Greetings, explanations, all of it was jumbled in her head as she gazed at the clock. It had gone well. Better than she’d hoped. But she should have known this family would be that way. There’d been no recriminations, no veiled doubts. Her biggest fear had been for Drifter. How would he handle all of this? So far he’d done it with a grace she hadn’t realized the man-child possessed.
A tear slipped out of her eye as she thought about it. She had to think about it, go over each minute in her mind. Pain had awakened her. Sharp and pounding in her head, it brought fear on the jagged talons of torment. A thief who would steal her life and leave her in the dark that was nothing. She couldn’t trust her own mind to be there for her. To let her retain all this. It could all go away so quickly and then she’d have nothing again. But worse, her son would have nothing. Jill dragged in a ragged breath as panic threatened to crush her.
A shadow stirred in the darkened room and she gasped. He shifted on the couch across from her and rolled off it to stride over to the bed.
“Holdin?” Jill questioned in surprise as he didn’t stop. He pulled up the covers and slid into the bed, gathering her into his arms.
She was too taken aback to protest as he slid under her. She’d been lying on her stomach and now she was lying across his bare chest. He had shorts on, but that was all. Adjusting her easily across him, he settled with an arm around her. The other hand caressed her damp cheek where her face lay on his shoulder.
“I needed to know you were here, Jill. I didn’t ask if I could sleep on the little couch over there because then you could have said no. You were crying and you can’t expect me to ignore that. Relax and tell me why the tears.”
Holdin’s voice rumbled up from his wide chest to whisper around her. Deep and soothing, he surrounded her with comfort in a uniquely intimate way. There was nothing demanding about his hold on her but she couldn’t call it impersonal.
It was so damn natural too. Their bodies had somehow picked up right where they left off. At least, how he treated her had. All afternoon and evening he’d been less than a touch away. Mostly, he was right beside her, holding her chair or opening the door. Handing her water or otherwise seeing to her needs as he always had while engaging in conversation and activities around them. He made his care appear a natural extension of his life.
The thin material of her nightshirt did nothing to disguise the feel of him. Hard and rippling, his chest supported her soft breasts. Flattened against him, her abdomen rested on his, angled to the side a bit so her legs straddled one of his thick thighs. The position was amazingly comfortable while reminding her how large he was. He’d not let her even brush the part of him she remembered as significantly large. As he settled beneath her, her leg between his shifted up naturally to rest against him. The shorts shielding his sac from her thigh might as well not have been there.
Straddling him brought steely thigh muscles up against her damp panties with firm pressure. She knew he felt her embarrassingly excited condition yet Holdin simply held her. He was too honorable to use her natural reaction to pressure her if she wasn’t ready. However, there was no chance he wasn’t aware of it.
Jill wanted to moan at the feel of him. This magnificent man who’d always burned her with a hunger she had no tools to resist. Then she wanted to rage at the reason she was awake to enjoy his attention.
Rage was pointless. She’d learned that a long time ago when facing the fact that no one would ever come looking for her. Now she was almost as alone as she had been then. This could only lead to more pain if the worst happened. Not her pain, his. He needed to understand how devastating things could get. This wasn’t going to help him to protect himself.
“The reason I woke up was pain, Holdin.” She needed him to face the ugly truths. “I was trying to remember everything about today, enjoy it because it could all be gone in an instant. The pain is a reminder. Nothing about present reality is secure for me. If I go back to sleep, I might not know who you are when I wake up. Do you understand that? We can’t have a relationship. There is no foundation. No sure ground. What we’re doing right now is just for this minute.
“I came here to be sure my son has a future. That’s the only important thing. Oh God, I was so afraid I didn’t have enough time to do that.” Jill shuddered across his body. “What if you had refused to see me? You could have been anywhere in the world. I was so afraid.”
“Hush, Jill,” Holdin soothed as he cradled her precious body at last. Needing to hold her was undeniable and now the rest of his drives were clamoring at him. The one thing capable of controlling them was her need. It was always Jill at the center of the storm that was his hunger for her. Being held was what she needed. “You’re panicking over the possibilities that don’t exist anymore. Our son has a concrete future. He’s safe. You did the right thing. You trusted the man from your past enough to come here. That’s very important to me. I don’t agree on our relationship issues though.
“Baby, we have unfinished business as a couple. What we’re doing right now is part of that. I’m not asking more from you. This is Holdin holding Jill because she was crying. I need to do it. If you really think the time might be short, Jill, let us have these few days.”
Her face was turned away from him on his shoulder and his lips nuzzled her hair. Dragging in the scent of it, he tried to flood all of his senses with her. She was still delicate as a night flower, the same and yet different, just like the lush body draped over him.
“What do you mean?” she murmured.
