wait.”
“You – what?”
“Wait.”
She blinked. “Because…”
“One, ‘cause I ain’t got any condoms and I always play safe until I’m with someone for a good long while. Two, ‘cause I wanted tonight to be about you. Three, ’cause I ain’t interested in rushin’ anythin’ with you, and I think full-on sex between us is still a bit fast so even if I had condoms, I wouldn’t use ‘em. I want the timin’ to be right. And also…” He hesitated. “I want you to see my leg for the first time when you’re all clear-eyed, not in a moment of passion. Is that – is that all OK with you?”
“It is,” she said quietly. “That’s all OK with me.”
“Good.” Keegan nodded at the bathroom door, flicked the light on. “Everythin’ that you need is in here, OK? I’m gonna go clean up the kitchen, make some tea, check on the cake. You take your time and come on out when you’re ready.”
“Keegan?”
“Yeah?”
She smiled up at him and it was that amazing smile that lit up her whole face, the one that made his heart squeeze. “Thank you. For everything. I’m having a wonderful time tonight.”
He winked at her. “Ditto, baby. Believe me.”
**
“So if I set the alarm for six, that’s OK, right?” Keegan asked. “I can make you a coffee before you head back home to get breakfast ready for Meredith.”
Trish nodded, her head resting against Keegan’s broad chest, her fingers tracing the tattoos on his arms. “You don’t mind getting up early?”
“Baby.” He pulled her tousled blonde head up to his lips, dropped a tiny kiss on her head. “I’m up at four o’clock three or four days a week, workin’ at the bakery. Sleepin’ until six sounds like bliss to me.”
“Then I’d love for you to make me a coffee.”
“And you want some more honey cake too?”
Trish laughed. An hour earlier, her body all loose and relaxed after that mind-blowing orgasm that made her forget her own damn name, she’d gotten out of the shower and put on one of Keegan’s long t-shirts. Then like she was in a dream, she’d wandered down to the kitchen and found a steaming cup of green tea and two slices of cake waiting for her. She’d devoured them and asked for a third. Keegan had watched her demolish her sweet treat, looked delighted that she was enjoying it.
“You look hungry, darlin’,” he’d commented, sipping some coffee. “One more?”
“Maybe half,” she’d said. “And I’m hungry because I worked up an appetite.”
“You did, huh?” He’d sliced a piece, broken it in half. “How’d you do that?”
“Oh, you know. Baking. Talking. Being honest.” Trish had paused. “Having an incredible orgasm on your kitchen floor while covered in honey.”
“Yep,” Keegan had said in a deadpan voice. “Bakin’ will make you hungry, every time.”
She’d giggled and swatted at him a bit. Keegan had caught her hand, kissed it and she’d smiled at him. As soon as she’d finished eating, he’d taken her hand and led her down the hallway again, to his bedroom this time. They’d settled into bed together, just chatting and kissing until they’d both started yawning, and Keegan now stood up and stared down at her with a strange look on his face.
Trish rolled onto her side, propped her head up in her hand. “What’s up?”
“I need to take my prosthesis off now,” he said quietly. “I can’t sleep with it on.”
“Oh!” she said. “Should I – do you want me to look away until you’re under the covers?”
“I don’t want you to,” he said, holding her eyes. “But if you feel like that’s what you need to do, then you do it, baby. I promise that I understand and I won’t be offended.”
She paused. “You should be.”
“I should be what?”
“Offended.”
“I – what?”
“I’d be offended, if someone let me go down on them in the kitchen and then barely an hour later, they rejected my body as somehow not good enough,” Trish said crisply. “Last time I checked, people we claim to like and their bodies are package deals.”
“Uhhhh.” Keegan stared at her, stunned at just how much more gorgeous the woman was when she was being fierce. “That’s true.”
“So.” She stared right on back at him, not dropping her gaze even slightly. “I knew the deal when I accepted our first date. I still knew it when I accepted our second date. And I sure as hell knew it when I kissed you in the bar, threw myself shamelessly at you in your truck, accepted your invitation to come to your home – and let you take my jeans off tonight. If I couldn’t handle you missing your left leg, then I had no goddamn business doing any of that.” She smiled at his stupefied expression, marveling how adorably cute this alpha male looked when he was taken by surprise. “Do what you need to do to get comfortable, honey cake.”
Without another word, without any hesitation now, Keegan unbuckled his belt, unzipped his jeans. Very interested at what was being unwrapped right in front of her eyes, Trish sat up: no goddamn way she was going to miss one second or one inch of this experience. She wanted to fully enjoy the first time that she saw Keegan Sinclair remove even a single article of clothing in her presence. She didn’t give a good goddamn if that meant watching him take off his socks – she was there for all of it.
Off came the jeans and t-shirt and they were carefully folded and laid across a chair in the corner. Trish had noticed the neatness and organization of his home earlier, and she supposed that all that military training might well have something to do with it. Or maybe the man was just a neat freak; she wondered what the café kitchen and storeroom looked like and she instinctively knew that they were perfectly clean and meticulously arranged.
