by Dana Nussio
Still she’d made it only halfway across the floor when Shane did one thing that probably shocked him as much as it stunned her.
He stood up.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SHANE DIDN’T KNOW when he’d made the decision—or even if it was an actual decision and not the most perfect reaction to her belief in him—but he was walking. Well, stepping, anyway. He took one painfully awkward step, and his other foot must have remembered what it was supposed to do as it shifted forward to restore balance.
A step and a second one. And a third. He couldn’t believe it. This was happening. He was doing this on his own, something he’d wondered if he would ever do again. Natalie looked as shocked as he was, her eyes wide, her jaw slack. He needed to get to her now and give her every bit of the loving she’d just asked for, but his legs weren’t quite as ready as he was. After that third step, he waited for the other leg to do its job and shift his weight forward on the other side again, but the message must have been relayed wrong because it stopped instead.
The rest felt like a slow-motion movie sequence with him cast as the schmuck whose knees buckled and whose body twisted wildly on its way down. Only this time when the floor reached up to grab him, Natalie was there with her competent arms wrapped around his waist.
“Sorry about this.” He sagged against her, trying not to take her down with him. This was not how this was supposed to go. He’d needed to make a grand gesture like that one she’d just made, not this reel of romantic-scene bloopers.
“You walked, Shane!”
“Not far, but I guess I did.”
Her arms tightened around him. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
He squeezed her shoulders slightly tighter until it felt more like a hug than a rescue.
“Yes,” he said, pausing before he added, “you do.”
Natalie had already backed him up one step toward his chair, but now she tilted her head up so she could look at him. Her wide eyes told him everything he needed to know. She’d understood what he was really trying to say. She did have him. He was hers.
She smiled, and he could think of nothing but her sweet lips. So close. So tempting.
That he dipped his head to kiss them then must have been one movement too many. It disturbed the delicate balance they’d established, and, for the second time in five minutes, he nearly hit the floor. And this time he almost took her with him.
Natalie’s laughter rumbled against his chest, and he couldn’t help joining in as she backed him up the two remaining steps and helped lower him into the chair.
“I was going to say, ‘But not for long,’ when I said I had you, but you probably don’t need me to clarify that now.”
“Yeah, I got the idea.” He chuckled again, reaching for her hand and lacing their fingers together. “My plan wasn’t so great. Trying to make the grand gesture. Epic fail.”
“I happened to like it. No, that’s wrong. I loved it. You came to me. You...walked to me.”
When Natalie’s voice broke, Shane had to swallow several times to push back the emotion clogging his throat. “Tried to, anyway.”
This time she frowned. “Are you trying to ruin this moment for me?”
He grinned and shook his head. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Good. Because I’m trying to make a gesture of my own.”
She leaned in close and lifted one of the side panels from his wheelchair.
“Did this statement of yours involve knocking me to the floor? If so, you could have saved yourself some time by just letting me fall a few minutes ago.”
“Hush.” She pressed her index finger to his lips, but when she lifted it away, she reached down to trace her hand over his mouth.
He might have had another joke lined up after that, was almost sure he did, but he forgot what it was. When she lifted her hand away, he moaned in protest.
Natalie only grinned at him and removed the second side panel. Pushing aside the foot plates, she stepped between them, slid one of her legs up and over his lap and then settled over him.
Shane couldn’t help himself. He drew her so close that he wasn’t sure where each of their halting breaths began, inside his chest or hers. Still, she wasn’t close enough. He wanted more. He realized now that he would always want more. With Natalie, it would never be enough.
Again, his gaze lowered to her lips, so close that her breath feathered over his cheek. He had only to dip his head to capture them, but he held back. Natalie had come to him tonight. It was her night, and he would wait for her to make the next move, even if it killed him.
And if she didn’t do something soon, it just might.
Finally, when he was certain he would die in just this position—on the cusp of ecstasy but never quite getting there—she tilted her lips to his.
Her kiss was almost unbearably light. A whisper when he longed for a siren. Because he was tempted to take over, to yank her to him and make this about his needs rather than hers, he slid his hands to the wheels of his chair to hold back.
“Still holding on?”
She asked the question as her lips slid away from his, but she didn’t wait for an answer before tracing a line of kisses down his throat, up his jaw and back to his lips. Hell, yeah, he was holding on. To a desire that was barreling out of control. To a need more visceral than anything he’d ever experienced.
But this was Natalie, tasting and touching him at her leisure, eliciting responses from every nerve ending in his body and then expanding her range to reach his soul. This was the woman he loved. His first. His last as well, the clench in his gut told him. Sex was different with her, a glimpse of paradise instead of a brush of bodies. He was different with her, and he wanted to be different.
He was hers. But was she his?
“Still worried that I’m going to hurt you?”
Shane blinked. There was a sparkle in her eyes that suggested she was kidding, but it was as if she’d read his mind and had spoken aloud the thoughts he didn’t want to admit, even to himself.