“You want our son to be safe, secure, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then why can’t we give him these few days with his family? A whole family. You and I have a connection that was never severed, Jill. I know you feel it. We’re still a couple. We were so in love and so young. I naïvely thought it’d go on forever. I didn’t have time to mention it, but I planned to marry you. I was going to ask, but thought it’d be a good idea to wait a year. That was the level of my commitment, Jill. There was nothing casual about it.”
Jill raised her head and turned to look at him. Only a feeble bit of moonlight found its way in the double windows across the room but she could see him. His handsome face was drawn and serious as he continued.
“Things didn’t work out the way I planned and then there was no ending for us, no closure and no future. What I’m saying is, right now we can give our son a family like he should have had. Our relationship is still open, Jill. Don’t close it just because you think it might be done for us again.
“Let me be his dad who adores his mom. Not the guy who fathered him and who his mother was forced to turn to as a last resort.”
Chapter Three
Jill lay perfectly still. Her body was sprawled across him, her head lifted at a slightly awkward angle to see his face and it was all too seductive. He wasn’t caressing her. No, it was the temptation to sink into his care that swamped her. She fought a sugar-sweet craving to let him be her boyfriend again. That was what he was asking.
If she agreed, where were they? She knew the answer. He would simply take over and deep in her soul that was such a temptation. To let someone else be in control would be so sweet. At eighteen she’d literally blossomed in his hands. Yet from the adult perspective she could see his gentle, unrelentingly sexy attention had been so complete that she’d not even realized the extent of his influence. She’d been his, body and soul.
“Holdin, how do we do that? I don’t know how to answer. We aren’t those people.”
“I’m asking you to stop being defensive. Not give up your defenses, just stop fighting us. Let me hold you, Jill. I need to hold you. Let me help lift some of that burden you drag around. Lean on me, just a little. Is that so hard? Have I ever given you reason to distrust me?”
“We were hardly more than kids. Now we’re adults. Huge difference, Holdin.”
“I know. I don’t want the eighteen-year-old Jill. I want the woman in my arms. We can’t be those people anym
ore but we can let what we had give us a door to the future that might have been. Are you afraid of me?”
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“Everything! Don’t you get it? Everything. What happens if we drop ourselves into a relationship again? What if we hate each other and just don’t know it yet? What if we don’t hate each other? That’s worse. I can’t lose everything again. I can’t do it!”
“Jilly-girl,” his tone was soft as his large hand pressed her head down to his shoulder, “you can’t lose everything. It’s not possible anymore. Even if you don’t know us, both Drifter and I will be there. You’ll never be abandoned again. Shhhhh,” he soothed as she started crying into his neck. “That’s what this is about. You were terrified and so alone. Not even a memory of being loved to comfort you. Oh damn, baby girl, I’m so sorry.”
Jill sobbed on his chest in soul-wrenching, gasping explosions of emotions that gathered in force as she let them go. Her whole body jerked with each sob. He wrapped his arms around her to hold her grief-racked body to him and welcomed the outpouring of her heartache. It was the old loneness. The complete abandonment she’d suffered. It was all the emotions he should have been there to defend her from.
Pain marked his face as she poured out the depths of her loneliness, fear and desperation. Words couldn’t have expressed the terrifying hell she’d awakened to in that hospital so long ago.
She’d been right. Between him and her father, she’d been surrounded. Not that either of them ordered her around. No, it was much more subtle than that. She was the woman of her father’s house, in charge of it but completely safe in its shelter. When she was with Holdin, she’d been his in every way. He’d loved how they were. Loved how she let him be a man, expected it of him. Their relationship had been perfect and he didn’t think it was the rose-colored glasses of time he was looking through.
It had been her nature to lean on him. It was his nature to accept it. They’d fed each other in ways few couples manage. And then she’d woken up alone. So very alone. Her soul had known that it was not her nature to fend for herself.
“Shhh, that’s it. Let it go. It’ll never happen to Drifter. I promise you, Jilly-girl. He’ll never feel abandoned the way you did, darlin’. You’ve seen to it. He has a father, grandparents and a past. He’s safe. You’ve taken care of our baby.” Holdin assured her as the sobs continued but in a much healthier emotional cleansing. Not the complete meltdown she’d done to begin with.
The tears finally subsided and they lay there holding each other in a silence that was both sorrow and understanding.
“How did you know?” Jill asked into the peaceful dark that had settled around them. “I didn’t even know why my soul was breaking until you put it in words.”
“I know your nature, Jilly-girl. Then or now, it’s the same soul and I know it,” Holdin murmured. “Try to relax and go to sleep, baby. It’s time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time for you to let go of that fear. The two of you will never be alone like that again. No matter what happens between us, I will always be his father. His grandparents will always adore him. He’s safe. It’s time for you to be safe too. Be safe in me, Jilly-girl. I’m not going to lose you again. You can’t drop off into nothingness a second time. Think about it. Even if you remember nothing after the surgery, you will not be abandoned. We’ll be there. You’ll have a history. You will have a future.”
