by Lori Foster
“Lizzy, look at me.”
She did, snared by his beauty, by the savage hunger in his hot blue eyes. He took her in one long slow thrust and she cried out, not in pain but in incredible pleasure. Her hips lifted of their own accord, trying to make the contact as complete as possible.
Gabe slid both hands beneath her bottom and lifted her, pushing deep, retreating, pushing in again, causing the most incredible friction. “Put your legs around me, sweetheart.”
She did, crossing her ankles at the small of his back, squeezing him tight. His hairy chest crushed her breasts, and she tried to rub them against him, tried to feel as much of him as she could. The sensation of him being inside her, her tender flesh stretched tight around him, was almost unbearable. The explosive feelings began building again and she struggled toward them, her head tipped back, her eyes squeezed closed.
But then Gabe cursed and paused for one throbbing heartbeat. With another muttered oath he lowered himself to her completely, opened his mouth on her throat and began thrusting hard and fast, his groan building, his body rock hard and vibrating, and Lizzy held him, enthralled as he came. She forgot her own needs, satisfied to smooth her hands over his damp back, through his silky soft hair and straining shoulders.
Gabe relaxed against her, breathing deep, his arms keeping her close, her legs still around him. After several minutes he muttered against her throat, “Sorry.”
Lizzy kissed his shoulder. “For what?”
“For leaving you.” He leaned up and looked at her and there was a deeply sated expression to his eyes, a tenderness that went bone deep. “I’ll make it up to you in just a little bit.”
Elizabeth smiled and touched his face. “I’m fine.”
“I want you better than fine,” he said, and he kissed her, a long, slow, leisurely kiss. He didn’t seem in any hurry to stop kissing her. After a while he sat up to remove the condom—another first for her! Without much talking he carried her into the bathroom where they both soaked in a cool tub. Gabe made her wild with the way he bathed her, stroked her, teased her. After that, he seemed insatiable.
She could barely keep her eyes open after two more climaxes and a lot of new firsts, but when he settled into the bed with her, she found the foresight to ask, “Are you staying all night?”
“Yes.” He pulled her to his side and pressed her head to his shoulder.
His assumption that he was welcome amused her, but then, she wanted him to stay. “Shouldn’t you tell someone where you are so they won’t worry?”
“I’m twenty-seven years old, sweetheart. I don’t have to account for myself to my brothers.”
“What about Honey? Will she worry?”
He went still, then cursed softly. “Don’t move.” He padded naked from the bed into the kitchen where her only phone hung on the wall. After a few seconds she heard him say, “I won’t be home tonight.”
There was a pause. “Yeah, well, I thought Honey might—” He laughed. “That’s what I figured. See ya tomorrow.”
He came back to bed and settled himself. “You were right. Sawyer said she would have worried.” He kissed her forehead and within seconds he was breathing deeply.
Elizabeth stroked his chest, wondering how often he spent the night with women, if this meant anything to him at all, if she had the right to hope he’d stay with her whenever possible.
It was a long time before she, too, dozed off. But thinking of Gabe and how strong and independent and capable he was only served to slant her dreams with miserable comparisons of all the things he was, and all the things she wasn’t.
And sometime in the middle of the night, the nightmares returned.
CHAPTER TEN
GABE WAS generally a sound sleeper, but then, contrary to popular belief, he seldom had a very sexy, very warm woman cuddled up to his side when he slept. Because he lived with his brothers, and because his nephew, Casey, was there, he hadn’t made a habit of flaunting his social life. Having Lizzy at his side was a unique and pleasant experience.
And while he’d had no problem sleeping, he was never at any moment unaware of her curled against him.
When her skin grew warmer and her breathing deeper, he stirred. She mumbled something in her sleep and he turned his head to look at her, making a soft, soothing sound. Her hand suddenly fisted against his chest, and her head twisted from side to side.
Frowning, Gabe came up on one elbow. “Lizzy?” She didn’t answer him. He touched her cheek and felt it wet with tears. His heart pounded. “Hey, come on, sweetheart. Talk to me.”
