by Soraya Lane
“I’m sure,” she managed to croak back.
Embarrassment fired within her when she remembered why he knew the way, but deep down she no longer cared. All she cared about was being in Tom’s arms, being carried like a featherweight, as if he could walk to the end of the earth with her in his arms and not pause until he had her to safety. It wasn’t because Penny had told her to trust him, that he wouldn’t hurt her; it was because she’d known it all along. Although the confirmation had been what she needed to make her trust her own instincts.
He paused at the door to her bedroom, eyes touching hers again, looking at her with an intensity she didn’t think she’d ever seen before. She smiled, the only thing she could do in response to the question in his eyes.
Tom walked her toward the bed, cocooned in his arms. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?” he whispered against her cheek. “Because you are so, so beautiful.”
He ran his hands down her back as he lowered her onto the bed, placing her down as if it took no effort at all. As if she were weightless. Now he stood above her, watching, waiting. Not saying anything.
“Tom,” she said his name but she didn’t know what else to say, what to tell him. In her mind she did, inside she was screaming out to have his hands on her body, but they were words she’d never said to a man before.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Tom said, his eyes shining with honesty, with kindness. “Do you want me to…”
“Stay,” she said, finishing his sentence, finding her voice. “I want you to stay.”
She watched as his gaze traced down her body, slowly, before resting on her ankle. “Are you really sure?”
Caitlin smiled with a bravery that didn’t come naturally. “Be careful with me and I’ll be fine.”
Tom pulled off his T-shirt, tugged it over his head and stood bare-chested at the foot of her bed. Caitlin couldn’t help it—she stared at him as though she’d never seen a man with his shirt off before. His shoulders were wide, strong, and his torso lean. Tom’s skin was tanned, smooth and flawless. What would he think of her scars, the marks on both her legs when he saw them up close again? If he knew how she’d gotten them and what secrets her past held?
Caitlin pushed the thoughts away, refused to let them ruin this moment. The accident and her surgery, the weeks she’d spent not being able to walk, let alone dance, were not going to hold her back. Not now. She’d had to sacrifice enough because of what had happened, but that was in her past and it was time to leave those memories behind for good.
He still looked worried that she was going to change her mind and regret asking him to stay. “Kiss me,” Caitlin told him, being the woman she wanted to be, making herself sound more confident than she felt. “Kiss me,” she repeated.
Tom lowered himself down gently beside her, stroking his hand up her leg as he did so. Caitlin tensed at his touch, couldn’t stop her hand before it brushed his away.
Tom responded immediately, hand hovering above her skin. “Is there something you need to tell me?” he asked, voice husky.
He wants me but he’s still in control, she told herself. It’s Tom. Tom can stop.
“No,” she forced herself to say, making her body relax. “No.”
Tom slowly touched her again, his fingers staying lower, not tracing up her leg this time.
With one hand he pulled off her sock instead, carefully taking it from her foot before bending to press a flutter of kisses against her swollen, tender skin.
Then he trailed his fingers slowly, so slowly up her body, giving her every opportunity to stop him. Even through the denim of her jeans she could feel his touch, was covered in goose pimples at the way he was caressing her, torn between pushing him away and making him touch her more.
Tom edged down, closer, lower, to kiss her on the mouth. Caitlin arched her back into his hold, tried to tell him how willing she was by the way her body moved. Encouraged him the only way she knew how.
And when he kissed her, when he slipped his fingers beneath her top and edged it down to show her skin, she sighed into his mouth and hoped he’d touch her all night. Because she needed this. Her attention-starved skin had been craving this more than she’d ever realized.
* * *
“No!”
Caitlin leaped up as the shout echoed around the room, dragging the sheets up to cover her naked body. Fear ran through her like a raging current, tore through her body as she fought the scream building in her throat.
Stop.
“No!” he yelled again, even more bloodcurdling than before.
Tom. It was Tom.
