by J. S. Scott
Wishing he could express his desire to share all things intimate with her, his obsession to be close to her, he tugged her back onto a built-in lounge seat. After sitting and leaning back, water lapping at his torso, he pulled her between his legs. Molding her naked body to his, her back to his front, he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist to anchor her. He nearly sighed in ecstasy as she relaxed against him, her head resting against his shoulder. He buried his face in her hair, breathing in her tantalizing smell for the first time in three days, feeling like he was finally where he belonged.
“I’ve just never done that when someone was watching. I told you I don’t have much experience.” She sighed. “I missed you. I know I pushed you away. I shouldn’t have. I just wanted you to share what happened with me, to help me understand what happened the other night. I’m really sorry, Simon. I-”
“Shhh...stop!” His mouth to her ear, he whispered, “It isn’t you, Kara.” Hell, it made his chest hurt to hear her apologizing when he should be begging her to forgive him. He’d treated her poorly. Shut her out. He just wasn’t used to a woman who actually wanted to be close to him, a woman who actually gave a shit enough to try. “It’s my problem. Something that I’ve never told anyone. Shit! I never even told the shrink that Mom made me see after the whole thing happened. Not the whole truth, anyway.”
“Helen had you see a counselor?” she questioned in a low, thoughtful voice. Her hands covering his arms that were wrapped around her waist, she squeezed gently in a comforting gesture.
He shivered, even though the water lapping over their skin was still hot. Taking in a deep breath, he exhaled slowly, knowing that at this point...he was all in. It was time to risk it all, throw all his cards on the table and pray that he came out the winner, that she cared enough to stay with him. Truth was, he did trust Kara. But, did he want to talk about his shame and irrational fears? Oh, hell no...he absolutely fucking didn’t want to talk about it. But his obsession was to be close to the woman he was holding in his arms, the woman who was leaning back against him with complete faith and trust, with a gentleness and patience that had him in awe of her.
Nothing between us. Ever.
“Yeah, she did. I saw Dr. Evans for over a year.” His voice was hoarse and hesitant as his instincts warred with his emotions. “Mom wanted to make sure I was okay emotionally.”
She squirmed back against him, pushing her body tightly against his, getting as close as she possibly could. Her hands slid down his arms, finding his hand under the water, entwining their fingers together.
He breathed in the scent of her as she tilted her head, resting it against his jaw, her fragrance surrounding him.
“Simon?” she whispered softly.
“Yeah?” He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze.
“I love you.” Her voice was barely audible. “I love everything that you are, every part of you. Nothing that happened in your distant past is going to change that. I even love you when you’re bossy.”
“I’m never bossy,” he answered automatically, the walls around his heart crumbling, allowing his heart to soar. Holy shit! He had wanted her to say it, but he had never imagined that it would feel this damn amazing to hear it. He wasn’t sure what he had ever done to deserve a woman like her, but he wasn’t stupid. He was keeping her. “You know that I’ll never let you go now, don’t you?” It wasn’t really a question, but he figured that she should know his intentions.
“I didn’t tell you so that you would feel obligated. I just wanted you to know.” In a lighter tone, she added, “And you are bossy. Now tell me about Dr. Evans.”
Obligated? She wasn’t an obligation. She was his whole damn life. His arms tightened around her convulsively.
She loves me!
He relaxed, the tension draining from his body. Suddenly, talking about the past didn’t seem quite so difficult. Yeah, he’d much rather take his woman to bed and show her exactly how much he worshipped her, but he wanted to do it with full disclosure. He needed to explain what had happened the other night, and the only way to do it was to talk about the past.
She loves me.
He started to talk.
“Before I tell you about Dr. Evans, I guess I should start at the beginning.”
Kara nodded, not wanting to interrupt the flow of his words with any questions or comments. She hadn’t meant to confess her love, but she hadn’t been able to help herself, hadn’t been able to hold back the words. And she didn’t regret it. She was weary from trying to hide it, and no man deserved to be loved more than Simon.
