* * *
RELEASING HIS HOLD on her, Mark stepped back long enough to take stock of the woman standing in the middle of his bedroom, his erection straining against the fabric of his shorts in response. Never in his wildest fantasies had he ever come across a female quite like Emily Todd.
Her eyes, her hair, her face spoke to his protective side, the innocence he found in her gripping his heart and threatening to never let it go. And her breasts spoke to him in a different way—tantalizing and teasing him with rock-hard nipples that confirmed his desire was reciprocated.
With determination befitting a Jedi warrior, he forced his eyes from her breasts and allowed them to travel south, down her flat and sexy abdomen to the alluring scrap of fabric that separated him from a heat he craved as he’d never craved before. He sank to his knees and guided her panties down her legs with his mouth, letting the garment drop to her ankles so he could taste her sweetness.
Her answering moan of pleasure was followed by the feel of her fingers as they buried themselves in his hair. He wanted this woman. Wanted her now.
Rising to his feet, he steered her hands to the waistband of his shorts, watching her face as she released his erection with a tug. When she was done, he pulled her to him, the heat of their skin mingling as he laid her on the bed and lowered himself to her, their bodies joining effortlessly.
She felt so good and so right as he moved inside her—slowly and gently at first, then with gathering strength and desire. With thrust after thrust he claimed her, the intensity of his efforts making her cry out for more—a request he was all too happy to oblige, until neither one of them could resist any longer, their release coming so strong and so decisively it left his body craving an encore before the spinning in his head had even stopped.
Chapter Nine
It was a full ten minutes or so before Mark opened his eyes, the fleeting confusion in his face at her empty spot in the bed giving way to a smile that warmed her the moment he spotted her standing in the bedroom doorway, wrapped in a bath towel, watching him.
The thin cotton sheet slipped from his chest as he rose on his elbow to give her a more thorough and appreciative once-over. “How long have you been standing there?”
She held her hand to the opening of her towel and picked her way across the clothes-littered floor, her other hand clutching the skirt and halter top she’d rescued from the hallway. “Not long. I—I took a shower in your guest bathroom. I hope that was okay. I got up about an hour ago and did some exercises that made me a little sweaty.”
She could feel his gaze as she bent to retrieve her panties. “Exercises?”
“Uh-huh. Sit-ups, push-ups, that sort of thing.”
“Naked?”
The huskiness of his voice warmed her face, rendering her unable to answer with anything more than a nod.
“Wow.” He dropped onto his back and laced his fingers behind his head, a mischievous smile playing across his lips. “I’m getting worked up just thinking about that.”
She glanced at the part of his body still covered by the sheet, the sudden elevation of the fabric just below his waist confirming his words. She swallowed.
Mark patted her side of the mattress. “Get back in here. I miss you.”
“But my hair’s all wet,” she protested.
“Get back in here.”
She set her recovered clothing on his dresser and made her way around the edge of the bed. “If you’re sure.”
He rose on his elbow a second time, the sheet slipping farther down his well-toned body. “Oh, I’m sure. Trust me. But lose the towel, okay?”
She paused, a sudden burst of self-consciousness making her apprehensive about granting his wish.
“Oh, no, don’t go getting all shy on me now. Your body is exquisite.”
Slowly, she peeled away the soft blue towel and slipped into bed beside him, where he coaxed her onto her side and pulled her back against his chest. She snuggled there, keenly aware of his still-hard length pressed to the base of her back. “It might not always be that way, you know,” she murmured in a voice that was suddenly sleepy.
He kissed the top of her wet head a few times. “What?”
“My body. It could change in lots of ways.”
The pressure of his lips ceased temporarily. “You’ve got a long way to go until you’re old enough to worry about body changes. And even then, I suspect those worries will pass you by, with good reason.”
She rolled over and planted a kiss on the tip of his chin. At his happy moan, she kissed him one more time and then looked up at the ceiling. “I’m not talking about age-related changes, silly. I’m talking about disease-related changes.”
At his silence, she continued, transported back to countless nights and mornings over the past few months when this exact topic had played its way through her thoughts. With no one next to her to hear her fears.
“There are the obvious ones, of course, that most people think of when they hear the words multiple sclerosis. You know, wheelchairs, walkers, a funny lilt to your walk, that sort of thing. Then there’s the chance that I could wake up one day and be temporarily blind, or unable to feel my legs or my arms or even both.”
On a roll, she kept talking, the need to say everything out loud far stronger than she’d realized. “Sure, I know the meds I’m taking three times a week are designed to help stave off the disease as long as possible, and I’m grateful for them. But even those bring their fair share of issues. When I have to take a shot, I try to do it just before bed so I can sleep off the flulike effects. And if I don’t get enough sleep on those nights, I pay for it with aches and pains in the morning. If I fail to take it before bedtime, as was the case last night, then I have to take it in the morning and basically deal with feeling lousy all day.”
