by Teresa Hill
"Emma, please come with me," he said. She shook her head.
"We're not done," he told her. Shit, he sounded just like her old friend Mark, who'd made a threat just like that.
"You gonna go? Or am I going to take you in?" the officer asked.
"I'm going."
Straight to hell, it seemed. Straight to hell.
Chapter 18
He kept calling. She kept hanging up, when she answered the phone at all. Melanie, Emma's roommate, talked to him several times when Emma wouldn't and claimed he sounded honestly sorry, worried, and as baffled as any man could be. He left long, apologetic messages on her voice mail.
In her saddest moments, Emma worried that she was acting like the kid he'd accused her of being.
Then he started with the flowers. Tiny, pale, pale pink roses. They were so pretty, she couldn't resist. The card said simply I'm sorry.
Sorry about what? Because she'd humiliated herself in front of him? Or because he'd made love to her. Okay, he'd had sex with her, and she'd made love to him, and it had been... Oh, her whole body started trembling just thinking about it.
"That good, huh?" Melanie had said, when Emma had stumbled through her explanation of what had happened.
Yes, it had been that good, everything she'd ever dreamed it would be, except she'd blackmailed her way into his bed. If that wasn't bad enough, she'd told him she loved him. She'd told him she'd been waiting for him and even now, she couldn't get him out of her head or her heart.
Thankfully, he finally stopped calling. She sat in her room staring at her flowers. Four days later, just as they'd started to wilt, she got more, lavender colored this time. The card said, Please talk to me.
She had terribly erotic dreams about him. If years of wanting him were bad, wanting him now—knowing what she was missing—was even worse. She relived every moment, every touch of his hands and the feel of him moving over her and inside of her. How was she ever supposed to forget him now?
More flowers came, soft yellow. Please don't do anything crazy.
Like what? All she'd wanted to do was break his hold on her, move on with her life. Going to bed with someone seemed like a drastic step to take, but she'd been desperate. All this time, she'd been saving herself for him. Having sex with someone else meant giving up on that dream, giving up on him, which she had to do.
It had all made some kind of twisted sense to her a few weeks ago.
Flowers kept coming. His cards got funnier.
Emma,
I hope you're finding this amusing, because the clerks at the floral shop in the next town sure are. I drive over there, because I don't want everyone in town to know I'm sending you flowers. The florists know me by name now, and they've got a pool going as to what I did to make you so mad at me that even all these flowers haven't gotten me out of the doghouse. I need to see you. I need to talk to you. My birthday's next week. Grace is making me a cake with black icing (I think she's still mad at me for not coming to your party) and I know this isn't a conversation to have with an audience, but maybe we could go somewhere afterward. Please?
Emma folded the card and slipped it into the envelope. It was ridiculously small. He'd put the message in the tiniest print and scrawled it on both sides of the card to make it fit.
She missed him like crazy.
She had a million things to do, papers to write, projects to finish. Finals were only six weeks away, and she'd hardly done anything but fret.
"Doesn't look like he's going to give up anytime soon," Mel said.
"He feels guilty. He has this whole protective thing going with me, always has. But that's it."
"How do you know?"
"Mel, he's ignored me for more than two years."
"And now you've managed to get his attention."
"By doing something stupid."
"Emma, you've been feeling rotten for two years, and if there was anything you could have possibly done to get his attention, you would have. Well, you finally did it. Maybe not in the way you'd have liked, but he's paying attention. What are you going to do about it?"
She couldn't decide. Like a coward, she caught a ride with a friend who was going to Baxter the weekend of Rye's birthday, and then couldn't bring herself to go to her own house that day. The whole charade between them had turned into something like a divorce. They shared custody of the family. Today was his day to have them.
She lingered outside, watching and waiting from a house two doors down, and when the party broke up around seven, he came walking down the street to his truck, parked not far from her. She stepped out from her hiding place next to the shrubbery as he'd just finished loading up his stash of gifts.
He turned around and stared at her. "I thought I was going to have to hunt you down tonight."
"Hunt me down?"
He nodded. "I'm tired of being reasonable. I'm tired of trying to figure out what I did that was so wrong and begging you to talk to me."
"You didn't do anything wrong."
"I must have. You disappeared. I know you're not up on all the morning-after etiquette, but it's really rude to run out without saying a thing or giving the person you were with a chance to say anything. I had a lot I wanted to say."
"Sorry. I couldn't..." she said. "I just couldn't stand to face you."
"Well, you're going to face me now." He opened up the passenger-side door and said, "Get in the truck."
She got in. He took her back to his house. She studied it without the alcoholic haze that had hampered her view or her memory of the time before.
"The house looks nice. You're almost done, aren't you?"
"Almost," he said, taking her hand and helping her out of the truck. Almost like they were on a date.
Emma closed her eyes and tried to steel herself for what was to come. For more of his guilt and his outrage over her whole stupid plan.
