by Pamela Clare
The only solution as far as Nate could see was to keep kissing her, keep touching her for as long as it took until she was truly ready for more.
And if that day never comes?
Well, there were always cold showers.
He lowered his mouth to her exposed throat, licking and nibbling the spot where she was most sensitive, his left hand busy teasing her nipple. Her fingers curled in his hair, her head turning to give him access, her breathing ragged.
“Mommy?”
Megan stiffened, gave a little moan. “Y-yes, sweet pea?”
“Can I come out now?”
Nate withdrew his hand from Megan’s shirt and rested his forehead against hers, struggling to rein himself in.
“Okay. I’ll be right there.” Megan looked up at him, her pupils dark, an expression like pain on her face. She adjusted her bra, then reached up, cupped his scarred cheek. “Don’t go anywhere.”
He could barely walk with this much wood in his jeans, but he didn’t say that. He smoothed his hands down her slender arms. “Hey, we have all the time in the world.”
As he watched her disappear into the bathroom, he found himself hoping what he’d just said was true.
*
Megan lay in the dark beside Emily, her body burning with arousal from the hour she and Nate had spent making out in his bedroom. Oh, but the man was good with his hands! He’d brought her to the brink of orgasm without even getting inside her jeans, the way he’d teased her nipples, driving her to the very edge. Now she was wet and aching—and several rooms down the hall from him.
How are you ever going to get to sleep?
She tried to force her mind off the throb between her thighs, turning onto her side to watch her daughter sleep. Emily looked so peaceful, not a worry in her little world, the sight of her making Megan’s heart swell. Her life was so different from Megan’s—and for that Megan was grateful. She never wanted Emily to know the loneliness, fear, or violence that she’d grown up with, never wanted Emily to doubt for a moment that her mother loved her, never wanted her to view every man as a predator.
That’s how it had been for Megan—never trusting, never being able to let down her guard. A man was a threat simply by virtue of being a man. Until Marc had come back into her life, it hadn’t occurred to her that some men might be good people. It was a terrible thing to say, but given what she’d been through…
And now there was Nate. Not only was he a good man—a decorated veteran who donated thousands of dollars of meat to Denver’s hungry—he also knew everything there was to know about her and accepted her. She couldn’t say why, exactly, but she trusted him. More than that, she wanted him.
She’d never imagined that any man would make her feel the way he made her feel—her blood hot and alive, her skin craving his touch, her body so aroused that she actually wanted him inside her. The only thing she’d ever longed for this intensely was heroin, but this wasn’t the dark, desperate craving of addiction.
This felt pure and bright and clean.
Megan rolled onto her back and clenched her thighs together, wishing the ache inside her would go away. She’d already taken a hot bath, hoping it would make her drowsy, but it hadn’t. She closed her eyes, tried to clear her mind, drew slow, even breaths. But she was no closer to drifting off ten minutes later.
Did Nate want her, too? He certainly seemed to. If the way he kissed and touched her wasn’t enough to prove that, the hard bulge he’d had in his jeans was. But rather than asking her to sleep with him tonight, he’d walked her to her room, kissed her—and left her to sleep alone. Maybe he wasn’t as interested as he seemed.
What would he do if she went to him—knocked on his door, walked inside and asked him to make love to her? Not that she would or even could do any such thing. She hadn’t known Nate for very long. She wasn’t on the pill. She couldn’t even be sure she’d enjoy having sex. If she ended up hating it, she would embarrass both of them and perhaps ruin her relationship with Nate. And the last thing she needed was an unplanned pregnancy or a messy relationship to complicate her life.
Besides, she wasn’t that brave.
There would be no turning back from this. In her life, there would always be before Nate and after Nate. He had awakened something inside her. He’d shown her that it was possible for her to enjoy a man’s touch, to trust a man. He’d given her something she hadn’t even realized she was missing, stripping off the armor she’d built around herself, exposing the longing she’d tried to suppress for so long.
Would it be so wrong of her to go to him, to tell him how she felt? After all she’d been through, didn’t she have a right to claim some happiness?
She found herself getting out of bed, slipping into her bathrobe, opening the bedroom door, walking barefoot down the hall. Heart racing, she stood outside his closed door for a moment, reminding herself of all the negative things that might happen if she did this. This was followed by the realization of what would happen if she didn’t.
Nothing.
Nothing would happen.
Her life would remain the same as it was now—loveless, sexless, ruled by memories, by fear, by loneliness. She didn’t want that, not when Nate was here. Not when he made her feel the way she felt.
You can do it. Be brave.
She raised her hand and knocked.
*
Nate was about to come, his mind wrapped around thoughts of Megan, his hand wrapped around his cock. His heart was beating hard enough that for a moment he thought he’d imagined it, but then it came again.
A knock on his bedroom door.
Fuck!
He threw back the covers, flicked on his bedside lamp. He grabbed a T-shirt and his boxer briefs off the floor and drew them on. Tucking his throbbing dick inside his underwear, he walked to the bedroom door, wondering whether there was an emergency with the herd or whether Chinook had gotten out of his stall again. Hoping his T-shirt would be enough to hide his damned boner, he opened the door. “Megan?”