In the dim moonlight filtering through the curtains, he could barely make out her features. He saw her mouth move, crying soundlessly, then heard a small whimper, and another, each gaining in volume.
“Lizzy?” Gabe held her closer and stroked her hair. “You’re dreaming, sweetheart. Wake up.” He made his voice deliberately commanding, unable to bear her unconscious distress.
Suddenly her body went rigid as if she’d just suffered a crushing physical pain. She screamed, harsh, tearing sounds that echoed around the silent bedroom. Her arms flailed wildly and she hit him in the chest, fighting against him, against herself. Gabe pinned her arms down and rolled her beneath him.
“Wake up, Lizzy!”
Sobbing softly, she opened her eyes and stared at him. For one instant she looked lost and confused, her eyes shadowed, then she crumbled. Gabe turned to his side and held her face to his throat. “It’s all right. It’s all right, sweetheart.”
She clutched him, and his heart broke at her racking cries. Gabe felt his eyes get misty and crushed her even closer, wanting to absorb her pain, to somehow be a part of her so he could carry some of her emotional burden.
Long minutes passed before she finally quieted, only suffering the occasional hiccup or sniff. Gabe kissed her temple, then eased her away from him. He kept the lights off and said, “Don’t move, baby. I’m going to go get you a cool cloth.”
He was in and out of her bathroom in fifteen seconds. When he walked in, Lizzy was propped up in the bed blowing her nose. She had her knees drawn up to her chest, the sheet wrapped around her. The first thing she said was, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t make me turn you over my knee when you’re already upset.” Gabe scooted into bed beside her and manfully ignored the way she tried to inch away from him. He caught her chin and turned her face, then gently stroked her with the damp washcloth. “You have no reason to be sorry, Lizzy. Everyone has bad dreams every now and again.”
A long silence threatened to break him and then she muttered, “It wasn’t a dream.”
Gabe propped his back against the headboard and handed the washcloth to Lizzy. She pressed it over her swollen eyes. Utilizing every ounce of patience he possessed, Gabe waited.
Finally she said, “I’m a little embarrassed.”
“Please don’t be.” He kept his voice soft but firm. “I’m so glad I was here with you.” His arm slipped around her shoulders and she didn’t fight him as he pulled her close. “I care about you, Lizzy. Will you believe that?”
She nodded, but said, “I don’t know.”
Rubbing his hand up and down her bare arm, he asked, “Is it so strange for someone to care about you, sweetheart?”
“Someone like you, yes.”
“What about someone not like me?”
She went still. “There’s…things about me you don’t know.”
Gabe tightened his hold, anticipating her reaction. “You mean the awful way your mother died?”
As he’d predicted, she jerked and almost got away from him. “What do you know about that?”
“I read the articles you saved.”
“How dare you!” She struggled against him, but Gabe held her tight.
“Quit fighting me, honey. I’m not letting you go.” Probably not ever. It was several seconds before she went rigid against him. Gabe could feel her hurt, her anger. But he wanted to get past it, and the only way he saw to do that was to forc
e his way. He spread his fingers across the back of her head and kept her pressed to his shoulder. “That’s why you’re so all-fired determined to understand this nonsense about heroism, right?”
She shuddered, and another choking sob escaped her before she caught herself. “You…you can’t understand. You aren’t like me. You saw a way to help and you instinctively acted. I…I let my mother die.” Her hands curled into his shoulders, her nails biting, but Gabe would have gladly accepted any pain to help her. “Oh, God. I let her die.”
Unable to bear it, Gabe pressed his face into her neck and rocked her while she continued talking.
“We were in a car wreck. I…I was changing the radio station trying to find a song Mom and I could sing to. We did that all the time, playing around, just having fun. It was raining and dark. Mom told me to turn the radio down, and I started to, but then a semi came around the corner and Mom had to swerve…”
Her voice had an eerie, faraway quality to it. Gabe wondered how many times, and to how many people, she’d given this guilty admission. The thought of her as a twelve-year-old child, awkward and shy, suffering what no child should ever suffer, made him desperate with the need to fix things that were years too distant to repair.