She leaned her head back so she could study him. “Are you?” she asked again, this time glancing down at his arms that still gripped the wheels.
He pasted on a grin. “Absolutely.”
“Well, I won’t.”
If her words before had been in jest, she seemed suddenly serious. It was a promise that everyone made and no one ever should. Yet he wanted to take her at her word. So when she kissed him again, he encircled her in his arms and drank in her kisses with the desperation of a wino, meeting her touch for touch, taste for taste.
As they peeled away each other’s clothes, he cherished her smooth skin and perfect curves with his gaze, his hands, his mouth. He closed his eyes, memorizing her body with his hands and drinking in each precious moment. He refused to rush her. This wasn’t a high-speed chase, after all. This was a leisurely drive, and he intended to relish each sight, each sound, each taste. He might have been certain of little else, but of this he was sure. The journey to Natalie had been a long one, but it led him home.
* * *
“I LOVE YOU.”
The words slipped from Natalie’s lips on a drowsy sigh, her liquid limbs draped over him, but she jerked when she realized she’d spoken them aloud. Though she’d been snuggled against him, her head resting on the pillow of his bicep, she shifted carefully now, turning so that her back was to him.
When Shane’s hand came to rest on her shoulder, she started again.
“What is it?” he asked. “Did you hear something?”
She blinked several times, adjusting her eyes to the low light coming in from the partially open blind slats. “No. Nothing.” The question was, what had he heard? She swallowed, her pulse pounding in her ears. What would he say if he had heard? Would he get up and roll right out there even t
hough it was his house?
It wasn’t that she didn’t want him to know how she felt. She would have told him...eventually. As in after he’d said the words first. If he ever planned to say them. But, now, with her admission hanging out there in the room, she felt like a player at a poker table who’d just turned all of her cards faceup without having any idea which cards her opponents held. Of course, after the way she’d come here to make her big statement, he might have already guessed that she loved him. But she’d said want, which wasn’t necessarily the same thing. He’d wanted her, too. He’d proven that a few times now, but could that have been all it was? And, if so, would she be able to accept that truth? Was what he had to offer enough for her?
She blinked several times to push away the questions. When Natalie opened her eyes again, her gaze came to rest on the wheelchair parked at the side of the bed, its side panels reattached. Exactly when they’d relocated their party from the family room to his bedroom she couldn’t recall, but from the series of steamy images now etched into her memory, she could only guess that it had been hours ago. Nothing had mattered to her except showing Shane how much she wanted him, and his chair must have proven to be just another obstacle on her path to that goal.
She refused to second-guess her decision to come here now that she lay sated in his bed, but she was surprised by how chilly it had become in his room. She pulled the sheet and the comforter higher to cover her because she was cold. Not because she suddenly felt a little more naked than she’d been a few minutes before.
“What time is it?” He reached up to rub his eyes. “How long was I asleep?”
“Not long.”
That she could have told him precisely how long he’d been asleep made her pull the sheet higher again. She’d found it strangely comforting lying there listening him breathe and then noting the change when he’d drifted off to sleep. It felt different now. And no longer soothing.
Shane was looking toward the spot on his nightstand where a digital clock had been earlier, but it wasn’t there anymore. She bit her lip, remembering how her foot had connected with it at some point.
“I’ll get it.” She sat up, drawing the sheet up with her, and then searched the carpet next to the bed with her toes. Where the heck were her clothes?
“Everything’s still in the family room,” he said, answering her unspoken question.
Then, as if he understood far more than just the question she hadn’t asked, he reached under the comforter and yanked out the top sheet on his side. “Here.”
“Thanks.”
Natalie wrapped the sheet tightly around her, tucking in the end at the top. She didn’t know what she was trying to hide when he’d already seen every inch of her nakedness. A few times now. Most of it he’d also cataloged by taste and touch.
But somehow this was different. She’d bared her soul to him, even before speaking the words that she prayed he hadn’t heard. She felt exposed. More vulnerable in a way she never had before. She’d handed him her heart and could only brace herself for him to crush it.
In her toga of sorts, she hobbled to his side of the bed and got down on her hands and knees to pat around under the bed for the missing clock. When her hand connected with its power cord, she grabbed it and pulled until it tumbled out. As she set it back on the nightstand, she noted that it was already close to midnight.
“It’s getting late. I’d better get home. Mom’s probably wondering where I am.” She scrambled to climb up from the floor, holding on to the sheet at the top.
“You don’t think she could have guessed?”
Natalie shrugged and licked her lips as she lifted her hand away from the clock. She took a step back, but Shane reached out to catch her hand before she could take a second one.
“I don’t know,” she said, staring down at their hands.
“Well, I think she could have.”
“How do you know that?”
He tugged her a little closer to the side of the bed. “She asked me.”
