by Mallory Rush
"I—I want to—to watch a movie," she stuttered. "Call for the popcorn. I need some champagne."
Mariah rushed past him, her eyes glued to the filled glass. Thank goodness she didn't have to pour it; she'd surely slosh it all over the carpet.
When she frantically brought the glass to her lips, he caught her gaze. And she saw that the blatant lust that had simmered in his eye had turned hard.
"You want to watch movies on our honeymoon night? Fine," he gritted out. "Catch me up on the action when I get back. I'm headed for the bar."
With amazing speed, Sol went to the closet and got his shirt and dress coat. He was unzipping his pants to tuck the shirttail in by the time she realized he was actually going to leave. Mariah caught a flash of white briefs. The large hands that minutes ago had been skillfully fondling her breasts were now holding crutches.
"Sol. Wait! Please, wait. Don't leave."
"Too late. I'm gone," he threw over his shoulder as she rushed to stop him.
"I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
"I can't afford feelings right now—not with a smashed-up leg that's smarting like hell. Don't wait up. I'll be back when I can deal with a wife who finds me so revolting she doesn't want me to touch her."
"No! No, it's not that way at all." She reached him as his hand grasped the knob. "Don't go. Stay. Forget the movie. I'm just nervous, that's all. It's not your fault, it's mine."
"Right," he snapped, still facing the door. "It's not your fault I'm so disfigured you can't stand to have me put my hands on you, or look at you without two eyes. I can't blame you. I doubt that I'd want to go to bed with me."
"That's not true! I do—"
"Oh yeah? Could've fooled me. Admit it, Mariah, you don't want to get pawed by someone who's less than a whole man. If that's how you feel, it's no skin off my teeth." He twisted the knob. "You probably don't want those on your perfect body, either."
Mariah caught his wrist, stunned by the anger in his tone, anger that was directed not only at her, but at himself.
"Don't be ridiculous. This has nothing to do with your injuries."
"No? As far as I can see you're nothing but a liar, and that's one trait I can't abide." She flinched. "Go on, Mariah, go watch your movie. I'd rather get drunk than take a wife to bed who's sleeping with me out of duty."
"Duty? I never said, never thought—How can you believe I'd even think such a thing?"
"I didn't, until you ran for the booze and begged for a movie instead of me. I just hope to God the rest of our marriage isn't as disappointing as tonight. Somehow I didn't plan on some serious drinking and thinking about a woman who shudders every time I show my heart or the rest of my body—even if they are both imperfect."
"How dare you imply that I'm so shallow and insensitive that I would shun anyone—much less you—who's been hurt? I resent that as much as those ugly words you've tried to put in my mouth. And all because I showed some modesty when you—"
"Touched my wife, who admitted to getting off on watching strangers have sex on a stage. But apparently that doesn't extend to me." Sol looked away from her. "I've lost too much, Mariah, my pride's about the only thing left, and it's not yours for the taking. I'm keeping it. Just as you can keep your pity screw."
Mariah clamped one hand on his arm and covered his grip on the knob with the other. She tugged and pulled but he was immovable. He was shutting her out, putting distance between them so he could cling to his hurt, his bitterness. With nothing to lose but her heart, she honed in on Sol's most vulnerable spot.
"So you want to keep your pride," she said sharply. "That's no problem, since I can't take anything you're not willing to give up. But as for pity, you don't need mine. You're wallowing in enough of your own. Go on, Sol, leave, take the easy way out. I gathered from our ride that you've been running away from some things. You might as well add me to the list."
Sol's spine stiffened. She could all but see his hair bristle on end and knew that she had achieved her purpose—perhaps too well. He swiveled around with go-to-hell rage.
Only his legs didn't catch up with the rage. Sluggish, they twisted behind his torso, and he stumbled trying to gain his footing. Mariah caught him by the shoulders, but his weight was twice hers and they both fell to the floor.
Crutches landed with a soft thump on either side of her head. The breath was knocked from her lungs—or maybe it was the solid weight of Sol's chest pinning hers down. Or the sudden awareness that his hipbones were riding over hers while his groin was pressing between the hollow of her wide-open legs.