“The car went off the road and hit a tree. Mom’s door was smashed shut, the windshield broken. She was… bleeding. I thought she was dead and I just screamed and got out of the car and crouched down on the gravel and the mud, waiting and numb. Too stupid to do what I should have done.”
“Oh, Lizzy.” Gabe kissed her temple, her ear. He murmured inanities, but she didn’t seem to hear him.
“The nearest telephone was only two miles away. If…if I’d gone for help…she’d have lived if only I hadn’t frozen, if I hadn’t become a useless lump crying and waiting to be helped when I was barely hurt.” Her hand fisted and thumped once, hard, against his shoulder. “She was pinned in that damn car unconscious and bleeding to death and I just let her die.” Sobbing again, her tears soaking his neck, she whispered, “By the time another car came by and found us…it was too late.”
Keeping her in the iron grip of his embrace, Gabe reached for the lamp and turned the switch. Lizzy flinched away from the harshness of it, but Gabe was so suffused with pity, with pain and mostly with anger, he refused to let her hide. Her ravaged face was a fist around his heart, but he never wavered in his determination. Forcing her to meet his gaze, he said, “You were twelve goddamned years old! You were a child. How in the hell can you compare what a child does to a grown man?”
She looked stunned by his outrage. “I was useless.”
“You were in shock!”
“If I’d reacted…”
“No, Lizzy. There is no going back, no starting over. All any of us can do is make the most of each day. You’re such an intelligent woman, so giving and sincere, why can’t you see that you were an innocent that day?”
“You…you said you read the articles.”
“And I also know how the damn media can slant things deliberately to get the best story. One more human death means little enough to them when people pass away every day, some in more horrific circumstances than others. But a human-interest story on a young traumatized girl, well, now, that’s newsworthy. You were a pawn, sweetheart, a sacrifice to a headliner. That’s all there is to it.”
“I let her die,” she said, but she sounded vaguely uncertain, almost desperate to believe him.
“No.” Gabe pulled her close and kissed her hard. “You don’t know that. It was dark, it was raining. Even if, through the trauma of seeing your mother badly injured, you’d been able to run to the nearest phone, there’s no guarantee that you’d have gotten there safely, that you’d have found help and they’d have made it to her in time.”
She searched his face, then reached for another tissue. After mopping her eyes and blowing her nose, she admitted in a raw whisper, “My dad has said that. But I’d hear him crying at night, and I’d see how wounded he looked without my mother.”
Gabe cupped her tear-streaked cheeks, fighting his own emotions. “He still had you.” He wobbled her head, trying to get through to her, trying to reach her. “I know he had to be grateful for that.”
Her smile trembled and she gave an inelegant sniff. “Yes. He said he was. My father is wonderful.”
Relief filled him that at least her father hadn’t blamed her. The man had obviously been overwrought with grief. Gabe couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d react if something happened to Lizzy. If he ever lost her, he’d—
Gabe froze, struck by the enormity of his thoughts. He loved Lizzy! It didn’t require rhyme or reason. It didn’t require a long courtship or special circumstances. He knew her, and she was so special, how could he not love her?
He touched the corner of her mouth with his thumb, already feeling his body tense with arousal and new awareness. “You’re a wonderful person, sweetheart, so you deserve a wonderful dad.”
Her eyes were red-rimmed, matching her nose, and her lips were puffy, her skin blotchy. Gabe thought she was possibly the most beautiful person he’d ever seen. The sheet slipped a bit, and he looked at her lush breasts, the faint sprinkling of freckles and the tantalizing peak of one soft nipple.
He tamped down his hunger and struggled to direct all his attention to her distress. “Will you believe me that you weren’t to blame, Lizzy?”
She bit her lip, then sighed. “I’ll believe you don’t blame me. But facts are facts. Some people possess heroic tendencies, and some people are ineffectual. I’m afraid I fall into the latter category.”
