by Sarah Morgan
But before he’d only ever cared about pleasing himself and his partner.
He’d never wanted anything more.
Now, for the first time in his life, he resented the hollow emptiness inside him that had kept him safe for so long.
He wanted to fill it with her, he wanted to warm himself on her and thaw out the ice-cold center that had somehow become part of who he was.
He wanted to feel.
But because he knew he couldn’t, the pressure grew. “You should take better care of yourself. You need to leave.”
“If you want me to leave, I’ll leave, but first I’m going to ask you the same question I asked you the other night in the forest. The one you didn’t answer. If we’d met for the first time a few weeks ago, what would we be doing now?”
That was easy. “We’d be having sex without coming up for air and—” He sucked in a breath as she pulled her top over her head and slid her cargoes over her hips. All woman, she stepped out of them and stood in front of him in nothing more than silk and lace.
He couldn’t see or hear past the roaring of lust in his head. “What the hell are you doing? You said you were going to leave.”
“I said I’d leave if that was what you wanted. It isn’t.” She pushed her clothes away with the toe of her bare foot and his mouth dried.
“I told you—”
“You told me that sex is nothing more than a physical workout for you. You can’t feel. I know. I heard you. So let’s share a physical workout. Exercise is good for you, it’s a medically proven fact and I’d rather have a naked marathon with you than pump iron in the gym. And, Zach, you’re going to feel something—” She gave him a smile that made it impossible for him to think.
Up until the point where he’d met Brittany, his life had been about taking care of himself when no one else would, keeping himself safe and alive. Other people’s feelings had come low on his agenda, mostly because he’d grown up knowing that he was the only person looking out for himself. His connection with women had been on one level only, a physical one. The only time he’d broken that rule had been Brittany and even though he knew she hadn’t really loved him, he knew he’d hurt her and he’d regretted it.
But she gave him no opportunity for more argument because she stepped forward and he felt the silken brush of her skin against his and breathed in the scent of her hair.
He was still fighting the crashing waves of lust when he felt her fingers on the waistband of his damp board shorts.
“You can’t—”
“I can, and you should stop talking now.” Her voice husky, she dragged the shorts down and slid to her knees.
“Brittany—” Her name jammed in his throat and his vision blurred as she took him in her mouth.
When they’d been together the first time, he’d been the one to lead the way on everything. He’d nudged her out of her comfort zone, although nudge was perhaps too gentle a word for what he’d done. The moment she’d turned eighteen, he’d considered it his duty to teach her everything she didn’t already know, which had turned out to be a lot. She’d been gutsy and independent, but sexually inexperienced. He’d given her an intensive course and plenty of practice, making no concessions to shyness and embarrassment.
Apparently she’d left shyness behind.
He felt the warm heat of her soft mouth slide over him and his mind shut down. He knew that if she carried on it would be over in five minutes and nothing that felt this good should be over that fast.
Finding willpower he didn’t know he had, he eased away from her, hauled her to her feet and powered her back to the bed, catching her as she lost her balance.
Careful to protect her wrist, he lowered her to the bed.
“I want to feel something.” His tone was raw. “I want to—”
“I know—” she drew his head down to hers “—I know you do. And it will happen. We just have to be patient. And in the meantime if you could do that thing you do, that would be great because you’re killing me here.”
He breathed her name against her mouth, feeling her soft lips part under the pressure of his. He kissed her slowly, skillfully, taking his time. Then he eased away, stripped off the last of her clothes and slid his hands over warm skin and secret places until she was moaning under him.
“You don’t have to take it slowly.” Her voice was desperate and she slid her leg over his hips and arched against him. “I need you—I need you to—”
“Not yet.” He wanted to take it slowly. Maybe if he took his time, if he savored every moment—and he did that, exploring every part of her, starting with the curve of her neck, then her shoulder and lower to the peak of her breasts. When she writhed and shifted, he flattened her to the bed, trapping her with his weight.
He felt her push against his shoulder with her good hand but he kept her pinned beneath him as he explored her with his mouth. He felt her nipple harden under the slow stroke of his tongue and heard her breathing grow shallow. The taste of her skin was like a drug, and he tasted and licked, his hunger for her building. It burned through him, ravenous, insatiable, and he knew she felt the same way because she squirmed under him, the supple lift of her body an explicit invitation.
Through the clouds of dizzying pleasure he could hear her saying his name, over and over again, until the soft pleas became sobs and the movement of her hips against him became almost frantic.
Still he held her down, ignoring his almost all-consuming need for her, willing himself to feel something other than blazing sexual heat.
Her body had changed, her breasts deliciously rounded and her thighs lean and strong from long hours spent outdoors. He explored those changes with his mouth and the tips of his fingers, touching her skin, breathing in the scent of her, tracing every soft feminine inch with his tongue.
When he finally stroked his hand between her legs, she moaned, and when his fingers slid skillfully into that vulnerable part of her, she parted her legs.