It wasn’t anyone who was going to hurt her.
Caitlin bent to cradle Tom’s head, to push the damp hair from his forehead. She hadn’t known where she was or what was happening, had immediately thought she was the one in danger. But it wasn’t her who needed taking care of, who needed protection, not right now.
“Shhh, it’s okay.” She pressed kisses to his wet skin, pushing the sheets off him as she did so. He was hot and sweaty, terror making his body shake. Making him whimper like a child scared of the dark. “Tom, you’re okay.”
His eyes fluttered open, she could make them out even in the near dark. Frightened to begin with and then slowly relaxing.
“I’m here for you,” she whispered, cradling his head and keeping her lips against his skin.
Tom didn’t say anything, didn’t need to, but his breathing became less shallow, his body relaxing beneath her touch.
“Shhh,” she whispered again, as if she were comforting a baby.
Caitlin tucked her body more possessively to his and shut her eyes.
They both had their demons, she knew that, and the one thing she could do for Tom was to hold him. Because when she’d been in her most darkest of places, it had been not having anyone with her that’d made it that much harder to live through.
“Caitlin?”
She sighed as Tom’s lips closed over hers, clumsily in the dark.
“Thank you.”
She didn’t need to say anything back, drifting off to sleep with him in her arms.
CHAPTER TEN
CAITLIN stretched out gingerly, needing to move her stiff limbs and be careful of her bandaged ankle, but at the same time desperate not to wake the man sleeping beside her, not after the way he’d woken in the night.
Tom.
She slowly shuffled back onto her side and curved her leg gently against his, molding her body to him. He was lying on his back, one hand thrown over his face as if he was trying to block out the light, the other by his side. Caitlin ran her fingertips up his chest, letting them fall over his heart.
He was perfect. So flawless that he looked like a model torn straight from a magazine, only bigger and stronger. More rough around the edges and real.
He reminded her of what she’d once been, an athlete, but she didn’t begrudge him his fitness and discipline. Tom knew hurt, on a different level, as acutely as she did.
She stilled her fingers again, stopping the casual back and forth motion on his bare chest. Just because she’d spent the night with him didn’t mean he wanted a relationship with her, even if it did mean something deeper to her. He was the first man she’d trusted in so long. After her only serious boyfriend had been sweet in the beginning before slowly revealing himself to be just like her father, she’d been too scared even to put herself out there to be hurt again. But now…
“Morning, beautiful.”
Caitlin pressed her lips to the soft curve of his neck. “Hey.”
Tom’s grin lit his face, and he raised his elbow so he could look down at her. “I can see your lips moving but I can’t hear you.”
She shut her eyes, giggling. “I forgot you had a bad side.” She reached up to stroke his ear, tickling her fingers over it. Caitlin nipped at his earlobe, tucking her body tight against him. Letting herself touch him, be natural and uninhibited with him.
“Come here,” he said gruffly, catching h
er around the waist beneath the sheets and making her squeal.
“Tom!”
“I warned you,” he said, pulling her down low on top of him. “I specifically told you that you were on my bad side, and yet you failed to move.”
Caitlin wriggled, trying to escape his grasp yet not really wanting to. He had hold of her, tight, but she wasn’t afraid. She slid down on top of him, pulling the sheet with her, trying to keep herself covered, and trying not to wince as she put too much pressure on her still-sore ankle. “Is this what you do to all your enemies?”
“Baby, you’re not the enemy.”
His voice was silky, sent ticklish ripples trailing across her skin. He was gorgeous, breathtakingly gorgeous, and it was sending the blood pumping through her body like liquid fire.
Tom kept hold of her but let her slide across him, his arms forming a tight circle around her as the length of their bodies touched.
“I could hear you just fine,” he said, voice low. “I just wanted an excuse to have you wriggling around on top of me again.”