Gabe caught her hips and pulled her down so she lay flat in the bed. He whisked the sheet away. “Few people,” he said, while eyeing her luscious body, “are ever given the opportunity to really know if they’re heroic or not.” He placed his palm gently on her soft white belly. “Personally, I don’t think you can judge yourself by what a frightened, shy, injured twelve-year-old did.”
She stared at his mouth, firing his lust. “That’s…that’s why I’m studying this so hard. I want to help other adolescents to understand their own limitations, to know that they can’t be completely blamed for qualities they don’t possess. We’re all individuals.”
“And you don’t want any other child to hurt as you’ve hurt?”
Her beautiful eyes filled with tears again. “Yes.”
“I love you, Lizzy.”
Her eyes widened and she stared. Stock-still, she did no more than watch him with wary disbelief. Gabe had to laugh at himself. He hadn’t quite meant to blurt that out, and he felt a tad foolish.
Elizabeth was everything he wasn’t. Serious, studious, caring and concerned. She had a purpose for her life, while he’d always been content to idle away his time, shirking responsibilities, refusing to settle down, priding himself on his freedom. She was at the top of her class, while he’d gone from one minor to another, never quite deciding on any one thing he wanted to do in his life. His time in college had been more a lark than anything else; he’d gone because it was expected. He’d gotten good grades because his pride demanded nothing less, but it had been easy and had never meant anything to him.
Lizzy would never consider letting someone like him interrupt her plans. She was goal-oriented, while he was out for fun. She’d told him that she wanted the summer with him, but she’d never even hinted that she might want more than that.
Trying to make light of his declaration—though he refused to take it back—he said, “Don’t worry. I won’t start writing you poetry or begging you to elope.”
She blinked and her face colored, which added to her already blotchy cheeks and red nose, giving her a comical look. Gabe forced a grin and kissed her forehead. Damn, but he loved her. He felt ready to burst with it.
“Have I rendered you speechless, sweetheart?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes.” Then: “Gabe, did you mean it?”
“Absolutely.” He cupped her breast and idly flicked her soft nipple with his thum
b until it stiffened. “How could I not love you, Lizzy? I’ve never known anyone like you. You make me laugh and you make me hot and you confuse my brain and my heart.”
She scrunched up her mouth, trying not to laugh. “How…romantic.”
Gabe shifted, settling himself between her long slender thighs. “I’m horny as hell,” he admitted in a growl, letting her feel the hardness of his body. “How romantic did you expect me to be?”
She looped both arms around his neck and smiled. “Thank you, Gabe.”
“For what?”
“For making me feel so much better.” Her fingers caressed his nape, and she wound her legs around him, holding him, welcoming him. “For being here with me now, for saying you love me.”
He started to reassure her that he hadn’t said the words lightly, that he meant them and felt them down to his very soul. But he held back. Similar words hadn’t crossed her lips, and he needed time to get himself together, to sort out this new revelation. So all he said was, “My pleasure,” and then he kissed her, trying to show her without words that they were meant for each other whether she knew it yet or not.
He felt as if his life hung in the balance. He needed her, but he didn’t know if he could make her need him in return.
SAWYER STOOD behind him, leaving a long shadow across the planks of wood that extended over the lake. Gabe didn’t bother to turn when he asked, “You want something, Sawyer?”
“Yeah. I want to know why you’re mangling all those nails.”
Gabe looked at the third nail he’d bent trying to hammer it into the new dock extension he was building for his brother Morgan. Normally he did this kind of work without thought, his movements fluid, one nail, one blow. Over the years he’d built so many docks, for his family and for area residents, that he should have been able to do it blindfolded. But he’d hit his damn thumb twice already and he was rapidly making a mess of things.
In a fit of frustration he flung the hammer onto the shore and stomped out of the water, sloshing the mud at his feet and sending minnows swimming away. Sawyer handed him a glass of iced tea when he got close enough.