“My father died a month before the incident. Overdose. Drugs and alcohol. He was foolish enough to steal drugs from one of the biggest drug dealers on the West Coast, a guy he ran errands for or distributed drugs for in return for enough drugs and booze to feed his own habit. He rarely got paid in cash, and even if he did, he didn’t use it to feed his family or his wife.” His voice was low, seething with distain for the man who had fathered him. “Mom tried her best, but she had dropped out of high school and couldn’t get anything but minimum-wage jobs. She did whatever she could to feed us and keep dear old dad’s business away from our shitty apartment and away from me and Sam. Mostly, she kept us out of trouble, making us see that we could be something more, something better.” His voice cracked, his adoration for his mother evident.
Everything that Helen had told her made sense now. Helen blamed herself for not being able to give her boys a better childhood. Kara frowned as she remembered the sorrow in Helen’s eyes when she had talked about her boys, their crappy childhood. Didn’t Helen realize that she had given her boys something to cling to in their childhood, something they desperately needed to survive intact? Helen had given Simon and Sam love...and hope.
Simon’s voice strengthened as he continued. “Rose was my childhood friend, really my only friend other than Sam. She grew up in the apartment next to ours. She was a year older than me.” He shifted uncomfortably, his foot bouncing in the water as though he were nervous. “We were as close as friends can be until my hormones started to rage and I started to see her as a female. I cared about her a lot and I thought she cared about me.”
“So you did have a girlfriend when you were a teenager?” She wasn’t sure where he was going with his explanation, but she sensed that it was important to his history.
“Yes and no. I guess. We kissed, we held hands. I had horny, teenage-boy wet dreams about her every night. I wanted to get laid for the first time and I wasn’t exactly an attractive teenager. I was quiet and skinny, not much to look at. Clumsy as hell. I read a lot. Mom made sure Sam and I had books from the library or reading programs. But Rose seemed to like me even though I was a gawky, ugly kid.”
Kara’s heart contracted, trying to picture a young, awkward teenage Simon. She was willing to bet her nursing career that he had been adorable.
“She started changing when she turned seventeen. She dropped out of school, started hanging with my father’s crowd, wouldn’t talk to me anymore or was so distant that she acted like I was nobody.”
She squeezed his hands. “That must have hurt.”
“It did.” He didn’t bother to deny it. “I knew she was using, stoned out of her mind most of the time. I begged her to let me help her, but she wouldn’t listen. She just laughed in my face, saying that there was nothing I could do because I was as poor as she was. And she was right, damn it! But I wanted to help her get clean. And stop working the streets.”
“She became a prostitute?” Oh God, poor Simon.
She couldn’t see him, but she felt his shoulders lift in a shrug. “She had to pay for her habit somehow and I know she gave some of the money to her mom to help her younger brother.”
“You didn’t give up, did you?” Kara didn’t need an answer. She already knew. Simon was stubborn and tenacious, his rescuer tendencies still alive and well. It wasn’t in his nature
to stop trying.
“No. I wanted to believe that the Rose I knew was still inside her, waiting to come out again.” He snorted. “It didn’t matter how many times she tried to avoid me or told me fuck off, I still tried. I was pretty naive, I guess.”
No, you weren’t. You were good, even though life had dealt you a crappy beginning. You were a dreamer who wanted to believe that everyone could be saved. You must have been as guileless, honest, and direct as you are now. You just didn’t hide it as well then.
“Having hope doesn’t make you naive, Simon.”
He laughed, but it was self-deprecating. “I was gullible. I didn’t see her for about a month after my father died. Then one night, she showed up at our apartment, dressed in a short sexy skirt and a friendly smile. For a teenage male virgin...that was all it took for me. Mom was working and Sam had already gone to Florida to start a construction job there. I was getting ready to graduate from high school and Sam had made enough money working construction to bring us to Florida to join him.”
