Never Let Her Go

by Gayle Wilson

She heard the depth of the breath he took. She liked hearing it. She always had. She liked knowing she had this control over him. Everywhere else his strength had always dominated. But not here. Never here.

  She flattened her fingers, sliding them downward, over the swell of muscle and to his ribs, tracing along each. Her fingers Brailled his body, as if she were the one who had been tragically blinded. Feeling his breathing expand, become ragged and uneven.

  Once his body jerked in reaction to the unintended scoring of her nails, and her hand hesitated. She had been a little startled at the sudden movement, such a contrast to his previous stillness. He was standing so still, just letting her touch him.

  Finally she put her hand against his side, palm flattened, and stepped closer. Her breasts, under the thin covering of the shirt she was wearing, brushed against the wall of his chest.

  “Nick,” she said. He didn’t move, didn’t respond in any way. “Nick?” The word was questioning, her face lifting at the same time to look at him. His head was unmoving, eyes open and focused on the doorway behind her. Unseeing, she remembered.

  She closed her own eyes. There would be no turning back. No retreat. This was her decision, and he was allowing her to make it. Or forcing her to, perhaps, by his very stillness.

  Her other hand rose, finding the soft hair at the back of his neck. A little too long. The feel of it unfamiliar. She spread her fingers, pushing them through the black strands, silken and almost curling now. Cupping the back of his skull and urging his mouth down toward hers.

  In obedience, his head lowered, eyes closing. That was automatic. Unthinking. Just as was the response that made his lips part and tilt into the perfect alignment to cover hers.

  Then his hands closed around her arms, too tightly, pulling her against him. His mouth was hard, and his kiss ravaged. Devoured her.

  His was a need born of deprivation. Hunger. It demanded. But nothing that she could not give, she realized. Nothing that she did not want to give him.

  His mouth moved, still opened, sliding hot and wet against her cheek. His hands had found the neck of her shirt and were fumbling with the buttons Too small for his fingers. They were moving too slowly. Everything was too slow.

  She pushed away from him, but hungrily his mouth followed, reluctant to release its contact with her skin. She crossed her arms in front of her body and grabbed the hem of the man’s shirt she wore, pulling it off in one quick motion.

  The sudden spill of air chilled her skin. Goosefleshed it. His hands caught her shoulders again, pulling her back against him. Against his warmth.

  His lips moved over her face, her neck, her throat. Lower. His fingers fumbled with the fastenings at the back of her bra and then, when he had succeeded, he pulled it off her arms, dropping it to the floor.

  She waited, breathless, and it seemed an eternity until his hands moved again. They slipped under the fullness of her breasts, lifting them, ripened now with the ripening of their child. They were heavy. So heavy. Like the deep inward ache of her body—almost too heavy to bear.

  Like the ache of his, revealed in his low groan. Almost sound. Almost sensation. His hand released. Right one. Drifting over the jutting protrusion of her pregnancy, whose swell began just under her breasts.

  His breathing had deepened. His hand flattened, fingers turning downward. It moved lower still. Pushed into the loose waistband of her maternity slacks and inside her panties.

  She could feel it. Sliding down her distended belly Palm pressed tightly against her skin. Nick shifted his weight, leaning to reach…

  She gasped. His touch was electric, and heat flared along nerve endings that had lain dormant too long. Waiting for him. For his touch. So long. It had been so long. An endless wanting. Nick’s hand. Nick’s body.

  And then it wasn’t waiting. It was immediate. Instantaneous. As soon as he began to touch her, the hot aching need released. Scalding in its intensity.

  She cried out with it, leaning into his hand, increasing the pressure, giving in to the sweet heat that poured in waves throughout her body.

  His left arm moved behind her back, holding her. Supporting the boneless, mindless ecstasy of release. Joy Her body arching toward his, into his touch. Too hungry to be ashamed of its need. Its passion. And there was no reason to be. This was Nick. Nick. Beloved

  The heat shimmered. Flickered. Smoldered. She remembered to breathe. Finally. Her breasts, damp with perspiration, moved against the hair-roughened skin of his chest. His fingers moved too, and sensation jolted again. Arcing into new current. Burning her up with its heat.

  She said his name. Her voice was so hoarse it didn’t sound as if it belonged to her. Someone else crying out her loneliness. Such a long loneliness.

  When it was finally over, the incremental torment slowly easing, she sagged against him. His hand cupped gently now, only supporting. No longer teasing or tantalizing. Neither promising nor fulfilling. Just holding her, and she lay exhausted, resting against his strength. Drained. Sated.

  After a long time, he straightened. Both hands found her waist, tenderly holding the beginning swell of his child. Holding her still.

  Her need. Awakened and answered.

  His need…

  She raised her head. Strands of her hair caught in the sweat that dewed his chest and she brushed them away like spiderwebs. His face was infinitely calm. His lips were set, almost stern. And his eyes were not directed toward her face.

  She stepped back, breaking the familiar contact with his body. She had been so safe and warm there. It took an incredible act of will to move away from him. But she did.

