There was no denying it. Her family was here. All the animals she’d cared for every day and come to love—and the man, with his raven hair and soulful eyes. She belonged here, not in that awful little house down on Ponderosa Lane.
“Chloe?”
She jerked her head up and wiped her wet cheeks. She’d tried so hard to stand on her own two feet. Now, here she was, on her knees in Ben’s entryway, sobbing her heart out with her arms around his dog.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Damn it, don’t say you’re sorry.” He crouched beside her. After studying her face for a moment, he smiled slightly and brushed at her cheek. “Diablo is a generous soul. He’ll share his coat with anyone.”
Chloe scrubbed a trembling hand over her mouth and sniffed. “He can share it with me any time he wants.” Tears sprang to her eyes again, which made her impatient with herself. “Someone opened the floodgates. I’m not usually a sniveler.”
“Sweetheart, you’re not being a sniveler now. You’ve had a hell of a night.”
“It’s just—” She shuddered. “I keep flashing back. You know? I couldn’t get the wire thing off the champagne bottle. I pushed and pushed. It was all I had as a weapon, and for what seemed like an eternity, I stood there, shoving on it, listening to him go on about the things he wanted to do. It was—” A knot formed in her throat, and she couldn’t say more, so she settled for shaking her head.
Ben sighed and curled a big hand over the back of her neck. “Come here,” he urged.
At the back of her mind, Chloe knew it was irrational to so deeply yearn for his touch, but at that moment, what dimly made sense and what was clamoring at the forefront of her mind were in direct opposition, and the clamoring won out. She leaned forward, letting him gather her close. His arms curled around her, strong yet gentle. As always, the instant he touched her, a tingle of warmth moved through her.
“You know what you need?”
“No, what?” she whispered against his shirt.
“A huddle cuddle.”
“A what?”
“It’s my mom’s phrase. When I was a kid and bad things happened, she’d hold me on her lap in the rocker, and we’d just talk. A huddle cuddle.”
Before Chloe could anticipate what he meant to do, he scooped her up into his arms as if she weighed no more than a child. “As for what’s wrong with you, Chloe, he might have killed you and Jeremy, as well. I think you’ve held yourself together amazingly well, considering.”
She loved his strength—the wonderful dizziness that came over her as he walked with her in his arms to the living room. When he sat on the sofa with her cradled on his lap, she liked that, too. Hugging his neck, she pressed her nose to his throat and took deep breaths like a junkie sniffing glue.
At the back of her mind, she wondered if she was losing it. She’d come very close to being raped, one of the most horrible experiences a woman could endure, and she’d escaped by the skin of her teeth. She should be recoiling from Ben’s touch right now and needing her space. Only this was what she wanted, to be with him—heart to heart, flesh to flesh, with his hardness and heat forming a shield of safety all around her. Maybe it was weak of her, but for now, the stores of strength that had seen her through so many difficult times seemed to have drained out of her.
His touch was completely asexual, the kneading motion of his hand on her arm, shoulder, and side searching out all the knotted muscles and melting away the tension. Soon Chloe felt like a puddle of warm gelatin smeared over his broad chest. She closed her eyes.
“You have magic in your hands,” she whispered. “Little wonder the animals love you so.”
She felt his lips graze her hair. “Yeah,” he said huskily. “Magic in my hands. But that’s a subject for another day. For tonight, I think we need to concentrate on you and how you’re feeling.”
Right then, Chloe felt as if she had no bones. She nuzzled her nose against his collar. She’d cared deeply for Roger, and in many ways, she would always love the memory of him. But her feelings for him had never run this deep. Or been so completely consuming.
“I love you, Ben.”
He was silent for a moment. Then in a low whisper, he said, “You love your idea of me. You may feel differently when you learn who I really am. There are things I haven’t told you, remember. Maybe it’d be better if you keep those feelings on ice for a while until we can talk.”
