Breaking Her No-Dating Rule

by Amalie Berlin

  Max thought it had been put there for him, naturally, and ran over to lie down in the middle.

  “No, Max. Go lie down.” Anson ushered the big dog off the bed, then bent to unfasten his boots so he could shed the snow suit and be a little more comfortable on the floor bed. It also gave him an excuse to get under the quilt with her once she’d settled with it. “What were you three talking about?”

  “I already talked a bunch.”

  “Okay. Me first.” He pulled her against his side and anchored an arm around her waist. “When I was ten I was lost on the big mountain for several days with my mother during a storm,” he said without preamble, since it seemed like the easiest way to start this story.

  She looked up at him, her eyes going unfocused beneath frowning golden brows. Not really looking at him—that was the look of someone searching her memory. Did she remember hearing the story? Had he become a tale told to frighten local children into right outdoor behavior? It was something he never talked about, so the idea had never occurred to him.

  “Did you hear about that?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe...I’m not sure.”

  His relief surprised him.

  “We crawled under a ledge to get out of the snow. The ledge wasn’t small, but it was very close to the ground. Too close for us to do much besides lie there on our backs and wait for the storm to pass. It took a long time. By the time it was past I was drifting in and out of consciousness. My mother...she died.”

  Ellory looked down to where his legs disappeared beneath the blankets and with one hand she found his closest foot. By chance it happened to be the one with the most damage. The one she’d been looking at in the massage room before he’d kissed her.

  He felt her hand curl around the remaining toes and squeeze, but she didn’t say anything. She just rubbed his disfigured foot, which he’d really rather she not touch at all—he didn’t like anyone touching his feet.

  Before he could stop her, she’d snagged the top edge of the sock and pulled it down and off his foot. Anson had to work not to say anything or stop her. Not that she was going to say or do something cruel, but he just didn’t like how exposed it made him feel to open up about this stuff, to let someone see the mark of his shame.

  She wouldn’t know that part. He hadn’t told her everything.

  “You touch everyone,” he said as her hand curled over the decades-old scar.

  “Yes. I touch everyone.” She finally spoke as she caressed his foot and leaned her head on his shoulder. “People need to be touched in order to be healthy. Touching heals and...” She started to say something else but stopped short.

  He’d finally started to understand most of what she said without asking for clarification, but when she left off thoughts entirely, he still needed help. “And what?”

  The woman was like an exotic creature he had no chance of understanding if he didn’t ask all the questions that other people would leave alone.

  “That’s how I express love.”

  That sounded like a declaration. Only it couldn’t be, they barely knew one another. And she touched everyone. Compassion. She meant compassion.

  “I can’t imagine how alone they’re all feeling right now, even if they’re in it together. Especially Chelsea. The man she loves is still out there because he wanted to save her. I want her to know that I feel for her and that there are people here who want to help her through this if she wants the help,” Ellory murmured, but she didn’t sound like herself. “Sometimes it’s harder for someone to hear words than just to offer your touch and presence for them.”

  Like she was touching him now. It was still all about how he was doing, making him feel connected to someone and better, whether or not he deserved her compassion.

  “It’s good. I had teachers in school who made a point of telling some...well, a good number of the students to touch their patients.”

  “All book, no heart?”

  “Something like that.”

  She may be all heart. Based on their fight earlier, he knew she wasn’t just sad for him and the patients. She was struggling too. He held back telling her more, and pretended it was in case he should need to barter the information with her later, because he really needed to know why she was crying. “Why were you crying earlier?”

  Her eyes warmed again, giving Ellory warning that tears were imminent. She laughed. “So annoying, you can just mention tears and they spring right back up.” A sniff and she swiped her eyes again, mentally cursing her lack of control.

  “Only when you’ve stopped crying because you’re avoiding what upset you.” The gentleness in his voice helped. At least it pushed away the embarrassment she felt as the result of tearing up.

  “Mira and Chelsea were talking about being in love,” Ellory began, trying to find words that fit what she felt so she’d actually know what she was thinking. “These moments of insight when they knew they were in love...”

  Anson’s arm came around her again and gave a squeeze—encouragement to talk, not that she needed encouragement, she just needed words. It was sweet anyway.

  “Started thinking about someone you lost?”

  If only that were the case...

  “No. I realized I never loved any of the men I have been with. Not one of them. I never had that realization of love.” She couldn’t look at him. The confession sounded terrible enough to her without seeing disgust or something worse in his mossy green eyes. “Which is horrible, I know. And makes me sound like a—”

  He shushed her. “It doesn’t make you sound like anything.”

  “Not something bad? Because you’d think I would’ve loved some of them, they were all perfect for me in some way. We were...” She started to claim they were just alike, but the words sounded false. “We had a lot of the same ideas and beliefs. And they were always doing something good. And they taught me...”

  Anson let her work through things at her own pace. She tended to work through things out loud, and he suffered her pauses with patience she only recognized when she’d fallen into her thoughts long enough to make him prompt her. “Elle?”