  “Abby?” he questioned, the raven-wing darkness of his head turning slightly. The light behind her had found his hair, imbuing it with blue highlights.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she pushed her slacks and panties down over her hips. She bent, awkwardly slipping them lower until she could step out of them. For a moment her eyes considered her own nudity. Her hand cupped under the child she carried, a gesture that was almost protective

  And then it lifted to find and take his His fingers closed around her hand, squeezing gently Hers responded, and again she guided him. This time toward the tumbled bed.

  She stood a moment beside it. For the first time she thought about the changes he would find in her. In her ability to respond to him. In the awkwardness of her body.

  If they had made love all along, as their child grew and her girth increased, she would never have thought about this. Never have worried But suddenly, she realized that she was as different as he. More different, here in their darkness.

  His hands had touched her, had examined the baby. But that was not the same, of course, as lovemaking. Not the same as her hips arching under the power and force of his Demanding her response, just as he always had.

  “It’s all right, Abby,” he said. “I understand.”

  That surprised her. It didn’t exactly fit the context of her own hesitation “Understand?” she questioned.

  “I don’t know a lot about this. I’ve never…You said you’d had some trouble”

  She didn’t know what to say. She had never asked. She had had no reason to question the parameters of this. Of her circumstances Her “trouble.”

  Surely, she thought Surely.

  “It’s all right,” Nick said again. “It doesn’t matter.”

  I guess that’s the difference between me and you, he had said. I do need it, Abby. I still need you. Need. It had been so raw in his voice. And nothing had changed about that.

  This prohibition had not been in the warnings she’d been given. Nothing about sex or about any danger it might represent. If making love was forbidden, surely her doctor would have told her. And she knew that Nick wouldn’t hurt her. Nick would never hurt her. Not this Nick, who was neither cold nor angry nor groping in frustration.

  “Jeans,” she suggested softly.

  “Are you sure, Abby?” he said. But the need was back. Slipping from his careful control As
raw as it had been before. As aching.

  She laughed. “Just exactly what does a girl have to do to get you into bed these days, Deandro? Issue a written invitation?”

  Silence. Awkward Cruel, perhaps, but an unintended cruelty.

  “I sure couldn’t read it if you did,” he said softly. There was no bitterness in his voice. No anger. And the slightest hint of amusement. Self-mockery.

  And so, relieved, she laughed again.

  “I used to love to hear you laugh,” Nick said “I used to love that so much.”

  “I know,” she said, tears stinging, hot, and demanding release She blinked, denying them. This was not the time for tears. This was the time for rejoicing. That should be what they were doing. All the important gifts were back. Only her fear had prevented them. Fear that had evaporated in this reality. The reality of the kind of man Nick Deandro still was

  Nick bent to remove his jeans, and when he had, he reached out behind him, finding the edge of the bed in the darkness. He eased down on it. And this time, his hand drew her down to join him, and there was not a single remaining thread of doubt in her response.

  Chapter Twelve

  She moved above him in the darkness. Slowly. There was no longer urgency. No longer need. No longer fear.

  Her head was thrown back, eyes closed, her breathing deep and shuddering. His strong hands glided over her throat and her breasts. Over their child

  She had once, long ago, wondered how many times she and Nick could make love, given unlimited hours together. Given that there was no secret clock ticking away the precious minutes they had stolen. Given no danger to demand his leaving.

  Last night and throughout this long day they finally had opportunity to explore those possibilities. And none of them had been squandered. Six empty months had lain between them. As had injury. Pain. Memory loss. And her fear.

  Now nothing was between them. Nothing had separated them during the last twenty-four hours, as one day slipped away again into another night. Their time together had briefly been interrupted by the need for sleep, which had melted again into lovemaking. Once it had been interrupted for food from Abby’s meager pantry. Often for whispered confidences and confessions.

  And for gentleness. For Nick’s fingers to explore the life she had felt growing inside her through those months. To feel again his baby’s small, stretching movements. For his ear to strain against the distended skin of her belly, pretending to hear a heartbeat.

  The rest had been only lovemaking, enriched by laughter and promises. Sharing dreams she had been afraid were forever dead. And now, again, there was this. Not need, but still desire. Not urgency, but pleasure. Slow heated contact of once more familiar bodies. Minds. Emotions.

  “Abby,” Nick said softly

  She fought to respond. She tried to lower her head and open her eyes. To look at him. To think about whatever he wanted to say to her. And then he touched her.

  Mistake, Nick, she had time to think, before the world dissolved again, reality fading into sensation. Almost as strong, despite the number of times they had made love, as it had been the first time he’d touched her. Almost.

  His body arched, responding in kind, hot seed jetting upward, mixing with the heated moisture of her body. “Abby,” he whispered again, his voice hoarse and uneven from lack of breath.

  But not from lack of her. Never again from that loss, she had promised and then promised again. Silently Those vows made only with her body.

  And when she slipped from her knees, lying down beside him, he drew her close with his arm around her waist She lay against his chest, the weight of their baby resting on his hipbone

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Nick said finally. His thumb caressed her bottom, soothing up and then down, from the dimpled base of her spine to the beginning of her thigh.

  “Why?” she asked, smiling. She could feel his heartbeat slowing under her cheek, reclaiming its normal rhythm.