“It won’t matter.” As Chloe said those words, she knew they were absolutely true. She’d learned some invaluable life lessons tonight. “You can know a great deal about someone, Ben, and discover you really know nothing. And you can think you know nothing, only to realize you actually know everything.” She pressed even closer against him. “I know everything about you that I need to know. Everything. You’re the most wonderful man I’ve ever known. That’s all that counts. When I realized it was you on the other side of the door tonight, I knew it would be okay, that nothing could happen to us because you were there.”
His arms tightened around her. “Ah, Chloe.”
“It’s true. I’m sorry I got so nasty about all the little stuff. I don’t know why it seemed so important to me. Details, only details. If you never tell me what you do for a living, I don’t care. It doesn’t seem important to me anymore.”
He ducked his chin to smile at her. His dark face shone like burnished oak in the dim lamplight. “Thank you. That’s one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me, and I know that at this moment, you mean it from the bottom of your heart. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that you may feel differently tomorrow.”
When she started to speak, he touched a blunt fingertip to her mouth.
“We have to talk. Not tonight, but soon. Even if you don’t need to hear it, there are things I need to say.” His deep blue eyes went cloudy with tenderness. “It helps knowing that there’s a good chance you’ll love me anyway, no matter what I tell you. I’ll hold that thought close.”
“If you’re worried about it, just tell me now.”
He kissed her eyes closed. “I think you’ve had enough dumped on you in one night. It’ll keep until you get your feet back under you.”
Chloe sighed. “He’s sick, Ben. He told me tonight that he likes to inflict pain during sex.”
He ran a hand slowly up her arm. “There’s a lot of sickness in our world, Chloe. We see it every day on the news. It just strikes a lot closer to home when it’s someone you actually know.”
“I can’t get the things he said out of my head. I was afraid—so afraid—that he’d do all those things to me, and that afterwards, he’d kill my Jeremy. It was like a horrible dream, only I couldn’t wake up.”
When Ben said nothing, Chloe continued to talk. She wasn’t sure where the words came from. They simply spilled from her, disjointed, sometimes making no sense, but like with her tears earlier, she couldn’t seem to hold them back. As she talked, she became vaguely aware that she was occasionally dropping Roger’s name into the mix and recounting offenses that he had committed against her during the last few months of their marriage.
When she finally fell silent, Chloe couldn’t recall exactly what had prompted her to begin—or why she’d stopped. She only knew the pressure inside her had been released—as if Ben had pricked an abscess within her and all the poison had drained out.
Boneless, drifting, she lay in his arms, disconnected from reality, feeling at peace. Sleep stole over her in insidious waves of blackness. Her last conscious thought was that she and Jeremy were absolutely safe. Bobby Lee couldn’t get them now, not with Ben and Diablo standing guard.
Chapter Twenty-one
Ben carried Chloe to a bedroom that was adjoined to the master suite by a large bathroom. Ever the optimist, he’d originally designed the room to be a nursery, just in case he was ever lucky enough to marry and have a child. Tonight it would serve as a room for Chloe, separated enough from his to give her privacy, but close enough to hear he
r if she needed him during the night.
After laying her on the daybed, Ben drew a coverlet over her and sat on the mattress to study her sweet face. In the moon-kissed shadows, she was incredibly lovely, her skin glowing like alabaster, her dark lashes forming crescents on her cheeks, her hair spread like a fan over the pillow.
With the back of a knuckle, he traced the delicate hollow of her cheek, loving her as he’d never loved anyone. Tonight, when she’d pressed so trustingly against him, he’d yearned to make love to her, the devil take tomorrow. But as much as he’d wished for that, he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of seeing regret in her eyes in the morning.
She was right; he’d erected a wall of evasion between them. As soon as she had recovered from the trauma of this evening, he meant to tear it down, secret by secret, until there was nothing left between them but absolute honesty. Afterwards, if she still wanted him, there would be time enough for lovemaking.
He could wait. All things worth having were worth waiting for, and Chloe was infinitely more precious to him than anything else ever had been.
Sighing, Ben stood and left the room. He kept the connecting doors open, glad of the fact that he’d always been a light sleeper. If she so much as stirred, he’d know it. Moving out into the hallway, he cut around to the foyer and set the alarm, just in case a certain deputy decided to pay them a predawn visit.