  “I know why I’ve fallen apart since I came home.”

  He could hear the disgust in her voice, and it was all Anson could do to keep from dragging the information from her.

  “What did they teach you?”

  “They taught me their habits. We usually lived someplace where simplicity was the only option, and I just did whatever they did. If they had fruit salad in the morning, that became my routine too.”

  The sigh that came from her was so forlorn his first instinct was to change the subject. Don’t make her dig that deep—he hadn’t dug that deep for her earlier. The difference was he knew how he felt, he knew what had happened, he knew what he’d done. He’d examined it all so many times the memories barely made him feel anything any more—except shame.

  But it was clear her process was one of discovery. Not something to be shut down. Clean out the wound so it can heal.

  “Whose habits are you following now?”

  “My father’s. And they keep invading what I do. Like when I was apologizing for the cocoa. That was a habit he gave me.”

  “How so?”

  “When I failed to follow the rules in some fashion, his favorite punishment was a diet of junk food. Because if I behaved like the rest of the parasites on earth, I should eat what they did so at least I’d not live very long. Some kids got grounded, I got fast food, the greasier and more processed the better.”

  Anson felt his mouth fall open. The psychological warfare of that made it horrifying. Other kids would rejoice to eat candy and snack foods, but if she’d been raised believing that they would kill her—and that her father wanted to her to die young because she didn’t live up to his expectations... That was a special kind of twisted.

  “There are a bunch of ways to live the kind of life I need to live, but I come here and I fall into this pattern of extremes. It’s ridiculous that the place I lo
ve more than anywhere on this earth turns me into a basket case. I want to stay, but I don’t know how I can if I can’t get control of this. Figure out how else to be. Relax my rules. Or actually just figure out what my rules really are. Right now, central heat feels like a gateway drug! It’s not even something I can control here, but it’s like some slippery slope that’s going to make me give up my beliefs or compromise my ideals. So I push to the other extreme, as hard as I can, and...”

  Her words died, but he knew it for what it was now: where her epiphanies dried up. She burrowed closer to him and he tightened his arm, for once uncertain of what to do, or even to say to help her.

  Max finally picked up on the tension in the room and invited himself to the bed with them, where he could plop his big heavy head onto where their knees met.

  Ellory took it as a request to be petted, and obliged him, comforting the dog who wanted to comfort her. It was exactly what they were doing—a cycle of comforting and no one fixing anything.

  “Change one thing you’re doing,” Anson said, the only solution he could come up with that didn’t involve putting his fist through something living and infinitely more deserving than the drywall.

  “What thing?”

  “I don’t know. The sprouts. Get rid of the sprouts.” It was the first thought that came to him.

  “But I like the sprouts.”

  A gust of wind rattled the window, timely and a reminder. “Get a new snow suit, one you’ll actually wear.” There was a ski shop downstairs. She could do that immediately, which would give him some peace of mind.

  “We’re not dating, but how is that any different than me just adopting your habits?”

  “It’s not just my habit. My habit is an orange reflective snow suit. A regular suit is the habit of everyone who hits the slopes during a Colorado winter.” He strenuously avoided using the word ‘normal.’ She didn’t need those kinds of comparisons right now. “You get a suit so you’ll be better protected, and you’ll be changing something small. And I’ll do something for you in return. I’ll do...spirit quest stuff. Just no drugs.”

  “Ugh, stop calling it a drug. It’s a natural decoction,” she grunted, pulling back so she could look him in the eye. “You’ll do spirit quest stuff if I get a new snow suit?”

  “That’s what I said.” It might not solve anything, but it was something that they could do that might let her feel like she was helping him too, which balanced the margins. She didn’t need to know his margins could never actually be balanced.

  “You could also look for a job once the storm passes. I know a few centers I could recommend you to.”

  “I don’t know if I want to work at a center. Regimented schedules are hard for me.”

  “Okay. Then make some plan. Come up with what your ideal situation would be if you decided to stick around.” He wanted her to stick around, God help him.

  She laid her head back down on his shoulder and resumed stroking Max’s snout so he’d stop making big sad eyes at them both. “What are you going to do for upholding your end?”

  “You tell me. Where do we start?”

  “Meditation.”

  *

  The rest of the day passed at a lazy pace. No emergencies dragged them out of their meditation, and Anson only really left when it was time for him to make another round to check on everyone. Just because no one was in a state of life-threatening duress it didn’t mean he slacked off on his duties. They all ate together, and Ellory managed to make something that didn’t send her into an OCD tailspin. Mira provided a key and Anson helped her pick out a snow suit from the shop—not too big but big enough to hold in some heat—and set his mind at ease.

  When watching the fire got old, they spent time in front of the window, watching the snow swirl and blow.

  And he held her hand. All the time. When they were alone in the room, Anson held her hand. She always had known that touch healed, reminded you that you were part of something bigger, a way to share strength. She’d always believed those things, even if she didn’t feel it as deeply as she wanted to.

  But as they sat by the fire, saying nothing, his support flowed into her and carried away the loneliness she’d been feeling since...always.