This was a man who never lowered his standards, never let himself slack off or sloth around. Keegan was a man with a steel core of discipline and she resolved to look to him as an inspiration, to set higher standards for herself.
His body alone was a testament to his iron will: it was fit, toned, taut. The man clearly worked out and ate right, and Trish eyed the dark ink and grooves of muscle that went from his broad shoulders down to his defined pecs, over his sleek abs and down into the waistband of his boxer shorts. She swallowed as he moved towards her, all grace and power in that huge body, like a predator casually wandering around a civilized cocktail party. That body was dangerous – dangerous for all kinds of reasons and in all kinds of ways – and Trish knew that his body could snap her in half with barely any effort.
She also knew that it could drive her wild with no effort at all.
She watched with curiosity as he sat down on the bed next to her; she looked at his left leg. He had a bulging, smooth, muscular thigh for several inches, which then became plastic and metal and a bandage of some kind.
“OK, so,” he said, resting his fingers on what looked like a tenser bandage. “This is what’s called the liner. It’s holdin’ the prosthesis to my leg. It’s pretty tight for that reason, but it’s super-comfortable.”
She nodded and watched as he slipped the liner off his lower thigh, slid it down his knee and let it fall loose at the top of the prosthesis.
“Now that all the
tension of the elastic liner has been removed, I can step off and right out of the prosthesis, expose the stump.”
“That easy?” she asked, a bit stunned. “Just – just step off it like it’s a platform?”
“Yep.” Keegan lifted his left thigh and sure enough, he was totally free. He rested the prosthetic leg against the bed mattress, then pointed at what looked like a dark beige bandage on the end of what he called his stump. “This is the sock. Under it is another liner, a thinner and smaller one. The big liner is all about holdin’ my prosthesis in place, the second one is more for comfort. It rests right against my flesh and it’s about keepin’ my skin protected as much as it can be.”
“Does it hurt?” she asked him hesitantly. “I mean – the plastic must rub on your skin, right?”
“It can hurt and rub,” he said as he rolled the sock off the end of his leg, then started to move the second liner down “More in the beginnin’ ‘cause it’s hit and miss for a while when you first start tryin’ these things on, but now I’ve got a prosthesis that fits me perfectly and I can keep my balance pretty good, so I don’t lean so hard on it. These things take time, you know, and now it’s more a part of me than not. Some days I feel it’s somethin’ a bit alien, mostly when I’m on my feet bakin’ and servin’ customers for sixteen hours, but besides that, pain doesn’t happen anymore.”
Trish nodded again, more and more amazed and impressed at the human body’s ability to adapt, to cope, to toughen up. She knew damn good and well that people changed emotionally as required to survive, but she’d never fully understood how physical bodies did that. How animals and insects had literally changed skeletal structures, coloring, size, even gender to thrive in a hostile world.
It seemed that the ability to survive was ingrained and entrenched in nature – and that it was limitless.
“So when I take this smaller liner off, it’s nothin’ but skin and scars.” Keegan started to tug the material down and off, then paused to look at her, gauge her body language and facial expression. “You good with that, darlin’?”
“I am.”
Keegan gazed at the woman sitting next to him on his bed wearing his oversized t-shirt. She was the epitome of tiny in body but mighty in spirit, and he’d learned by now to believe what she told him. Trish said what she thought, what she felt – she was a person who spoke the truth.
If she said that she was ready, then she was. Simple as that.
Slowly, making sure that she knew what was coming, Keegan slid the liner off his flesh… then he just waited as those amazing eyes took in his stump and turned a calm, sweet blue. His stomach tightened and then relaxed as she gave him a smile, though not one of her ‘light up her whole damn face’ ones. This one was still beautiful, still shining – but it was also wise and understanding and compassionate.
It was the smile given by someone who’d been through her own personal hell and come out the other side with her own scars, her own damage. No, Trish’s shit wasn’t visible like his was: she didn’t wear her hurts on her body or in the dark wide gaps of missing things. Hers were quieter and hidden away and easy enough to cover up and distract from with a curvy little body and an angel’s face, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t there.
“Is it – are you OK?” he asked her, his voice raspy with concern and maybe a bit of fear. Fear that now that she’d taken a long, hard look at what was actually under his clothes and the liners and the plastic, she was going to leap to her feet and haul ass out of there, just flee into the freezing autumn night and never be seen again. “I mean – is it grossin’ you out?”
She glanced up at him sharply. “What?”
“You know.” He swallowed hard. “It’s – well. Like I said when I first told you about this, it’s ugly. It ain’t somethin’ that anyone can spend time enjoyin’ lookin’ at, right?”
Still holding his gaze, her eyes narrowed. “You did not just say that to me.”
“Huh?” He looked seriously discomfited. “You mad?”
“Hell, yeah, I’m mad.” She tossed that golden hair back and Keegan longed to grab handfuls of it and pull her roughly to his greedy mouth, but he was too enthralled by her warrior queen vibe at the moment. “Stop trying to tell me how ugly or pathetic or whatever you are, because believe me when I say that you’re not any of those things, not even a little bit. I don’t want to listen to you spout that shit, no matter how damn good you look with your shirt off, sitting there all muscular and tattooed and hot.”