She stood there wearing a velvety dark blue bathrobe, her auburn hair tangled around her shoulders. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” He stepped aside, trying to keep his dick out of sight—a losing battle when it was pointing directly at her. “You okay?”
She didn’t answer, but reached down, untied her bathrobe, and let it slide to the floor, leaving her standing there in blue and white striped long underwear that clung to her body like a second skin. He was so busy letting his eyes feast on her—the curve of her braless breasts, the rounded shape of her hips, the cleft at the juncture of her thighs—that it took him a minute to realize what this meant.
His heart gave a hard knock. “Megan, I don’t think—”
She pressed her fingers to his lips. “Shh.”
She stood on her tiptoes, rested her hands against his chest, and pressed her lips to his, her kiss taking him by surprise, making his mind go blank.
He drew her into his embrace, kissed her deep and hard, his conscience taking longer than usual to kick in. When it finally did, he tore his mouth from hers. “Megan, honey, wh-what are we doing?”
Her gaze met his, naked hunger in her eyes. “Making love.”
It was a good answer.
Riding a pure surge of testosterone, he crushed her against him, reclaimed the sweetness of her mouth, moving them both toward his bed in an awkward slow dance. Only when he’d drawn her onto the bed beside him did his conscience kick in again. “Megan, honey, mmm… We need to talk.”
She didn’t seem to want to talk, but kept kissing him. Only when he drew them both into a sitting position and pulled away from her did she open her eyes. She looked down at her hands, her hair spilling over her shoulder to hide her face. “You don’t want this.”
What she said was so patently untrue it almost made him laugh, but somehow he didn’t think laughter would go over too well right now.
He reached over, tucked her hair behind her ear, stroked her cheek with a scarred k
nuckle. He needed her to understand. “Oh, I do want this. More than you know. I just want to make certain this is what you really want. Sleeping together—that’s a big step. I don’t want to dredge up bad memories for you or give you another reason to be afraid of men and sex.”
There was more to it than that. He searched for the right words. “You’re too important to me to risk rushing this.”
Some part of him—the part that was pitching a tent—couldn’t believe what he’d just said, his more primal instincts telling him to shut the fuck up and kiss her. But he really didn’t want to screw this up.
“Rush it?” She lifted her gaze to his. “I feel like I’ve waited my entire life for this moment. No one has ever made me feel the way you do.”
Her words touched something inside him. So much had been stolen from her—not just her virginity, but her ability to view sex as something positive, a way of sharing trust, pleasure, and affection with a man. She’d suffered through having a baby, but she’d never enjoyed sex. That wasn’t just fucked up, it was brutally unfair.
But was he the man to do something about it? What if he made it worse?
He caught her chin, looked straight into her eyes. “If we do this, you have to promise me you’ll tell me if you start to feel uncomfortable or sick to your stomach, okay? Don’t force it.”
She nodded. “I promise.”
Nate found himself wishing they had planned this so that he could give her what she hadn’t gotten—the romance and tenderness a woman deserved her first time. He couldn’t give her roses. He couldn’t offer her romantic conversation over a candlelit dinner. He didn’t have satin sheets on the bed. But he supposed all that shit was superficial anyway.
He would give her the only thing he had—himself.
The question was how to go about it.
He decided to start where they’d left off. “Come here.”
She slid into his arms, the two of them stretching out on the bed side by side, soft kisses giving way to passionate ones until both of them were on fire, her body moving against his. He slipped his hand beneath her pajama top, claiming the lushness of her breasts without the annoying obstacle of a bra. Her nipples were pebbled and hard—and exquisitely sensitive. He pinched them, rolled them, tugged them, made slow circles over them with his fingertips, her whimpers and whispered pleas urging him on.
But they’d spent the entire day covering this territory. Enough of this teenage shit. Nate wanted to see and taste what he was touching.
He quit kissing her long enough to peel off her pajama top, his gaze taking in the sight of her. His breath left his lungs in a long, slow exhale. “God, you’re beautiful.”
Her breasts were firm and full without being overly large, more than enough to fill a man’s hand. Her nipples were a delicate shade of salmon pink, their petal-soft flesh drawn tight. He forced her onto her back and lowered his head to suckle her.
Fingers caught in his hair, stopping him. “Can we go… slower?”
He looked into her eyes, and through a pheromone haze, he saw fear. “Slower?”
She sat up. “Lie back. Let me touch you.”
It seemed to Nate that his heart stopped.
Some part of him realized why she wanted this. It would put her in control, make her feel less vulnerable. But the idea of lying there, his scars exposed…
He had an impulse to end this, to tell her it was just too soon for both of them. It had been one thing to take off his shirt when she was someone he barely knew, a stranger helping him with an injury. It was quite another to bare himself to her when he was lying skin to skin with her here in his bed, when he was supposed to be making love to her, when she mattered so desperately much to him.
Did you plan to have sex with your shirt on, idiot?
He hadn’t planned this at all.
She seemed to sense his reluctance—and the cause of it. She knelt beside him, her hair spilling over her shoulders, her nipples peeking through the auburn strands. “If you think your scars bother me, you’re wrong. In my eyes, you’re a hero. Your scars are just proof of that.”