He slid his mouth over her hip and lower to the inside of her thigh, then traced her with his tongue. This, he knew how to do. He knew exactly how to touch her and with each gentle glide and flick he drove her closer and closer to the edge. He could feel every ripple and tremor of her flesh and he responded until she was writhing under him. He felt her hand on his shoulder and knew what she wanted but he wasn’t ready to give it to her. Wasn’t ready to give up hope that being with her could break that lock inside him.
Through the heat of his own desire he heard her saying his name over and over again, telling him how much she wanted him, how she couldn’t wait any longer, how he was killing her, but still he drew out the torture.
Finally, when he decided it wasn’t fair on her, he eased himself up from her body and reached for the condom he was never without.
She shifted under him, her fingers biting into the muscle of his back and he slid his hand under her, reining in the urge to thrust deep. Instead he lowered his forehead to hers, held her gaze and entered her slowly. He felt her nails dig hard into him and saw her lips part in a soft gasp as he joined them intimately. It cost him, but he kept his movements slow and gentle, easing into her by degrees as he felt the warm, feminine yielding of her body.
When he was buried deep he lowered his mouth to hers and spread slow, lingering kisses across her mouth and then her jaw as he gave her time to grow accustomed to him.
Her hand slid into his hair, and she brushed her mouth against his. “You’re safe,” she whispered, “you’re safe. You can let go, Zach. You can trust me.”
He moved with long, slow, breath-stealing strokes, building the rhythm and shifting position so that every controlled surge created a perfect, delicious friction, watching as a soft flush highlighted her cheeks and her eyes glowed with heat.
“Zach, Zach—” She whispered his name, slid her arm around his neck and dragged his head down to hers, licking into his mouth as he drove into her with erotic precision. Her gaze stayed locked on his, open, trusting, sharing eve
rything.
The pleasure built and multiplied until it was no longer in his power to hold back physically. Zach took her mouth and sent them both flying into a perfect storm of sexual excitement. He felt her come, felt her body rippling around his and dragging him to the same place.
Physically, it was about the most perfect sexual experience of his life.
He curled her into his arms, holding her against him, listening to the sound of the ocean mingling with the pounding of rain through the open window and thinking that if this was all it could ever be, then maybe it would be enough.
She snuggled closer. “I love this cabin. It’s so cozy. You don’t get lonely, out here away from everything?”
“I love it.”
She slid her arm around him so that each part of her was touching a part of him. “The other night when we were in the woods, talking about Travis, you said that it might be possible for some people to change. To learn to trust. You’re not one of those people, are you?” When her question was met with silence, she took a deep breath. “You never trusted me, did you? And because my default is to trust people up until the point where they let me down, it never occurred to me that you wouldn’t. We were coming at our relationship from completely different places and I didn’t understand that.”
There was another long silence, broken only by the sound of the ocean through the open window.
“I was closer to you than I’d ever been to anyone.”
“You never talked to me. And you didn’t sleep. At night you just lay there, awake. Then when it was light you’d fall asleep for a few hours.”
“I’d taught myself to stay awake. To me, monsters weren’t nameless, faceless creatures that lurked under the bed. They had a face and a name and they lived in my house.” It was something he’d never talked about, but he told himself that if he couldn’t open up in other ways, then at least he could give her this. “Night was the most dangerous time. I moved furniture and blocked the door, but I still had to be vigilant. And when he was drunk he was twice as strong as when he was sober.”
It was something he had never revealed.
All social workers had got from him had been silence.
Even Philip didn’t know all the details.
Saying it aloud felt strange, like stripping off your clothes and standing naked in front of a room of strangers.
Part of him wanted to snatch the words back, but it was too late.
Brittany propped herself up on her elbow.
“Your father?”
His mouth was dry. “My stepfather.”
“What about your mom?”
He thought about his mother, vicious, mean and utterly unsuited to be left in charge of anything, let alone another human being. “She stayed out of the way.”
“She didn’t try and protect you?”
“And put herself in the line of fire?” Why the hell had he started this conversation? Zach sat up in the bed, remembering now why he kept that part of his past carefully locked away. It leaked, ugly and thick as tar, contaminating all that was good about his life. “Why would she do that?”
“Because that’s what parents are supposed to do.” Brittany sat up, too, sitting shoulder to shoulder with him. “They’re supposed to protect you.”
“Protect?” He ran his hand over his face, finding the word almost laughable in the context of a conversation about his mother. “Whatever parenting manual you got that from, I can tell you my mother hadn’t read it.” Running from his thoughts and the conversation, he sprang from the bed and snatched up his jeans, pulling them on roughly. What had possessed him to talk about this?
He should have kept silent.
He should have— “I need to get out of here. I’m sorry, but I need to walk.”
“It’s raining.”
“I don’t care. I need some air.”
“Then I’ll come with you.” She was out of the bed, too, pulling on her clothes. “Wait for me. We’ll go together.”