“You were graduating from high school at the age of sixteen?”
“I skipped a grade. Twice. School was never difficult for me,” he answered in a sheepish voice, like the fact that he was smart embarrassed him.
Why was she not surprised that he was a boy genius too? “So, what happened after she came in?”
“She came on to me hot and heavy. I responded like a sixteen-year-old who had never gotten laid. She had me in my bedroom within minutes. She was experienced and I let her take the lead. She opened my fly and had my dick out of my pants and a condom on me before I really knew what was happening.” He laughed, but there was no humor in the hollow sound. “Not that I would have objected. I had a beautiful woman above me, ready to fuck me senseless. I was a teenager in complete ecstasy.”
Oh. Dear. God.
Kara bit back a horrified gasp. Her suspicions had to be wrong. It couldn’t have happened that way.
“She had the knife hidden in her bra.” His voice trembled.
She wasn’t wrong, and the nausea started to rise in her throat.
“So there I was, getting my first fuck, drowning in erotic bliss, never once thinking that there was something strange about the whole situation. She grabbed the knife and started stabbing the moment I started to come. It took me by surprise. She had stabbed me so many times before I realized what was happening that I didn’t have a chance to defend myself.” His chest was heaving, his voice strangled and raw.
Kara’s whole body quivering with emotion, she turned in his arms, straddled his thighs and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Why?” she asked, her question coming in a short sob. “Why would she do that?” Burying her face in his neck, she let her tears flow unchecked down her face. All she could think about was the vulnerable teenage Simon, lying in a pool of blood, dying, just because he was a hormonal, typical young man.
Wrapping his arms tightly around her, he answered in a graveled voice, “Revenge. My father died before he could be punished for stealing from a powerful boss in an organized and huge cartel. The organization was sending a message, letting people know what happens to a person or their family if they try to steal from them. They couldn’t let my father’s bad deed go unpunished. He died before they could send that message. I was just a substitute.”
“But why Rose?”
“The boss knew we had been friends since childhood. Her loyalty was being tested. She was pretty deeply involved in the organization. They threatened to kill her mother and brother if she didn’t kill me.” Surprisingly, there was no bitterness in his voice.
Shaken to the depths of her soul, she choked out, “Is she in jail?”
“She’s dead.” His voice was flat. “She fled as soon as I passed out from blood loss, obviously convinced that I was a goner. She went straight to an alley, took a lethal amount of drugs and slit her wrists with the same knife she used to stab me. They found a suicide note and her confession in her pocket. She begged forgiveness from both her mother and mine, saying that she had to protect her family. She never knew that I survived. Mom came home a few minutes later and found me. If she hadn’t, I would have been dead.”
Unable to contain her horror, she sobbed into Simon’s neck, crying for all of the pain that he had suffered, both emotionally and physically. How did one survive a betrayal like that? Especially by a friend, a woman he had adored. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” he asked, sounding perplexed. “You didn’t stab me.” He rubbed his hand up and down her back. “Don’t cry. I don’t like it.” His voice was demanding, but he rested his head against hers, his touch on her back gentle and comforting.
A sad smile crossed her lips as she tried to rein in her emotions. His comment was so...Simon. He had no idea why she was crying for him, why she hurt for him. Being loved by anyone other than his family was completely alien to him. “Tell me about your injuries?”
“I had stab wounds. Lots of them.” His voice held a slightly teasing note. He paused and asked in a more hesitant, gruff voice, “Are you going to cry again if I tell you?”
Oh, good Lord. He’s telling me about the most traumatic event of his life and he’s worried about whether or not it will make me cry?
“I’ll try to contain myself. Tell me.”
“I was in the hospital for a while. Lucky for me, Rose was a lousy murderer. She managed to miss most of my vital organs and some of the wounds were shallow. They had to do surgery and repair a few organs, but I lived through it. As soon as I was well enough, Sam moved Mom and me to Tampa.” He breathed a long, masculine sigh.