After stripping down to his boxers, which he left on in case of emergency, he slipped into bed. For a long while, he stared blankly at the ceiling, unable to drift off. Anger roiled within him. He’d managed to hold it at bay in front of Chloe, but now that he was alone, the emotion built pressure in his chest like a volcano.
He imagined himself standing toe-to-toe with Bobby Lee Schuck and delivering blows to the bastard’s face. He abhorred violence but felt driven to it now. He wanted to pound Bobby Lee into the dust. Oh, God, how he wanted to.
Some time later, Ben jerked awake. For a moment, he didn’t know what had disturbed his sleep. Then he heard a whimper and a moan, coming from Chloe’s room.
He leaped from the bed, dashed through the adjoining bathroom, and was beside her in seconds. She was thrashing, the coverlet and sheets tangled around her slender body, her face twisted as she struggled in her dreams with some imagined horror.
“Chloe?” Ben bent over her. “Sweetheart, wake up. You’re dreaming.”
“No, please, no!” she murmured, her words slurred with sleep. “No!”
Ben touched her shoulder. The contact brought her jackknifing up, her eyes huge in her sweat-filmed face, her fists pummeling the air. He ducked to avoid a swing, caught her wrists, and said, “Chloe, wake up!”
Somehow she twisted free of the cover and nailed him dead center in the chest with one foot. Ben emitted a pained “Umph!” He lost his grip on one of her arms. She flew at him like a wild thing, kicking, clawing the air, and trying to bite.
“Chloe! Wake up! You’re dreaming!”
She froze and stared stupidly up at him. “Ben?” Then, as recognition dawned, she covered her face. “Oh, Ben, I’m sorry.”
He sank down beside her. “It’s okay, Chloe. I’m not hurt.” He didn’t ask what her dream had been about. He knew. “Hey, it was just a nightmare. You and Jeremy are safe now. I have the security system on. If anyone tries to enter the house, the alarm will go off.”
A sob jerked her shoulders. “The cork! It wouldn’t fire. He grabbed me, and in my dream, I knew he was going to kill me. I kept thinking I had to protect Jeremy, only I couldn’t get away from him.”
Ben gathered her into his arms, despising Bobby Lee with a virulence that turned his mouth acidic. “It’s all right. The cork did fire, sweetheart. You nailed him a good one, and followed up with several swings of the bottle. I would love to have seen the look on his face. The bastard probably didn’t know what hit him.”
Between sobs, she giggled and almost choked. The next instant, she was scrambling from under the covers to sit on his lap. His boxers provided precious little barrier between a certain recalcitrant part of his body and her soft, delightful bottom. Ben clenched his teeth and returned her hug. Her tears trickled from the hollow of his shoulder to his chest. He ran a hand into her hair, struggling to control his physical reaction so he could provide the comfort she so desperately needed.
The smell of her drifted to his nostrils—an enticing blend of scented soap, shampoo, perfume, and an underlying essence exclusively her own. Ben wanted to start at the top her curly head and devour every sweet inch of her. Then he wanted to bury himself in her moist warmth and carry both of them into oblivion.
Evidently she felt his hardness. She lifted her head and gave him a searching look. Ben swallowed, hard. “It’s, um—I’m sorry. You don’t have to worry. I can’t control the reaction, but I can control what I do about it.”
She ran her slender hands over his chest. He nearly groaned. Her palms felt like fire-warmed satin on his skin. Her face shimmered in the moonlight coming in through the window behind him, the tear tracks on her cheeks shot through with silver, her eyes liquid pools of darkness, outlined by spiked lashes. She somehow managed to look angelic and sultry, both at once.
“When you touch me,” she whispered, “and even when I touch you, the most glorious feeling moves through me. It’s like sunlight and electricity, and I can barely think. All I know is I can’t get enough of it.”
And therein lay the problem. When she gave herself to him, he wanted her to make the decision to do so with no stimulus from him to sway her. Ben didn’t want to push her away, but at the same time, he accepted his limitations. If she wiggled her butt one more time, he was going to lose it.