He unlocked the front door and flicked on the lights. She stood there in the foyer looking all around. He still hadn't stained or varnished the floors or painted or papered the walls, and it had been two months.
"Having trouble making up your mind what you want?" she asked.
He'd shrugged off his coat and hung it on a peg on the wall, and now he was reaching for hers, drawing it off her shoulders and hanging it up as well. When he turned back to her, he was smiling.
"I know exactly what I want, Emma. I just haven't let myself have it." There was heat coming off his body and a world of possibilities in his eyes.
"I was talking about the house," she said.
"I wasn't."
Oh.
"And you know what?" he said. "I'm getting really tired of not letting myself have what I want."
Well... What was she supposed to say to that?
He was coming closer, too. Not that there was anyplace to go, really. She took a step back, which brought her against the wall.
He turned off the lights he'd just turned on a moment before, and she really didn't understand. Not until he put one of his hands on the wall just to the left of her head, the other by her right shoulder and leaned into her, until she could very nearly feel the imprint of his altogether impressive body against hers. It was just a breath away, a whisper.
What was he doing?
She'd expected to get lectured about her own safety and waiting until she was older and in love. With anyone but him. She hadn't expected him to touch her at all.
"Was that it, Emma? The wanting part? Could you possibly think I didn't want you that night?" He was smiling in the most understanding way.
She was near tears. "I didn't give you much choice in the matter."
"I can say no." He came nearly close enough to touch his lips to hers. "I do it all the time."
"Oh, right—"
"And the revolving door line? That really wasn't very nice."
"You have a different woman every six weeks," she reminded him.
"Not in my bed," he said.
"Okay, in theirs—"
"No
pe."
"Rye—"
"I told you, I'm really tired of not getting what I want, especially now that I know what it's like. That my body knows. Now that I know you want me just as much. Tell me that, Emma. Tell me you want me half as much as I want you."
"More," she said. "I must want you more because—"
He shut off the words with a kiss, a ruthless, ravaging, wild kiss. It was like someone opening the door on a furnace—an instantaneous blast of pure heat. He brought his body fully into contact with hers, pressing her against the wall and attacking with lightning-fast hands.
They were everywhere, working furiously over the buttons of her blouse and tugging down the straps of her bra. Undoing the button at the back of her skirt and tugging the blouse up until he found skin, tunneling up under her skirt until he got his hands inside her panties and found even more skin.
It was like going from zero to sixty in about three seconds flat.
All of a sudden, she remembered everything she'd tried so hard to forget, that glorious, hard body of his, and his wicked mouth, the slight roughness to the skin of his hands, a working man's hands. He surged against her. She put her hand between his legs and rubbed the hard ridge nestled against her belly.
He groaned and ripped his mouth from hers long enough to say, "Help."
She unbuttoned his jeans and unzipped. He shoved them and his briefs down, pulled down her panties as well.
"Rye?"
"It's been two months, Emma."
It had been, and if she was any judge of the situation, he was desperate for her.
His hands went beneath her skirt once more. Palming her hips, he lifted her feet off the ground and urged her thighs apart. It left her completely open to him. He settled himself between her thighs, her firmly against the wall. She wrapped her legs around his waist, for balance in her precarious position at first, and then because it was the only real leverage she had to pull him closer.
She was wet, just like that. He teased her, letting the full length of his erection slide along her slick, wet heat. It was so very wicked, knowing one subtle little shift of his body and hers, and he'd be right there, right where she wanted him.
"Rye," she groaned.
"Does this feel like a man whose arm you had to twist to get him here?"
"No." She laughed.
"Tell me that little shot of yours is still working."
"Shot?"
"Birth control, Emma."
"Oh. Yes." She'd gotten an e-mail last week to remind her it would be time to come in for another one in a few weeks, so she was still good. Still safe. And in just a minute, he would be inside of her.
"Rye," she said again.
"I'm coming. Promise." He grinned against her mouth. "Open up for me."
She thought he meant her mouth, but that wasn't it. He lifted her just a fraction of an inch higher and gave a little thrust of his hips. There he was. Right there. It was still a stretch. He still made her feel so full, overwhelmed almost. Like she just couldn't quite take him, but in the end, she did.
He slid home, gave a very contented-sounding sigh, his face right next to hers, his gaze locked on hers. For a second, they hung there together, time frozen around them, while they were as close as two people could be.
"This is how I want you," he said, rocking ever so slightly against her, and then harder and harder, until he was so deep inside of her she didn't think there could be so much as a molecule between them.
She wrapped her arms more tightly around him, her legs, closed her eyes and let her head drop to his shoulder. Tears were coming, and this wasn't the time, but... He wants me.
All she'd ever wanted was for him to want her and to love her, and she'd never believed that would happen.
He wasn't treating her like a silly, desperate girl. Not that she hadn't appreciated every bit of tenderness and patience he'd shown her that first night. But this... This was raw and intense and so powerful. It was desire, pure and simple, fast and hot, shattering every bit of reserve and control she had.