This time Caitlin’s blush burned her face. Even her ears felt as if they were tingling with embarrassment. She hadn’t been intimate with a man in so long, and Tom was so open. Talked from his heart and spoke the truth. And she liked it.
He kissed her on the mouth, his lips warm, before trailing soft kisses across her face and down her jaw. “What do you want to do today?” Then he looked alarmed, as though he’d forgotten she’d been injured yesterday. “Your ankle?”
“Is fine since you bandaged it. I don’t think it’s as bad as I thought,” she whispered back, before adding bravely, “And today I want to stay in bed.”
Tom snuggled into her tighter, his body hard against hers, strong in her arms, protecting and loving her at the same time. “I think I can help you with that, Miss Rose.”
She tilted her head back, inviting him to kiss her neck, sighing as he fulfilled her wish as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “I thought you’d be up running already. Exercising.”
Tom shook his head and trailed kisses lower, his focus unwavering. “Wrong.”
She flexed her fingers against the taut skin on his back. “Well, good.”
Tom tickled her stomach as he kept wriggling farther down. “The run can wait for later,” he said, as though he had all the time in the world, wasn’t in any hurry to explore her body. “Afterward, I want to introduce you to someone, but right now—” his hand skimmed her breast “—you’re my morning exercise.”
Caitlin relaxed in Tom’s arms, refused to worry about him touching her in the daylight, the fact that he could see her. Because she could see him, too, and she wanted to watch him. To let her eyes rove across his skin, to watch the way he touched her and see the expression on his face as he spoke to her, as he caressed her.
“Have I told you how incredible you are, Caitlin?” Tom was looking at her now, had paused to stare at her.
Caitlin shut her eyes again, not believing that she was lying in her bed, with a man like Tom, and that he was showering compliments on her. She hadn’t had a man in her home in years, had kept it as her sanctuary from the world, especially the dating world, but here and now she was more comfortable in her home than she’d ever been. In the company of another. In the company of Tom.
“You have,” she repeated, opening her eyes to find him still staring at her. “But you can always tell me again.”
Tom folded his body against hers again, his hands roving so low it made her suck back a sharp breath.
“You are amazing, Caitlin Rose, and you’d better believe it.”
* * *
“I’ll be back in less than an hour.” Tom grinned at her as he walked backward down her driveway.
Caitlin shook her head in disbelief. Seriously? “I don’t understand why you don’t want to take your car?”
Tom stretched his legs out and she couldn’t stop watching him. The way her eyes were following his movements, his body, was…indecent. She wished she could turn away but couldn’t.
“I can’t believe you run every morning. It’s…”
Tom stood still, watched her. “Obsessive, I know,” he said. “But I’m kind of like an addict, and I’ll run back and get my car later.”
“For fitness,” she suggested, wishing she could scorn him but admiring him instead. “A complete fitness junkie,” she teased, but she was going to have to stop that sometime soon and come clean that a few years back, she’d been no different.
“Yeah, for anything that involves exercise.”
“Great,” she goaded. “Just great. I’m dating a fitness junkie.”
Tom started walking forward then, his grin even wider, his mouth turned up in the biggest smile she’d ever seen. “Dating, huh?”
“Let’s see how long you take to get back, then we’ll talk about dating,” she said, feigning a bravery that didn’t come naturally.
Tom blew her a kiss and broke into a jog. “I’ll be back with her soon.”
Caitlin pursed her lips and fought the question waiting in her mind. She had no idea who he was talking about, but so long as it wasn’t a secret wife then she didn’t care.
She watched him pound down the footpath away from her. It was exhausting just watching him running this early in the morning, when she was still so tired from the night before. Although… She cast a quick glance at her watch. Technically it wasn’t that early, but it was a Sunday and she was used to lying in bed until her stomach drove her into the kitchen for brunch.
Her belly growled at the thought of food and Caitlin turned from Tom’s disappearing silhouette. She could track him with her eyes all day—he wasn’t exactly hard to look at—but right now her fridge was calling to her.