“Were you scared?” she whispered against his neck, still visualizing a young, frightened, injured Simon. Her arms tightened around his shoulders, wishing she could have been there to comfort him.
“Honestly, I barely remember any of it.” He shook his head slightly. “Sam said Mom was a total wreck. The only thing I remember was being ashamed when I was finally coherent. And sad because Rose was dead.”
Her head jerked back abruptly in shock. Searching his eyes, confused, she asked, “Why? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I was duped because I was horny. I was thinking with the head below my waist instead of the one above it. Rose coming on to me wasn’t logical. It didn’t make any sense. I should have been suspicious. Christ! All she had said to me in months was to go to hell. Should have known something wasn’t right. But I didn’t think about anything but getting off.” His face was dark and tortured. “I was pissed at myself. I put my mom and Sam through hell because I was stupid. I knew better. I grew up in the neighborhood. I sure as hell knew how to watch my own back.”
Her palm lifted to his face, stroking over his jaw, realizing that he had been a man in a boy’s body when he was injured, expecting himself to make rational decisions even when his hormones were raging. Didn’t he realize, although he may have had the intelligence of an older man, his body had still been young, his maturity still that of a sixteen-year-old boy? “Simon...you were sixteen. Still a boy. You may have been a boy genius, but you were still a teenager.”
“Yeah, and I didn’t grow up to be exactly...uh...normal.” He caught her hand that was roaming over the stubble on his face and brought it to his mouth. He kissed her palm gently and entwined their fingers, resting their conjoined hands over his heart.
“No, you didn’t. You grew up to be extraordinary. You have reason not to trust easily. What happened with Dr. Evans?” Sure, he needed to have control, but given the circumstances surrounding the traumatic event, she was willing to bet that anyone would have their demons from that experience. She knew she would.
“He made me talk. I hated it, but I went every week to make my mom feel better. After a while, it got easier. He helped me through my feelings about Rose’s death and about my father. But I never told him what really happened. I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell anyone. Everyone as
sumed that Rose came in through an unlocked door and stabbed me while I was sleeping...and I just let them continue to think that. It seemed easier.” His body tensed. “It was a coward’s way out.”
“But there must have been signs at the scene. The condom and-”
“Apparently, Rose had some sort of feelings for me, some guilt. There was no condom and my dick was in my pants. No one ever assumed that it was anything but an attack on me while I was asleep. A revenge hit against my father. You’re the only person who knows. I couldn’t even tell Sam.” His voice trailed off in a husky whisper.
Her heart ached for him, her soul needing to somehow comfort him. Pulling her hand from his, she turned his face to hers, forcing him to meet her eyes. “Listen to me. You were attacked when you were young and vulnerable. You have no reason to feel guilty or ashamed. Not one bit of it was your fault. I understand why you have trust issues. I understand why you panicked the other night.” She saw doubt in his eyes and it pissed her off. “But know this...you survived and grew into a gorgeous, sexy, brilliant, successful man in spite of the fact that you got a raw deal when you were younger. You’re the most incredible man I’ve ever known. Do you understand me!?” Her statement was fierce and her eyes were shooting fire. Damn it, he needed to get it through his thick head that he was someone special.
His eyes grew warmer and his lips twitched. “Yeah. I got it. Can we go back to the sexy part?”
She rolled her eyes. Trust Simon to focus in on only the sex part of her statement.
“Is that the only part you heard?” she replied, exasperated.
“No. But it was the most interesting part.” He grinned at her unashamedly.
Frustrated, she scooped up a handful of water and dropped it on his head. “I’m trying to explain something to you here.”
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her back into his body, creating a ripple in the tub that had water lapping against their skin in a gentle caress. Eyes heated and intense, he speared her with a look that spoke of possession, desire that ran much deeper than lust. “Do you want to know what I understand?”