"Oh, Rye."
He thrust against her, her whole body shifting with each rush of his. She could feel him pulsing and swelling inside of her, could feel the grip her body had on him, could feel it all building and building until they simply exploded.
She shuddered against him, and he held her there, pinned against the wall, leaning into her and nearly crushing her.
Not that she cared.
He wanted her.
Truly, desperately wanted her.
The way a man wants a woman.
Against the wall, barely inside his front door.
Oh, my, Emma thought.
How terribly grown up.
He eased back, giving her a lazy, satisfied grin and a slow, sweet kiss. "Did I mention that I missed you?"
"I missed you, too," she said. Not just in the last two months. There were more than two years that she'd spent desperately missing him.
He eased back, lowering her feet to the ground. She started trying to put her clothes into some order, but her panties were on the floor about five feet away. No way to get to them. She was going to button her blouse when Rye's hands stilled hers.
"I'm just going to take that right back off of you."
"But we just... I mean..." Of course, if he wanted to do this again, it wasn't like she was going to object. She was just surprised.
"Emma, that was just to take the edge off," he said, grinning at her.
"Oh."
* * *
He took her to bed, and it was sweet and slow, a lesson in the rewards of patience. It was only as she was lying in his arms afterward that she thought of something. He hadn't used a condom. Not that she was at risk for getting pregnant, but she'd been raised in the safe-sex generation. It struck her as odd that he didn't use one.
"Rye?"
"Hmm?" he said lazily.
"I was thinking about what you said downstairs... What I said... About the revolving door?" She really wanted to know about that.
"Emma, there's no traffic going in and out of here." She could hear a lazy brand of humor in his voice. "I don't need a revolving door."
She frowned, not understanding. Not really wanting to talk about anyone else who'd been with him, but... "That night of my birthday? And tonight? You didn't use a condom."
He slid down beside her until they were face-to-face, side-by-side. "No, I didn't. We don't need one, do we? You're not going to get pregnant, and you've never done this before, so you don't have anything, and neither do I. I made sure of that, Emma. I'd never take a chance like that with you."
"I know, but—"
"Emma, I haven't been with anyone in more than two years. Except you."
She didn't quite believe the words. They were floating around in her head, but she couldn't arrange them in any order that made sense. "But... all those women?"
"I told you I was capable of saying no. I turned 'em all down."
She could barely breathe, barely get out the word. "Why?"
He kissed her, lingering softly, smiling. "Why do you think?"
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do," he whispered. "They weren't you, Emma."
"But I saw you with them—"
"I'll admit, I tried to make some things work. Probably just like you did. I really tried, and I just couldn't do it."
"I saw you laughing with them, and flirting with them, and I saw their hands all over you." She'd suffered unbelievably seeing him with all of them.
"That's all it was," he said. "Killing time. Trying to get on with my life. I sure didn't ever expect to end up here."
But he liked it here, didn't he? Sometimes life took people places they never expected to go. Like here. She would never be sorry for that.
"Sam asked you to stay away from me, didn't he?"
"I don't know if asked is the right word." He grinned. "He's your father. He had a right. Hell, he had an obligation to do what he thought was best for you. But I didn't stay
away because he told me to. I stayed away because you were just turning nineteen and starting college—"
"And you didn't trust me to know my own mind? To know what I wanted, what I felt?"
He took a breath, looking truly worried now, truly sorry. "I felt like I had an obligation to give you that time."
"I've been miserable all this time." Miserable wanting him and thinking he just didn't care.
"I know that now. I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt you, but I had to do what I thought was right."
"You could have told me. You could have said, 'Just grow up a little bit, and then we'll see.' "
"And what would you have done? Waited for me? That's not living, Emma. That's not taking time to be sure about what you want, what you need."
"So you're saying you did this for me?"
"I'm saying it seemed like an impossible situation, and I did the best I could. I'm sorry if that hurt you. I'm sorry if it makes you angry. I don't know what else I could have done. I wish you'd been happier, and sometimes I wish we hadn't met until later, when you were older, or that there weren't so many years between us in the first place. Hell, I wish I'd never stolen that car or killed anyone or gone to prison. But I can't change any of those things, just like I can't change this. I did the best I could for both of us."
* * *
She drifted off to sleep in his arms, thinking about what he'd said, thinking about where they went from here. When she woke up two hours later, rolled over, and reached for him, he wasn't there.
Emma sat up, listening and hearing nothing. The bathroom door was open, a faint light spilling out. He wasn't in there.
She wrapped herself up in a sheet and went downstairs, finding him in the living room. It was surprisingly chilly for April, and he'd built a fire, was sitting on the floor in front of it, his back against the sofa. His chest was bare, and he had an afghan wrapped around the lower half of his body.
She stood there waiting, not sure what to do. He took her hand and tugged her down to him. She sat facing him, letting him draw her head to his chest.