She drew a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “And then there’s the bruising and stuff at the shot site.” Shifting ever so slightly, she guided his gaze to the back of her arm, her abdomen, her hip and upper thigh, tapping a small red spot some eight inches above her knee. “You might not be able to see the marks a whole lot right now, unless I just took one, like I did before my shower. But over time, after months and years of injecting myself in the same places again and again? Well, they’ll be impossible to miss regardless of how toned I might—”
A quick, yet persistent buzz cut her off midsentence.
Mark rolled to his left and reached toward the nightstand, retrieving his cell phone from beside the lamp. He looked at the display screen and sat up, flipping the phone open. “Good morning, little man. How’d you sleep?”
For the briefest of moments, Mark’s lack of response to what Emily had shared stung ever so slightly. She’d kept everything to herself for so long it had felt good to know someone else was listening. To go from that to a phone call without so much as a squeeze or nod of acknowledgment was disconcerting.
Then again, he hadn’t asked for the phone call to come at that exact moment, and it was Seth, after all. The same little boy who’d managed to grab hold of her heart with barely more than a smile. Yes, Seth Reynolds was a sweet boy, of that she was sure. She’d seen it in his devotion to his sand castle and the careful thought he’d given to the life he’d have inside its walls if he were truly a prince. She’d seen it in the way he’d listened so intently to his father’s inquiries about her job and her clients while they ate, interjecting a few well-thought-out questions of his own on occasion. She’d seen it in the way he’d hopped do
wn from his chair to retrieve a slip of paper a passing patron had dropped on the ground. She’d seen it in the way he’d shared tales about summer camp and his favorite times with Mark. And she’d seen it in his eyes when she’d first told Mark about her diagnosis.
Kids like Seth didn’t become that way all by themselves. They were shown how by someone who was like that, too.
Stealing a glance in Mark’s direction, she felt a warmth spread throughout her body that had absolutely nothing to do with physical desire and everything to do with genuine affection and admiration.
Maybe she really could frame that final drawing one day....
Maybe there really was a prince who could love his princess no matter what....
Content for the first time in a very long time, she rolled onto her side and drifted off to sleep, the sound of Mark’s voice as he spoke to his son the best lullaby and postinjection anti-ache ointment she could ever imagine.
* * *
“SO TELL ME WHAT YOU DID with Gam last night. Did you get pizza?”
“Yupper doodle! And ice cream, too.”
Mark closed his eyes at the happiness in his son’s sweet voice, allowing it to soak into every pore of his being, and feeling his shoulders and neck muscles relax as it did. He was grateful for the result, but perplexed by the need.
He’d had an amazing time with Emily last night. She’d been both fun and funny at the barbecue, patient and encouraging on the climbing walls, and beyond his wildest expectations in his bed. They’d made love several times throughout the night, her enthusiasm and passion elevating the encounter into the best-ever category. And even when he’d awakened to find her watching him, he’d been happy. Truly happy.
Yet here he was, sitting inches from her sheet-covered body, and feeling the tension roll in all over again. It was subtle in nature, residing primarily in his upper body and temples, but it was present, nonetheless.
“And you wanna know what else we did, Daddy?”
Why on earth was he tense? It made no sense at all.
“Daddy?”
Mark shifted his focus from Emily to the dresser on the opposite wall. There, beside the pile of clothes she had placed on top, was the picture of Seth and Sally that greeted him each morning. It had been taken on their last outing together before the cancer had confined his wife to bed. Their smiles, so like one another’s, still brought one to Mark’s lips, too. Yet today, unlike all the other times he’d looked at that same picture and experienced the same reaction, the joy was fleeting.
Because there, on his son’s face, was something he’d overlooked each of the other thousand or so times he’d stared at that photo.
Seth’s mouth might have been smiling—a by-product, no doubt, of having spent a special day with his beloved mom—but his eyes weren’t. In them there was sadness—the kind of sadness only those who’d witnessed the suffering of a loved one could ever truly understand.
Mark swiped at the tears he felt forming, and willed himself to concentrate.
“Daddy? Are you still there?”
He tightened his jaw in determination. “I’m here, Seth.”
Focus…
“Gam and me had two whole bowls of ice cream!”
There were so many things Mark wished he could go back and change from the moment Sally had received her diagnosis. Things about himself and the way he’d handled the situation that still haunted him six months after her passing. But of all the mistakes he’d made, all the regrets that had him pacing his bedroom at all hours of the night, the one he shed the most tears over was the one that concerned his son.
Or, rather, the way he’d let his son down during the most difficult time of the little boy’s life.
“Did you hear me, Daddy?”
Focus, damn it…
“I’m sorry, little man. Can you say it again?”
“Gam and me had two whole bowls of ice cream! With whipped cream and candy pieces on top!”
“You mean one for her and one for you?” he asked.