He didn’t feel heroic at the moment.
Coward.
Nate slowly drew his T-shirt over his head, tossed it onto the floor, then laid back, fighting to relax, his heartbeat a thrum in his chest.
She rested her palm over his heart, then began to explore him, sliding her hand over the scarred right side of his chest and then the left, her touch spreading sparks over his skin, the shock of being touched so intimately making Nate’s body shake.
And as his fear slowly eased away, Nate realized he’d been waiting an eternity for this moment, too.
Chapter Eleven
Though Nate tried hard to hide it, Megan knew it wasn’t easy for him to share himself in this way. He didn’t seem to understand that she found him attractive—even downright sexy. His scars were a part of the attraction because they were a part of him.
She ran her hand slowly over his right cheek, trailed her fingers down the scarred side of his neck to his chest. The muscles on the left side were firm, his skin soft and bronzed, coarse curls tickling her palm. His dark nipple was flat and smooth like satin, its center a hard little pebble. The hairless right side of his chest had no nipple, his skin pinched, puckered and creased, some of it almost white, some of it darkly pigmented, some of it with an underlying diamond pattern as if it had once been held in place by mesh. It was harder and stiffer than normal skin, too. But it was his skin.
She could see now that the burns went all the way around his right side to his back, dipping below the waistline of his briefs, stretching down his right leg to just above his knee. He’d been burned, front and back, from his cheek to his right thigh.
And beneath his boxer briefs? Was he scarred there, too?
His left thigh also bore a large scar, but it was different, not puckers and creases, but a large, pale rectangle that wrapped around his heavy quadriceps. Was that where they’d taken skin for his skin grafts?
So much pain.
And so much courage.
Other than that first night when he told her how he’d been burned, he hadn’t spoken of his service with the Marines, keeping all the horrors he’d seen, all the things he’d done, all he’d suffered quietly to himself. He didn’t complain. He didn’t show self-pity. He simply endured.
She traced a finger down the uneven line roughly in the center of his torso, where scars met normal skin. She couldn’t imagine how much he had suffered, couldn’t imagine how any woman could have turned her back on him and left him to face the agony of recovery alone. She felt a sharp surge of protectiveness, wishing she could take all of this away from him.
“There are no nerve endings. I can’t feel anything beyond pressure. You don’t have to touch—”
“Shhh.” She lowered her head, pressed her lips firmly to the place where his right nipple ought to have been, wanting to touch him everywhere, to know all of him, wanting to show him that every inch of him, scarred or not, was precious to her.
He sucked in a breath, tensed, his fingers sliding into her hair. “Megan, I…”
His voice faded as she kissed her way down the taut, scarred skin of his belly, her hands sliding down his sides to his hips, his muscles jerking every time her mouth touched him. But if he couldn’t feel her, then why…?
She glanced up, saw him watching her, a look like pain on his face. And she understood. It wasn’t so much that he could feel her kisses, but rather just the fact that she was kissing this part of him that made him react.
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away, swallowing the lump in her throat as she lowered her lips to him again, the sympathy she felt for him warming to desire as she indulged herself, kissing, licking and nibbling her way back up his belly, across his chest, to his neck. Then she did what he’d done to her so many times today, teasing the sensitive skin beneath his left ear, delighting in the way he shivered.
“Oh, Megan.” His hands soug
ht out her breasts, his thumbs flicking their tips, making it terribly hard for her to concentrate. Then one big hand slid down her back and beneath her pajama bottoms to grasp and squeeze her bottom. “When are you going to take these damned things off?”
“Later.” She was too busy for that right now—and too nervous.
It was so much easier, so much less frightening, to concentrate on him.
She nipped his earlobe, sucked it into her mouth, bit down, the natural scent of his skin filling her head. It was a warm scent, unmistakably masculine, arousing her even more, an intoxicated feeling swelling inside her. She was drunk on him, his taste, the male feel of him. She wanted to kiss him and touch him—everywhere. She wanted to chase away his pain with pleasure. And—oh, yes!—she wanted him to keep doing whatever he was doing with his hands, his touch sending shivers of bliss straight from her aching nipples to her womb.
Had she ever felt anything like this?
No, never.
She stretched out on top him, seeking his mouth, her moan mingling with his groan of satisfaction as their lips were reunited in a deep, hard kiss, his head rising off the pillow to meet her, his right arm encircling her to draw her closer, his left hand still busy with her breast. They devoured each other, tongues tasting with slick strokes, teeth nipping, lips teasing. And still it wasn’t enough.
But Megan wasn’t sure she was ready for what came next.
*
Nate was on the brink of insanity. He wanted Megan, and he wanted her now. But he had relinquished control to her, and he was afraid that if he took it back, he would lose her. He’d almost brought it to an end a few minutes ago when he’d forced her onto her back, no doubt reminding her of what the guards had done to her again and again. He understood that now. He wouldn’t risk making a mistake like that again.
Tonight was about her. It was about proving to her that men weren’t all monsters, showing her the tenderness she’d been denied, giving her all the pleasure she deserved. It was about helping her reclaim her own body, her own sexuality.