Astonished, Keegan blinked at her but didn’t dare to speak: the woman clearly had stuff on her mind and it seemed prudent to just let her get it out.
“Now.” She huffed a breath at him and he hid a smile at fierce adorableness. “Remember when you told me that women think you can’t be sexy because you’re missing a leg? They think that you can’t satisfy them in bed?”
“Yeah.”
Trish leaned forward, holding his gaze. “Goddamn idiots. Every last one of them.” She leaned back again.
Startled, delighted, touched beyond measure or belief, Keegan laughed. “Gotcha, baby.”
“You had me a begging, writhing mess on your kitchen floor,” Trish continued. “And frankly, I’m barely holding myself back from attacking you here and now because I love how it feels to be held against you. You’re strong and huge and… well. Amazing. It feels amazing to be close to you and I want more of that.”
“Why hold back? I ain’t gonna fight you off if you wanna kiss me.”
“Because.” Her face and voice both turned serious. “There’s something else that I want to do first.”
“Shoot.”
“I – ” She hesitated now, all her fire gone. “I wanted –”
“What baby?” Keegan smoothed her hair over her shoulders, his touch lingering on her cheeks, throat, lips. “What do you want?”
She wrestled with herself, clearly not sure how to say what was running through that sharp, bright mind of hers. Finally and in a tiny voice, Trish said:
“Can I touch you?”
“Hell yeah, darlin’.” Keegan was amused. “Touch me anytime you want.”
“No. I mean –” Those astonishing eyes flicked down to his scarred flesh, gazed at it. “Can I touch you?”
“You mean that you want to –” Keegan cleared his throat. “You want to touch my stump?”
“Yes.”
“Trish,” he began, then didn’t know what to say next. “You don’t have to…”
“I know that I don’t have to.” She rested her hands lightly on his thighs but didn’t move them. She tipped her head back and held his eyes, searching his face with an anxious frown. “I’m saying that I’d like to, and I’m asking if I can.”
Keegan just stared at her, his throat and chest getting tighter with every passing second. Never, not once, not ever had a woman asked what Trish had just asked him. Hell, he was lucky if they wanted to even lay eyes on him after they’d heard what was missing under his clothes.
The hard, harsh truth was that Keegan had been with one woman since he’d lost his leg four years earlier. There had been one woman about two years ago, and she’d made it clear that she’d seen having sex with him as some kind of obligation or sacrifice. Maybe even her patriotic duty somehow, to fuck a former soldier who’d come home from war damaged and destroyed.
From beginning to end with her, Keegan had felt like nothing but a charity case, or like she was throwing him a pity fuck once in a while. Just gritting her teeth and shutting her eyes and enduring the whole thing.
She hadn’t enjoyed it and he sure as hell hadn’t. He’d ended it after the third time, after he’d finally faced the truth that she didn’t find him sexy or attractive, that she’d shied away from even looking at his scarred flesh. He felt ugly around her all the time, and he realized that he just didn’t need that with someone that he was getting naked with.
Keegan decided then that he was better alone than with someone who took away his humanity. If a w
oman made him feel like apologizing for what he looked like, then he was out of there.
And so he’d pretty much been ‘out of there’ constantly for years.
Now, though? Now he had a gorgeous little thing asking to touch him in a place that nobody ever had except medical professionals.
He was going to trust Trish. Really, really trust her.
He hadn’t trusted a woman in a long time; maybe he’d never fully and completely trusted one before this very moment.
Well. No time like the present.
Keegan nodded at her, since speaking was impossible around the lump of terror in his throat. Trish nodded back, then dropped her eyes to his left leg once more.
So impossibly gently, she ran her fingers down his leg, ran them over the rounded end of the stump. She skimmed his scars, her touch as light and soft as a butterfly, followed the curve of flesh and bone. Her touch was healing and giving and generous, and Keegan could have sworn that he felt her compassion for him just pouring out through her fingertips. She was accepting him in ways and to depths that Keegan hadn’t dared let himself hope for – and now that it was happening, he knew that this was what he’d ached for all along.
God, the gift that she’d just given him. He wondered if she’d ever really, truly understand what she’d just done. The hurt that she’d just healed, the anger that she’d just calmed, the fear that she’d just soothed.
All with a whisper-soft butterfly touch.
“OK, Trish?”
“You’re so gorgeous, babe,” she said quietly. “So much.”
Stunned at her words, Keegan just stared at her. He didn’t doubt for one millisecond that she believed what she’d just said – the thing was, he didn’t know if he’d be able to believe it.
Then she lifted her eyes back to his and he saw her. Saw her in all her clear, shining honesty, saw her speaking an undeniable and unshakeable home truth. She thought that he was gorgeous. The end. Full stop.
Keegan opened his mouth and what came out was:
“Are you free next weekend?”
Keegan (Wounded Hero Book 1) Page 18