The air he sucked in and out between groans fanned her ear, and his lightly whiskered cheek scratched her temple. She felt an unexpected thickening rise and lodge between her thighs.
"Are you all right?" he said raggedly. "Did I hurt you?"
"I'm... fine. But what about you, your leg? Is it hurting?"
"I'm hurting, in more places than I can juggle at the moment. Give me a minute and I'll get off."
Mariah realized that her hips were arching for a closer fit. Sol groaned and started to roll to the side, but she automatically gripped his shoulders to stop him. She wasn't sure why she'd done it, except that she was caught in a tingling pleasure that he'd take with him if he left. No, she didn't want him to move. And she sure as heck didn't want him to go out that door. Acting on instinct, she brazenly wrapped a leg around one of his.
Sol looked down at her with a questioning gaze. She met it with one of her own. He had the answers; she needed to discover them.
"Mariah," he said in a strained voice, "I think you'd best let me go. I might be in bad shape, but I'm still a man."
"I know." She traced his lips with a shaking fingertip. "I never thought otherwise, Sol, only you wouldn't listen."
"Then why did you bolt?"
For once she found the courage to give him the truth. "Because you are a man. More of a man than I've ever had occasion to deal with."
The lift of his brow expressed his disbelief, but he didn't argue. Instead he firmly removed her hands from his shoulders and raised them high above her head, causing her breasts to draw up and separate. And then she felt his thumbnail flick over her nipples until they were distended and acute with a pleasurable pain.
As soon as she moaned, he placed his hands on either side of her head and moved between her spread legs. He pushed against her, rotated, withdrew, then repeated the movement. She felt him grow harder, and she more aroused.
His face intense, he ended the breath-stealing thrusts with a grind that left her feeling achingly hollow inside.
"It just so happens that I believe words are cheap," he rasped. "Now let's see if yours are more truth than lie."
With that, he maneuvered the silk gown between them to her waist, breached the thin barrier of panties, and felt the truth for himself.
The most acute sensation speared her and emerged as a loud moan from her throat.
His eye glistened with heated pleasure while his fingertips continued to gently explore.
"You want me," he said with unmistakable relief. "Scars and all, if bodies don't lie."
She wasn't sure what she wanted; she only knew that it began with a letter, an innocent fib, and culminated in this ecstasy that was tearing her apart.
"I'm sorry I lashed out at you," she whispered haltingly. "But I couldn't let you leave."
A single finger, then two, pushed inside her, and his thumb found her sensitive point.
"I'm glad you didn't. I was wrong." His teeth caught at her chin before he drew it into his mouth. "But so were you," he said, now shifting to dart a tongue through her lips. "Right or wrong, I was raised to believe a wife shouldn't speak with such disrespect to her husband."
"And I was raised to—" He stopped her words by taking her hand and pressing her fingers over the significant bulge in his pants. Then he led them to his zipper. With a shuddering intake of breath, she pulled the zipper down while expressing her last cohere
nt thought. "I was raised to believe that a man doesn't provoke his wife to... to be disrespectful, by showing respect for her. You hurt me, Sol. I bit back."
"Bite me now. Here, on my shoulder, my mouth. If you draw blood, it can't be any more painful than thinking you didn't want me for better or worse. Kiss me, bite me, and take me inside. Please, Mariah, give it all to me, and don't hold back. I need you to love me, just as I am."
"I do," she nearly sobbed out as she silently echoed his plea.
Chapter 5
If the pain that had knifed through him minutes ago had been unbearable, the hot slide of blood rushing through him now was pure torture.
Her shaking hand hesitated, fingertips spread through the coarseness of hair, the vulnerability of flesh. Time stopped on a suspended heartbeat before accelerating to a blur as she suddenly delved, fumbled, then held him.
His breath left him completely, while hers, smelling of sweet champagne, fanned his face. Sol was struck with wonder. For a man who had accumulated enough carnal knowledge to fill a library, he was suddenly, inexplicably, on virgin ground.