Fruit, she mused. It would be healthy and wouldn’t leave her feeling guilty about her lack of exercise, because it was going to be a while before she was allowed to use her ankle properly.
Caitlin limped carefully into her kitchen and paused at the fridge, looking at the old black-and-white photo of a ballerina she had pinned to it. No one else would know it was her; they would presume it was a take-home from a show she’d seen. But it was her, and sometimes she felt like staring at it for hours.
But not today. Today she ignored the woman in the picture and hauled the fridge door open, searching for goodies instead. The woman in that photo had haunted her for long enough, and it was about time she moved on. She’d thought she had. After all these years she’d thought she’d been brave and positive and moved on from what had happened, but she hadn’t.
Caitlin put her fruit on the counter and reached for the photo, pulling it out from the magnet holding it in place. She gave it one last look, pressed a kiss to the girl looking back at her with her beautiful position, and slipped her into a drawer.
She was a teacher. Her role was to coach others to fulfill their dreams, and she was okay with that. Caitlin had loved the discipline of ballet, had lost herself within the structure of the dance. It had allowed her to be in control, and no one had been able to take it away from her. Until the accident that had ended her career forever.
Ballet would always be in her heart, but it was time to move on for good. And she was finally ready to, or at least she liked to think she was.
Caitlin smiled to herself as she cut into the melon, popping a piece in her mouth. Tom wasn’t exactly a bad distraction, and she couldn’t wait for him to get back.
* * *
Tom wasn’t ready to pull over, but he also wasn’t prepared to forfeit seeing Caitlin again. He’d run home fast, punishing himself, when all he’d really been interested in doing was getting back to her.
Last night had been… He stroked his hand over the steering wheel as he parked his vehicle. If he had to choose between Caitlin and his car right now, he’d give up the car, and that was saying something. Tom almost dialed his brother but jumped out instead. Daniel would laugh all day if he knew his brother was so keen on a woman he’d give up his car. Hell, i
t’d be like admitting he’d give up a limb for her. And he’d slept. After he’d woken and she’d held him, he’d slept like a newborn baby for hours. No waking up in a hot sweat, the sheets damp and tangled from his nightmares again. He’d gone to sleep with Caitlin in his arms and he hadn’t woken until morning.
“Tom?” Caitlin was calling out from the front door when he stepped out.
“Come and meet her,” he called back, inviting her down.
Tom tried to keep a straight face as Caitlin walked slowly, carefully down across her porch and toward him. She looked confused and her ankle was obviously tender from the way she was hobbling.
“You got a new car?” she asked.
Tom closed the distance between them and looped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in for a kiss before taking some of her weight from her leg. “This isn’t any old car, Caitlin.”
She groaned. Over-the-top-loud kind of groan. “Please don’t tell me this is who you wanted me to meet?” she asked, looking at him as though she pitied him. “Here I was thinking you were Mr. Perfect, but instead you’re actually a car nutter.”
Tom squeezed her closer and forced her to walk by his side to the car. “I am not a nutter.” He tried not to laugh. But he sure liked the sound of Mr. Perfect.
“Oh, yes, you are,” she goaded, poking him in the ribs. “Absolute nutter.”
Tom gave her a push sideways, nudging her with his hip to move her away without letting her put any weight on her leg. “I’ll have you know that this beauty is a 1965 Ford Mustang convertible,” he said, as proud as if he were introducing Caitlin to his own flesh and blood. “I restored her from the ground up myself, whenever I was home.”
Caitlin’s gaze flicked from him to the car and back. “Okay, I’ll concede that the car looks nice, but I’m not so sure about the formal introduction.”
“Sally,” he said, trying not to smirk.
“Excuse me?”
“Her name’s Sally.”
Now Caitlin was roaring with laughter, holding her belly and looking as if she was going to hyperventilate. “You named her? Oh my God, you are some kind of weirdo.”