“Are you kidding?” She jerked her hand back, and Shane released it. “What did she ask you? What did you tell her?”
He answered only one of the questions. “I didn’t see any point in lying, so I told her there’s something between us, but we haven’t defined it. Yet.”
Us. We. Yet. The words played inside her mind, making it difficult for her to hear the rest of what he’d said. Did that mean there was an us?
“Whether she knows or not, it’s nearly midnight and—”
“And you’re twenty-eight years old. Do you still have a curfew?”
She shook her head. He didn’t understand. “You know how she relies on me.”
“You said she was asleep, right? So, she’s fine. I’m not telling you to abandon your responsibilities. You have your cell phone, right? If she needs you, you can be there in minutes. Just like the last time.”
Immediately, Natalie glanced toward the door. She would have reached into her pocket for her cell, but it was still in the living room among her discarded clothes. When Natalie turned back to him, Shane was grinning.
“So, okay, you don’t technically have your phone on your person right now, but I’m still sure everything’s fine.”
She nodded, but because she couldn’t believe him without proof, she hobbled from the room and reclaimed her phone from the family room. She found it in her coat pocket. Clicking the button to awaken the screen, she found that he was right, after all. No calls. No texts. Nothing.
When she finally returned to the bedroom, having retrieved her clothes, and his, from the family room floor, she found him sitting up in the bed, with the lamp switched on and both pillows propped behind him. He’d pulled the cover up to his hip bones, but it hung loosely there, like a sexy photo shoot all for her. He wasn’t being fair.
“You see? Everything’s fine, isn’t it?”
After a few seconds, she nodded. “Fine. You’re right. But I still need to get going.”
“You mean you won’t stay and cuddle for a little while. What kind of player are you?”
“Player?” She was already struggling to slip on her panties beneath the bedsheet, but his comment made her miss the leg hole, so she had to start over again. “Why are you calling me that?”
“If the toga fits, sweetheart. You’re in and out of here like... I don’t know. Wham. Whir. Thank you, sir.”
She’d made a second attempt at slipping her panties on, and this time, she got one foot in and missed the other, ending up toppling backward onto the end of the bed. A giggle began deep in her chest and bubbled out. Shane laughed out loud. Natalie dropped back on the end of the bed, rolling back and forth and not even caring that the top of her sheet wasn’t wrapped as tightly anymore.
“Wham, whir?” she couldn’t help asking when her chuckle died down.
“The best I could do on short notice.”
“Strong words altogether, coming from you.”
She waited for his answer. They could go on like this for a while, trading barbs and slowly backing away to soften the evening-after awkwardness. But when she realized he wasn’t going to answer, she popped up and spoke to him over her shoulder.
“You’re not seriously upset that I’m leaving, are you?”
He grinned back at her to suggest that he was joking, but usually his laughter reached his eyes. This time it stopped short.
“Nobody likes to be the one left behind when the other creeps out the door. I’ve just learned that.”
“Sorry,” she began, not really knowing what else she could say. She didn’t want to be the one to leave, but it was the only way she could protect herself. She turned away from him again and started slipping on her clothes, this time from a safe, seated position.
“Do you think it’s really possible for a person to change?”
Natalie stopped just as she’d settled her panties into place. She wasn’t sure what he was really asking. Were they still talking about sex, or was he back to the subject of his childhood mistakes that he couldn’t forgive?
“You have to believe it. Isn’t the whole criminal justice system based on the idea of second chances?”
“Depends on who you ask. But that isn’t what I asked you. I want to know what you believe.”
His expression didn’t give away what he was thinking no matter how hard she stared at him. Why was it so important for him to know what she thought? She’d proven to him from the day she’d met him that she could be unforgiving no matter what changes someone else had made.
“It’s rare for people to change,” she said after a few seconds. “But do I think it’s possible? Yes. Otherwise, there would never be hope for any of us.”
Slowly, he nodded. “Then I want to tell you again that I’ve changed. I’m not the ladies’ man I used to be. Maybe not even the hotshot teen who screwed up his life.” He stared right at her then. “That guy is dead. I think he died the minute the shot didn’t kill me.”
Natalie could only stare at him. What could she say to that? So many times she’d judged him, first on his career, and then on his past with women. Why had she worried about him leaving her when she’d done nothing to make him feel good about staying?
“I’m sorry—”
He shook his head to stop her. “There’s one more thing I need to tell you.”
She pressed her lips together, staring at her hands, but finally, she looked up at him.
“I love you, too.”
Natalie blinked, not sure she’d heard him right. “You’re saying that you love me?”
“That’s what I said.” This time there was no doubting that his smile was real.
“But—” She stopped herself as the rest of what he’d said settled in her thoughts. “Too? You love me, too. Do you mean to tell me you heard what I said all along? You let me try to hide it when you heard everything I said?”
Shane shrugged, still smiling. “You didn’t seem to want me to know, so I didn’t want to disappoint you.”