“How about some hot cocoa?” he suggested.
She studied him as if he’d lost his mind. “No, thanks.” Her shoulders jerked with a residual sob. She wiped her cheeks. “Hot cocoa isn’t really what I want.”
“What would you like then?” Ben was willing to fix a seven-course meal if it would get her off his lap before he did something he’d regret. “I’ve got some whiskey. You want a hot toddy?”
“You,” she whispered. “I want you, Ben.”
“What?”
Dumb response. But what else could he say? There were unresolved issues between them. She might not realize their importance, but he did. When they were intimate, it wouldn’t be mere sex between two consenting adults, as he’d hoped for in the beginning. When she gave herself to him, she’d be expecting forever to be part of the package. Before she made a commitment like that, she needed to know everything about him, even the parts that he wished he didn’t have to tell her.
“Chloe, I can’t,” he said, his voice thick with regret. “I want you. More than I’ve ever wanted anyone. But there are things we need to discuss, things that—”
She cupped her hand over his lips to stop him from saying more. Her gaze, aching with emotion, clung to his as she whispered, “I don’t care about any of that now. I just need you to make love to me, Ben. Please? Erase the memories of Bobby Lee from my mind and replace them with new ones.”
She shifted off his lap, only to turn and straddle his bare thigh, which was infinitely more torturous for him than her prior position had been. She wore only lacy panties and the T-shirt, and the feel of her bare inner thighs bracketing his leg was about to push him over the edge.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
“Yes. I love you with all my heart.”
“What else really matters?” she asked breathlessly.
Ben had no answer for that. She rose up, her nipples dragging his chest through the flimsy T-shirt as she sought his mouth with hers. Spontaneous combustion. It had always been this way with her. One kiss, and he was a goner.
Ben slipped an arm around her, his body igniting with a desire so intense it almost blinded him. His blood hammered in his temples. His heart was knocking so hard he feared it might crack his ribs. She felt so good in his arms. How could something that seemed so absolutely
right be wrong?
Still kissing him deeply, she twisted and fell back against the pillows, drawing him down with her. Grabbing for breath, she arched against him. “Touch me, Ben. Just touch me. Make me feel the magic again.”
Ben knew he should pull away, but at that precise moment, he had difficulty recalling why. Jeremy was securely tucked away in the guest room at the far end of the hall where he wouldn’t hear, and his mother had taken her sleeping pill, so he felt fairly confident that she wouldn’t awaken. He and Chloe were alone. She wanted him, and he wanted her. He’d tried to do the right thing. Now all his willpower had been burned away by physical need.
“No second thoughts?”
“No second thoughts. None. I need you.”
It was all Ben needed to hear. Feverishly, he peeled her panties off of her, loving the silkiness of her skin as his palms moved down her slender legs. “Ah, Chloe,” he said on a sigh. “You are so sweet.”
She reached for the hem of the T-shirt with trembling hands. Bracing his weight on his arms, Ben watched her tug up the cotton and twist her hips to pull it off over her head. His heated gaze skimmed over her small, perfectly shaped breasts, the indentation of her slender waist, and the delightfully full curve of her hips. “You’re beautiful, Chloe. Absolutely beautiful.”
“You’re the beautiful one. Hold me, Ben. I need to feel your arms around me.”
Ben had never wanted to do anything more. But he couldn’t simply react to his own need, forgetting all else. “Chloe, I haven’t been with anyone for over five years. I have nothing here to protect you.”
A beatific smile lighted up her face. “Oh,” she whispered, running her hands into his hair. “Oh, Ben, that’s so sweet.”
Sweet? To Ben, it was a red light. “Chloe,” he began. “I can’t just—”
“Yes, you can. It’s not my dangerous time,” she assured him. “I don’t think pregnancy is an issue, not tonight. And safe sex isn’t a worry. You haven’t been with anyone for five years, and I’ve never been with anyone but Roger.”
Only by Your Touch Page 30