  As night came, Ellory felt content for the first time in a long time. It probably wouldn’t last. Maybe not even the night, but it was a start—like glimpsing the end of your journey while still on the mountaintop, with days of hard travel still to make.

  With their thermals still on, they stretched out for the night, Anson’s big body behind her, matching her bend for bend, his arm around her waist. “Wake me up if you have bad dreams,” she said over her shoulder, then settled down to the smile-inducing feeling of his nose burrowing into her hair.

  “I should get it out of the way. Braid it.”

  “Don’t you dare,” he mumbled, his arms tightening.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ANSON LET HIS EYES close and tried to make his body relax. She felt too good, she smelled too good—especially in this position, where he got the sweet, natural scent of her beneath the long sun-kissed honey locks he’d like to wrap himself up in.

  So he’d managed to avoid kissing her today, which didn’t mean much considering where they’d ended up anyway. People who weren’t already feeling intimate didn’t cuddle. Two people who just happened to be sharing a bed and who didn’t want more than that...they lay with as big a gap as they could between them.

  “This is a joke,” Ellory muttered, pulling thoughts right out of his mind. “I can’t sleep like this. If you don’t want me, if you don’t want to want me, or whatever, then I should sleep on the couch.”

  “You’re not sleeping on the couch.” And, by God, neither was he. Anson sighed into her hair, keeping his arms around her.

  Ellory looked over her shoulder at him. “You know what I would be doing right now if we were dating and you were being this big of a brat?”

  “I’m not being a brat.”

  She snorted and then beneath his hands he felt her tummy do that roll thing again, which pushed his thoughts further down that path they should not travel.

  “You’re the brat.”

  She rolled her tummy again. “Did you know there are a whole bunch of ways to move your tummy and your hips? It’s about controlling muscles, not just the abs but accentuating the movement of the hips and the curve from waist to hip.”

  “You’re playing dirty.”

  “I haven’t even begun to play dirty.” She laughed and then did something with her hips that rubbed that firm round little tush against his groin. In an instant he was hard, and just like that he stopped caring whether or not he deserved her attention and the amazing womanly body pressed against him. He had it. If Fate was making a mistake, then Fate would be to blame.

  Except...

  “I don’t have condoms.”

  “I do!” She scrambled out of his reach and leaned off the mattress, one hand on the floor so the other could reach her bag and drag it over. The position gave him the best view of her backside, and before this second he’d have never said thermal underwear was sexy.

  “Your thermals are too snug. They’re supposed to be loose to keep you warm...”

  “Shhh.” She flung condoms at him, and then started peeling those thermals off, starting with the top.

  The room was fairly warm, but as the shirt whisked over her head, he could see that she was a little chilled. The shirt landed on the floor and she was about to strip right out of everything else, her thumbs in the waistband of her leggings, when he grabbed her by the hips and dragged her back to him on the bed.

  “I get to take those off.” After he kissed her. After he got to explore the gorgeous flesh he’d already been granted the pleasure of.

  *

  As he slid her beneath him, Ellory reached for the hem of his shirt, pulling it over his head. While her confidence might be hit or miss in other areas of her life, one thing she’d never had a compunction about was nudi
ty—her own body or the nude bodies of others. With the kind of life she led, there were a great many communal activities, and her actual between-missions job was massaging frequently naked bodies...

  Since the minute Anson had yelled at her and dragged her inside from the cold, she’d been trying not to think naughty thoughts about him. Seemed like forever had passed since then. She might not have the most accurate concept of time, but she was pretty sure that her massage of his shoulder and back had lasted three whole years. And in the intervening years since she’d had him on her table—yesterday—she’d missed the sight of him.

  As soon as the thermal top was off, she did what she’d been itching to do since the start and ran her hands over his chest, lightly scratching her fingernails through the whorls of dark hair that danced over his glorious torso.

  “You’re beautiful.” She hadn’t meant to say that, but the smile he gave her made her glad it had slipped out...so glad she almost said it again. Instead, what came out was, “Let’s take off your pants!”

  Anson laughed again and pinned her hands above her head, levering himself over until his deliciously manly chest and belly flattened to her own.

  But one kiss, and the playfulness was gone. The third kiss was the charm. In the space of a single heartbeat her thoughts turned as chaotic as her body became needy.

  Heat.

  Hunger.

  And on the horizon the likelihood of hurt. Nothing good could come of this. It was not dating. It wasn’t a relationship. It wasn’t anything except the moment.

  Forbidden fruit, the allure of what could never be.

  His tongue dipped into her mouth and he let go of her hands so he could lean off her again and remove her bottoms, every inch of flesh exposed burning with awareness.

  Under any other circumstances she couldn’t have him and he would never want her. But right now he needed someone to lighten his load and she needed to feel connected to someone—that’s what they’d be to each other.

  Being the leader meant keeping up appearances to those who looked to him for something. All Ellory could think to look to him for right now was some relief. And maybe being able to save him from something, since she couldn’t freaking figure out how to save her own damned self.