Jill let his words curl around her fears. He’d named the demon, the nothingness. That nothingness was the black hole of pain she’d give her soul to protect her son from. Holdin understanding that so quickly should have been shocking but it wasn’t. He was right. He knew her nature.
Being in his arms felt like it always had. An overwhelming mix of edgy sexuality that could take her to the verge of endurance, tempered with the amazing certainty that she was safe in his care. The security he provided folded around her as exhaustion took its toll. Jill finally let go and relaxed into the luxuriant pleasure that was falling asleep in Holdin’s arms.
Holdin lay there and felt her quiet down into sleep. For right now it was enough. Holding her, feeling her soft breathing on his neck was a need. The hard knot in his gut shifted a bit lower but he could live with that. The precious gift of her trust, her pain, giving herself into his keeping, even for this short time, fed the starved beast who’d hungered for her. He hadn’t known that the last time he held her would be the last time. Hadn’t realized it’d be fifteen years before he felt this again.
The part of his soul that was a vicious competitor had grown up on the pain of missing this, her. He’d been very careful to cover that wounded animal, hide him behind a mask of sportsmanship. Never once had he discussed where his relentless drive came from, not with anyone. It was private, that dark part of him that had held the memory of her in his clutches had grown into a ruthless opponent in every way.
Sometimes his drive to win had almost overwhelmed him, tempting him down a much more dangerous path. Each time the thing that’d held him back from the shortcuts of drugs or steroids, of bending the rules and taking risks had been the thought of her reaction if she ever found out.
Watching others get caught in sports scandals had convinced him that it couldn’t be covered up. It’d be as public as his successes. He couldn’t risk her seeing that.
She’d both driven him and guarded him. His demon and his angel.
* * * * *
Jill woke to the feel of her “mattress” trying to stealthily slide out from under her. She didn’t open her eyes as she rolled over off him. “What time is it?” Jill asked as she hugged a pillow that suddenly slid up beside her.
Holdin was now sitting looking down at her.
“Six a.m. Go back to sleep, baby.”
“Mmm, where’re you goin’?”
“I work out in the mornings. Gets it out of the way.” Holdin leaned down and brushed his lips over her cheek. “Is the headache gone?” he questioned into her ear as his thick arms braced him over her.
Jill opened one eye slowly to test her light sensitivity. The room apparently wasn’t on the sunrise side of the house. It was still shadowed. “No pain,” she mumbled, and shut the eye again. Her arms tightened around the pillow she hugged. Her knees came up slightly and her body relaxed into sleep. Just that quickly.
Holdin stood, hands on hips and stared down at her. He struggled with dragging himself out of the room. The raw view of her pain last night had gone a long way toward bridging the distance between them but it had cost him. The price of regaining a relationship would be steep for both of them. Each had been to a very dark place in the last fifteen years. Climbing out of that place was a journey that had built two adults who were strangers. He didn’t even know if she was a morning person or not. Was this sleep one of deep peace or was it simply her habit in the morning?
“It’s seriously creepy when you do that,” Drifter commented from the door to the hall.
Holdin’s head whipped around in surprise that didn’t last long. “When I do what?” he asked as he strode to the door and out, closing it softly behind him.
“When you stand there staring at her while she sleeps.”
Holdin smiled easily and put a hand on Drifter’s shoulder, subtly drawing the boy with him as he strode to his own room. “Yeah? I guess I still can’t believe she’s here. I’ll get over it. What are you doin’ up?”
They stopped at the next door down the hall, Holdin’s room. “I have a couple things I need to check on.” Drifter glanced up and down Holdin’s nearly nude body. “What were you doing in there?”
“I slept in there,” Holdin answered honestly, a little curious where this would lead.
“You do realize the goal is less stress, right?” Drifter’s tone said he doubted Holdin’s ability to comprehend that. “If this is a problem, we have to leave. She can’t afford it.”
Holdin wanted to smile as he looked at his son. It was amazing, but the boy’s unflinching
attitude made him so damn proud. Little man was dealing with the facts, calculating possible outcomes and formulating a plan of action to deal with them.
“Relax. Your mother and I can handle our relationship. What are you checking on?” Holdin asked in a casual tone as he opened the door to his room and led the way in.
Drifter didn’t follow, just stood in the doorway to reply. “If you’re telling me it’s none of my business, forget it. What happens to her is my business. Especially now. Will she be upset when she gets up?”
Holden grabbed a pair of sweats and tugged them on over the shorts. “No, she’ll be fine.” He barely glanced at the boy as he pulled a T-shirt over his head. “It’s my business too and I take it seriously. But I’m glad to see you’re concerned,” he complimented gently while establishing a right to Jill.
Drifter nodded and turned to leave. “Hey, so what are you checking on?” Holdin asked as he picked up shoes and socks to follow.
Into His Keeping Page 6