“No! Two for each of us! And you know what else? Gam’s new frigerfrator came and it was in a great big box!”
Mark resisted the urge to correct his son’s pronunciation of refrigerator and addressed his enthusiasm, instead. “Sounds to me like you’re more excited about the box than you are about her refrigerator.”
“It’s really, really big, Daddy. Bigger than me, and even bigger than Gam if she could stand up.”
Closing his eyes, he imagined the smile that accompanied his son’s words. He’d taken Seth’s smiles for granted once. Now he knew better. “Wow. That must be a really big box.”
“It is! And you know what? Gam said we can get out my crayons and turn it into a castle that I can actually go inside!”
Before Mark could weigh in, Seth chattered on. “And then guess what, Daddy? Guess what she told me?”
“What?”
“She said we can keep it in the playroom for as long as I want!”
He made a mental note to have some flowers on hand when his mother dropped Seth off that evening. Maybe even a box of candy, too.
“I love you, Seth,” he whispered. “You know that, right?”
“Yupper doodle! And I love you, too, Daddy. Bunches and bunches and bunches!”
Long after his son had hung up, Mark held the phone to his ear, his focus trained on the photograph of Seth and Sally and the haunted look he was slowly but surely trying to eradicate from his son’s deep blue eyes.
A warm hand on his bare back made him jump, and he snapped the phone closed.
“Everything okay with Seth?” Emily asked in a voice thick with sleep.
“Yeah.” He propped his pillow against the headboard and reclined against it with a quiet sigh.
Emily rolled onto her side and smiled up at him. “So did he have some more pepperoni pizza?”
“Uh—what?”
Her smile faltered a smidge as he turned his head and met her gaze. “Seth. Did he have pizza last night?”
“I think so. I don’t really remember.”
Glancing back at the picture of Sally and Seth, he sighed again, this time more loudly and with a hint of impatience that made Emily sit up, his sheets drawn around her chest.
“Is there a problem with Seth?”
He looked from the image of Sally to the one of Seth in her arms, the hurt and loss of innocence in his son’s eyes clawing at Mark’s insides in a way he simply couldn’t ignore.
And in that instant, he knew what had been nagging at his subconscious.
The tension he’d been feeling when Seth’s call came in wasn’t a coincidence. It was a warning bell. One he needed to heed before it was too late. He owed him that much.
Emily’s hand closed on his and squeezed. “Mark? Is there a problem with Seth?”
“No.” He cast about for the best way to remove the Band-Aid her presence had placed across his heart, and finally settled on the tried-and-true yank method that got it all over in one shot. “There’s a problem with us, Emily.”
“Us?” she echoed, all sleepiness slipping from her voice in favor of confusion. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”
He bit back the urge to halt the conversation and pull her into his arms before he ruined everything, because he had to say it. “I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
He forced himself to meet her eyes. “This. You know, with us.” He moved his hand back and forth betwee
n them. “Seth deserves…better.”
A wave of self-loathing washed over him as his words hit their mark, but it was short-lived. His responsibility, his duty, was to Seth. It had to be.
“Better?” she echoed in confusion. “Mark, I don’t understand what you’re saying. Please tell me what’s going on. Everything was fine five minutes ago.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“Yes, it was. And you know that as well as I do.”
He had to make her understand. “I have to make a better choice for Seth. It’s my job.”
“A better choice?” she whispered through suddenly clenched teeth. “Wait a minute. I get this now. This isn’t about finding someone better. It’s about finding someone healthy, isn’t it? Someone who doesn’t have to take shots, or have bruises all over her body? Someone who won’t slow you down or embarrass you because she slurs her speech in front of your friends.”
When he didn’t respond, she scooted to the edge of the bed and traded the sheet for the towel she’d shed on the floor. With three easy strides, she crossed the room and pulled the pile of clothes off his dresser.
He fought back tears as he watched her march toward the door, the sight of her retreating back making it hard to breathe. But he had to let her go. He really had no choice. His life choices weren’t about him. Not anymore.
Yet as she reached the doorway, he couldn’t help but call her back one more time. For one more glimpse at the ray of sunshine that had graced his life and his bed for one amazing evening he knew he’d never forget.
“Emily?”
Without turning to look at him, she paused there.
“Please know that the Folks Helping Folks Foundation is here to help you in whatever way you need as this disease progresses. It’s what we do, and we’re really very good at it. And the Longfeld donation I told you about yesterday? That could really help you in ways you may not even be able to realize yet.” He could hear his voice growing hoarser with each passing word, the overwhelming sadness at losing this woman making it difficult to speak. “So, please, give it some thought. If you decide to come on board and let us help, I’ll assign Bob to your case—he’s the best. He’d take good care of anyone, but if I give him a heads-up that I know you, he’ll take even better care of you. I promise.”
Storybook Dad (Harlequin American Romance) Page 9