With no more than Mariah's tentative stroke and curiously awkward squeeze, he felt a heavy throb spear through him and culminate in a tiny spurt of liquid. This sudden slip of control was unbelievable. It was also a damn heady rush. If she kept this up much longer, he'd be consummating their marriage by himself.
"Stop." Sol gripped her wrist tight but she seemed unwilling or unable to follow his urgent command. Sweat beaded his brow with the effort of restraint as he stared down at the feverish intensity of her unblinking, trancelike gaze. "Mariah, please—let... go."
His hand was shaking—hell, he was shaking all over—as he stroked the hair from her temple and felt the rapid pounding of her pulse. His own was out of control, yanked from his ribs and plummeting through the sweet pain threatening to explode in his groin. "What's happening to us?"
"I—don't know." And she didn't. She didn't know anything but the marvelous discovery of the power she held in her hand. Sleek and brutally hard. Pulsing and hot and alive. A streaking sensation was overtaking her, causing her womb to contract. "I feel so... so strange."
"Yes," he whispered softly. "I feel it too."
Her hand was trapped, lodged between unyielding pants and unyielding flesh. She was pinned by his weight, his searching gaze. She was absorbing him, his scent that was masculine and clean, the subtle shift of his hips that rocked her very bones, and his sounds, harsh breathing sounds that filled her ears and seemed to stroke her most intimate places.
"Is... this normal?" she asked.
"Baby, I don't know about you, but I've never experienced anything like this in my life." Sol's low chuckle caught on a ragged groan. "Please, Mariah, take your hand out of my pants, or this is going to be over before it gets started."
"I can't—can't move." Her head lolled to the side, and the carpet was rough against her cheek. She was so sensitized, she felt each nub, each fiber against her skin. "Help me?"
His fingers sought hers, and even that small act became an erotic feast.
Their wedding bands connected. Gold rode upon gold, and their vows were suddenly there between them, a haunting memory of sheer terror, the heartbreak of losing him while the scream of STAT! pierced her ears.
"To have and to hold." Tears smarted in her eyes and leaked from the corners. "I never thought I'd hold you like this. I lost you, Sol, and I thought I was dying with you. Don't leave me, never leave me again."
He glided her palm over taut muscle and hard chest covered by a crisp shirt. Then he lifted her hand and pressed his lips to the center of it before running her band of gold against his whiskered cheek.
"Don't cry. I'm here, and we've got the rest of our lives together. You're my wife, Mariah. I'm not close to perfect, and I can be hard." His smile was suggestive and coaxed a small, throaty laugh from her. "But I have some deeply ingrained beliefs, and one of those is that marriage is for life. For all the wild oats I've sown, I can be unfashionably old-fashioned. Fidelity. Respect. Commitment. The whole bit. Maybe I took my vows without realizing they'd stick, but I took them and we're together from this day forward."
"You don't regret it?"
"I did, but not since I laid eyes on you." He fingered his patch, and she felt a quick stab of empathy. Mariah reached up and stroked away his finger to touch the material. "Somehow that feels more personal than when your hand was in my pants," he said quietly. "And that's about as personal as a woman can get."
"But I'm not just any woman." She traced the edge of the patch and her breath caught. She knew what she was about to do and wasn't certain it was wise, but driven by a need to take their intimacy beyond sex, she slid her finger beneath the patch. "I'm your wife."
Sol tensed and grew still with each taut second of her invasion.
The fan of his eyelashes gave way to the smoothness of sealed skin. Carefully she traced the suture, then the place where his eye had been. The other stared down at her with disbelief, warning, and a naked vulnerability that made her heart ache for his loss.
She ached elsewhere too. In the empty region where he pressed but did not enter. Scarcely able to believe she had actually committed such a breach of privacy, Mariah threw caution to the wind and twined both her legs around his as she arched her hips and rubbed. It was decadent and beyond anything she'd dreamed herself capable of, but there she was taking liberties and doing exactly what she wanted. She was shocked at herself, but greatly pleased—and most aroused.