  “Because I swear you’re going to kill me,” he whispered. He turned his head, mouth moving against her hair.

  “Not if you’re a very good boy,” she promised softly. “And if you always give me what I want.”

  “And what’s that?” he asked. She could hear his smile.

  “You,” she said softly. “This. A ring, a mortgage—”

  “And a baby,” he finished, his hand caressing the swell of her pregnancy. “I’m way ahead of the game in that department.”

  “And in most others,” she said, stretching her legs out to find a more comfortable position. She put the top one over both of his, feeling the hair on his thighs under the smoothness of hers. Her hand rested on his chest, fingers moving through the black mat that covered it.

  “Most?” he repeated.

  “You can’t have everything, Deandro,” she said teasingly.

  When he didn’t respond, when the long seconds crept by without a laughing rejoinder, Abby lifted her head, pushing up on her elbow to look down at his face. “Nick?” she whispered.

  His eyes adjusted to the sound of her voice, almost tracking to her face. Almost. His fingers lifted and touched her mouth, thumb sliding across her bottom lip.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Can you do this, Abby? Can you really live with this?”

  There was no hesitation in her answer. It was the question she had already answered One she had known she had to decide before she had brought him into this room again.

  “Of course,” she said simply.

  “But that is what you were afraid of? That is why you didn’t tell me about the baby?”

  “Yes,” she said, because it was the truth.

  He nodded, his mouth tightening, revealing a tension his voice had not held.

  “You knew that,” she said, wondering why they were talking about this now.

  “I knew,” he agreed. His hand had fallen, and his face moved slightly, blue eyes shifting away from her.

  She caught his chin and turned his head back.

  “I was afraid,” she said. The words were soft, but distinct. “I was afraid of how this would have changed you.”

  His brow creased, and his chin moved slightly in her fingers, side to side. “Changed me?” he asked.

  “In ways that mattered,” she tried to explain.

  The silence this time was his. Not awkward, but considering. Thinking. “What ways?” he said finally.

  “Your strength,” she confessed. That was easy. The others would all be harder. “How you treated me. How you viewed yourself”

  He laughed, and for the first time in these precious, nearly twenty-four hours they had spent together there was bitterness in the sound. “That sure as hell has changed,” he said.

  “Maybe. But not in any of the ways that really matter.”

  “You can’t know that,” he said

  And she couldn’t, of course She could know only her perceptions of him.

  “You aren’t afraid of raising a kid with a blind husband who’s not going to be a whole lot of help?” he asked when she hesitated.

  The essence, maybe, of his fear? She supposed they had reached a point where that fear needed to be answered. An answer she knew. “Of course,” she agreed.

  She watched him swallow, the movement too strong along the strong brown column of his throat. His mouth had tightened again, and she soothed her forefinger over the corner of it, pushing the tension away

  “But I’m more afraid of doing it without you, Nick,” she offered. “Far more afraid of that than I am of the other.”

  She bent, putting her lips where her caressing finger had been. He didn’t respond to their gentle pressure, and she could even feel the muscle contract, tighten, under her mouth.

  She touched its pulse with her tongue and then slowly moved from there to outline the shape of his lips. The top and then along the bottom. She wasn’t finished when they opened under hers, his head lifting, aligning, his tongue invading.

  He kissed her a
long time. A different need, and she never pulled away, although she wanted desperately to see his face To judge if he believed her. Because if not, then this was something she knew would always be between them.

  Nick, who had never before needed her in any way but physically, needed her for this. To assure him that he would never again be alone in this darkness. And that neither, of course, would she. Because she truly didn’t want to be.

  Eventually, his mouth released hers. She pushed away again, propping herself on her elbow, to study him His face seemed relaxed, the tension that had been there before erased.

  “You know what I want to do?” he said.

  She smiled, trying to think of anything he could possibly want that they hadn’t already done. And, given her own creative contributions to this marathon, she couldn’t imagine there was anything they hadn’t tried that they could try. That had, of course, included nothing that might possibly be uncomfortable for her or that Nick had thought might endanger the baby, a concern that she found both touching and a little amusing.

  “I don’t have a clue,” she said honestly.

  “Order out for pizza,” he said, his voice sure and decisive. Just as it had always been.

  “Pizza?” she repeated, her tone full of disbelief. “How the hell can you think about food at a time like this, Deandro?”

  “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I had pizza? Any idea at all?” His voice was defensive, pretending to be hurt by her laughter.

  “You’re Italian. How can you like take-out pizza?”

  “Some of my best friends like take-out pizza,” Nick said.

  “What do you want on it?” she asked resignedly.

  She began to push up, preparing to go make the call. The pizza delivery boy would probably be glad they were back. Nick was a good tipper, although she was the one who always answered the door, of course.

  Instead of letting her crawl over him, Nick grabbed her and pushed her down beside him. He rolled over almost on top of her, holding his weight on his elbows, and kissed her hard and deep.

  In the middle of it, his lips releasing hers just enough to get the words out around his tongue, which was still moving, he whispered, “Sausage.” Another involved delay. “Mushrooms.” Longer. And she almost had time to forgot the first two, before he added the rest. “And pepperoni. Extra cheese.”