“You don’t understand, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” It was the growl of a wounded animal and Brittany stilled but didn’t back off.
“Then we won’t talk.” Her voice was kind and calm. “I’ll just walk with you.”
“Why? What’s the point?” He felt her hand on his arm. Gentle.
“Because a friend doesn’t leave a friend alone when they’re hurting. And you’re hurting.”
“Brittany—”
She slid her arms around him and hugged him tightly, then let him go before he could push her away. “Let’s go. I love the rain.”
“You don’t have a coat.”
She shrugged. “My skin is waterproof.”
His pulse rate was slower, his breathing more steady. The panic receded like the tide.
“I’m sorry.” He ran his hand over his face. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t ever have to apologize.”
“After what I did to you?” He gave a bitter laugh. “I could apologize for a month and it still wouldn’t wipe out what I did.”
She shook her head. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. For being naive, blind, selfish—I should have tried to get you to talk to me back then.”
“I wouldn’t have done it. I never have.” Realizing that his legs were shaking, he sat back down on the edge of the bed, embarrassed by the weakness. “What’s your earliest memory?”
She hesitated and then sat down next to him. “I was four. I was on the beach with my grandmother, digging in the sand. I remember crying because it started to rain and we had to run back to the cottage. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay and dig.”
There was a pounding in his head. “My stepfather moved in when I was three. That’s my earliest memory. I don’t remember a single day of my childhood when I wasn’t scared.”
There was a moment of silence and then he felt her press against him, as if she wanted to wrap his body with hers like a soothing bandage around a wound.
“Zach—”
“I couldn’t stop it happening, so I tried to detach myself from it. I switched my mind off, pretended it was happening to someone else. Then one night he overdid it. I was so tired I’d fallen asleep and he got into the room.” He wondered why his voice sounded so flat. “I was in the hospital for ten days and I never went home.”
“How old were you?”
“Eight.”
“They took you into care?”
“I went to a foster family for a while, but that didn’t work out.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are limits to what folks are prepared to deal with, and I was way beyond those limits. After that I was in and out of foster homes and residential care.”
She was silent. “I should never have pushed you to get married. I should have known, guessed, that after everything that had happened to you, you couldn’t trust. I should have known it wouldn’t work for you.”
“I wanted it to work. Marrying you was my one attempt at having a normal life. At being like other people. As if by marrying you I’d merge my background with yours and somehow wipe out who I was and where I came from. I thought you might be the cure.”
“If I’d known you felt that way, if I’d understood, I would have realized that we needed more time so that you could learn to trust me.”
“That wouldn’t have happened.”
“Because sometimes not trusting keeps you safe. Is that it? That’s what you said about Travis.” There was a long silence and then she moved closer. She curled into him, resting her head on his shoulder and curving her arm around him. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was choked. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what? None of it was your fault.”
“Yes, it was. I’m sorry for not looking deeper. For not encouraging you to talk about your past, even a little bit. I was so sure of us, so confident that we could withstand anything. I told myself that I was protecting your privacy. I was naive and ignorant.”
“My past wasn�
��t your problem.”
“How can you say that? From the moment we met, it became both of our problems. The present is built on the past and we can never really understand it until we dig down, layer by layer. Instead of ignoring it, I should have talked to you.”
“You’re beating yourself up over nothing. I wouldn’t have talked to you.”
“Because you didn’t trust me, but maybe if we’d talked properly you would have understood that you could trust me. Was that what went wrong with us? Were you keeping yourself safe, Zach? Did you think you needed to protect yourself from me? If we’d talked, would we still be together?” Her voice was clogged with tears and he felt the tension rush through him.
“Don’t cry. I hate it when you cry. And none of this was your fault. I blew it.”
“That’s not true. I was blind. I wasn’t a good friend to you.”
“We were lovers.”
“But we were friends, too. I should have come after you. Even if we couldn’t work our marriage out, I should have been there for you. I should have tried harder.”
He stroked his hand over her hair, feeling softness and silk. “This wasn’t an exam, honey. It wasn’t something you could study for and get top grades in. Nothing you did would have changed anything.”
“Do you really want to walk in the rain or can we go back to bed?” She lifted her head to his and kissed his mouth gently and he tasted the salt of tears on her lips.
He could feel the warmth of her. Her hair slid over his arm, tickling his skin. “Nothing is going to change, Brit. I’m not going to change. If you’re a smart woman, you’ll walk out of here and not come back.”
“That just shows you don’t know as much about women as you think you do, because no smart woman would turn her back on sex this good.”
Despite everything, she made him smile.
“If Kathleen had known the things we did in that cottage when she was out at her knitting group—”
“I’m sure she knew. We talked about everything.” She gave him a mischievous smile. “Okay, maybe not everything, but most things. She warned me about you.”
“Of course she did.” He wondered why hearing that bothered him so much. “She was a good woman and she was protecting you. She was right to tell you to stay away. You should have listened.”