"You amaze me," Sol said, curling his fingers around her wrist. "Why did you do it?"
"I wanted to touch you where no one else would."
"You've done that, all right." He firmly removed her hand, then released it. "But in some places that go farther than the eye can see."
"And what do you see in me, Sol?"
"Courage, but a dangerous lack of caution." He made a strangled noise, a rough, inarticulate sound that was between a curse and a groan. "I see a woman I want to take to bed, or better yet, here on the floor. Whether or not you realize it, you just cut through any pretense of politeness I felt obliged to show." A muscle ticked beside his cheek. Naked, unslaked hunger was etched in his face, causing her to realize there would be a price for her reckless courage.
There was an intensity in him that suggested a furious passion. She'd done away with his veneer of gentility. He wanted her, and he wanted her now.
Mariah tried to swallow past the tightness in her throat, her fingers fluttering against her neck. Sol brushed them away and stroked the runaway throb.
"Nervous?" he said in a low, probing voice.
"N-no. Of c-course not."
"Liar," he softly accused, while his gaze fixed on her breasts beneath the see-through silk. "Where's your courage, babe? Don't let it desert you in my time of need."
Wishing for his tenderness to come back, Mariah blindly reached for a crutch, hoping a trip to the bed might gentle the moment.
Sol grabbed her arm and adrenaline pumped in her muscles, as if she'd picked up the scent of a predator hot on her trail.
"Let's go to, um... b-bed." Her voice was thin.
"Too late. You wanted the real me, and now you've got it. This is who I am, and what I am right now is not patient. We're getting naked."
"Please, Sol, don't be angry with me."
"Not angry, just pushed past my limit. You've stripped me to my bare bones. Now it's my turn to put us on even ground. That is what marriage is all about—give and take. Only we do seem to be getting a crash course."
In one smooth movement, he rolled her on top, then gripped the gown that had bunched at her hips, peeled it off, inside out, and flung it aside.
Instinctively, Mariah sat up on his pelvis and crossed her arms over her bare breasts.
"No way." He pried her arms away and held them firmly by her sides while he gazed hungrily at her bare chest. "You wanted to touch me where no one else would, and you did. Now you let me touch you where no
else ever will, and at the moment, that's your breasts. By the way, love..." He paused. "I think they're beautiful."
He pulled her down until she was leaning over his chest and her breasts hung freely above his mouth.
A strangled yelp of protest escaped her.
"Don't fight me," he warned softly. "No more running for either of us. The dress rehearsal is over, and this is for keeps. Let's make it count." His hand brushed her spine so lightly it brought chills to her skin. And then there was heat, wetness, the sudden stunning feel of a single breast taken almost wholly into his mouth.
Jolts of electric sensation shot through her and she nearly collapsed on his face. He was tasting her, sucking her deep. On and on it went, until she sobbed his name and struck her fist against the floor.
He murmured words that bespoke encouragement, approval, lust—all the things she had begun to feel deep in her bones, which were melting, capitulating to impatient desire.
His masterful handling filled her with unbounded sensation and held her prisoner. Yet at the same time it set her free from all restraint, sending her on a journey to womanly discovery.
She began to rock against him, trying to assuage a strange emptiness inside her that was wonderful, horrible. She was floating up, up. Her body had never been so alive.
In her mindlessness, in the sheer hedonistic delight he gave and she greedily took, Mariah was barely aware that he was staring at her, at the picture of wantonness she made.
"Just look at you there," Sol said fiercely. "So hot for me, just as I am for you. Hungry for more than a taste and... I think I did die. This has to be heaven."
Hardly realizing that he was pulling her forward, guided willingly by the urgency of his hands on her hips, she was shocked to feel his impatient fingers on her panties, his teeth ripping the silk barrier, then his tongue slowly lapping her moist heat.
Mariah's head fell forward and she could scarcely believe what they were doing, what she'd eagerly assented to.
"My word," she moaned. "What are you doing?"