In Dark Woods (Signal Bend Series #4.5)

by Fanetti, Susan

  She loved his hair, so much. More than any other part of his spectacular body, his hair was him. It was as long as hers, thick and dark, and she loved to wrap her hand around it when they fucked. He was vain about it, too, always wanting his braid smooth and even, very particular about what kind of band he’d wrap around it (no metal parts!), and she loved that—this little bit of primness in her massive, macho guy.

  She would have worked the snarls out strand by strand before she would have let them shave him.

  When she finally had every snarl released and his hair squeaky clean, she massaged conditioner into it. Then she rinsed it clear. She toweled it dry and pulled it all to one side of the pillow. She put everything away, and then she took their blow dryer out of her pack and dried and brushed his hair until it was soft and gleaming.

  Then she braided it, being careful to make sure the sections were even and the braid smooth, and she wrapped the bottom in a black, metal-free elastic.

  Only then did she notice that he was crying.

  She leaned over him and took his face in her hands. “Oh, love. I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “No, no.” He took the deepest breath he could and calmed. “I love you, Sport. I fuckin’ love you.”

  FOUR

  “For now, while you’re still immobilized, we’ll focus on blood flow and preventing atrophy. The leggings have been doing that passively, with electric current, but you’re healing well enough that we can add some massage to that. No manipulation yet, but that will come. When we can get you out of the immobilizer, then we can work on regaining and keeping tone and strength.”

  The rehab therapist, Julie, was allegedly massaging his legs as she talked. She could have been rubbing down some guy across the hall for all he could tell. Lilli was standing next to her, watching, learning how to massage him. Her hands on his body, which he could not feel. He closed his eyes and pushed at the shadows that threatened his mind whenever he thought of all he had lost.

  He focused instead on what he still could feel of her. She had washed his hair that morning. Jesus fuck, that had been intense. Almost an hour of her hands in his hair, on his head, really feeling her touch, feeling in the pull of the strands on his scalp something he could remember—the way she pulled his hair when she came. It was erotic. Even without a body that could respond, it was erotic. It tore him apart; it had been nearly unbearable in its intensity, and he hadn’t wanted it to end.

  This woman. His woman. Steady and true. More than he deserved. But she wanted him. Even like this, she wanted him. He hadn’t totally believed it until he’d felt her hands in his hair.

  They’d moved him to a different room in the afternoon, with a little more space and an actual window looking out over the parking lot. The only window in the ICU room had looked inward, at the nurse’s station. What he could see of it.

  It didn’t matter what room he was in, really. He couldn’t see much more than the ceiling, wherever he was. It was now late in the afternoon; the setting sun had cast an orange glow over the pocked white tiles above his bed.

  “Isaac.” Julie was standing near his shoulder. He hadn’t noticed that she’d stopped rubbing his legs—why would he?—and moved up the side of the bed. “I want you to try to squeeze this for me.

  She set something in his hand.

  He could feel its slight weight. He could feel its smooth surface. He could feel the warmth of her hands, holding his around the ball. It was a ball. Could he really feel all that? Or was it wishful fantasy? But she was holding her hands around his because he could not do it himself. He could not move his hand.

  So he said nothing about what he thought he could feel.

  ~oOo~

  He could not sleep. They’d changed the drug they were giving him to help with that, and all this one did was make his head spin. He continually felt like he was falling, without any way of stopping himself. It made him sick, and he threw up the gruel Lilli had fed him for dinner.

  Throwing up while on his back became a huge production, as he choked and nearly respirated it, requiring nurses and tubes down the throat, and oxygen delivery. There was no end to the abasements he would have to endure in this new life. But finally, the crisis passed, and he and Lilli were left alone, though now he had the fucking cannula shoved up his nose again. They’d given him something to counteract the sleeping meds. So he wasn’t sick anymore. But he wasn’t sleeping.

  To ease his distress, Lilli read to him from Altered Carbon, until she got to the scene where Kovacs and Miriam fuck like freight trains while on the drug Merge Nine. It wasn’t a sex book. It was a badass science fiction noir thriller, but the sex scenes…were plenty thrilling. Unfamiliar with the novel, she got into the scene before she realized how very detailed it was. He’d read the book so many times the cover was almost shot, so he’d seen it coming.

  “‘I settled over her, and my stubble rasped faintly over the sprung smoothness of her belly, my mouth making wet Os on its path downward. Then there was the deep salt taste as my tongue tracked down the creases of her cunt’—” Lilli went quiet, and he could sense her reading on silently, looking for the end of that scene.

  “Why’d you stop?” He couldn’t see her from where she sat at the side of his bed, but he could sense her, her proximity and her discomfort.

  “Isaac. It’s—damn. It’s not a good idea.”

  Because he was a fucking eunuch now. He hadn’t had even a reflex erection, as far as anyone knew. Shit, he couldn’t even touch her. “Because I can’t get you off if it makes you hot.”

  “No. Come on, love. Haven’t you had a rough enough night?”

  “Read the fuckin’ scene, Sport. Just read it. Like you mean it.”

  She was quiet for a long moment, leaving only the hiss of the oxygen, the grind of the IV machine, the beep of the heart monitor, the hum of the electric current keeping his legs and ass from dissolving into suppurating chunks of dead meat.

  No wonder he couldn’t sleep without the good drugs. It sounded like a machine shop in here.

  Finally, she started reading again. And she did read it like she meant it, like she was into it. For several pages, it went on. And it was hot. Even as his dead body ignored the titillation, his head did not. He was overwhelmed by the urge to grab Lilli and shove himself inside her.

  None of which he could do—not grab, not shove, and there was nothing to put inside her.

  Ever again.

  She was right. He should have let her stop reading the scene.

  When the chapter was over, she asked, “Is that what you wanted? Did you get what you wanted?” She sounded angry.

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  She stood and leaned over him, putting her hands around his face, as she so often did now. The only touch they had. “When I couldn’t get close, after what happened to me, do you remember what you said? You told me that it didn’t matter if we ever had sex again. That all you needed was me and Gia, in your life. Were you telling me the truth?”

  “Yes! God!”

  “Then why do you think I need more? What I need of you I still have, love. As long as you’re with me, I still have you. All I need.”

  ~oOo~

  She slept that night with her funky bed-chair pushed up close to his bed. When the night nurse came in—a skinny dude—he was nice enough to do what he needed to do without waking her. Isaac was grateful; Lilli didn’t sleep much, but she was doing okay this time, only waking once or twice. On this night, without the good drugs, he did not sleep at all.

  He could sense the weight of her hand on his, as if through padding. He lay staring at the ceiling, willing his body to let him really feel her hand, its warmth, it smooth softness, its strength. He willed his body to let him touch her, to let him hold her, if only to fold his fingers over hers.

  There was nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing happened. Nothing.

  And then, as the ceiling tiles began to brighten with weak dawn light, there was something. Like a faint current,
a tremor of muscle, that he could feel move down his arm to the hand Lilli was holding. Maybe it was an illusion, but Isaac could feel the sensation returning, as if following the wake of that tremor. And then he turned his hand under Lilli’s and folded his fingers over hers.

  She woke with a start and sat bolt upright. He couldn’t see her well, but he could hear her, and he could feel her hand jerk in his. He closed his hand tighter; he didn’t want to lose her.

  “Isaac?”

  “Morning, Sport.” He smiled. It felt like his first smile in a very long time.

  ~oOo~

  He still failed all the tests on his legs and his torso, nearly up to his pecs, but his arms were coming back. They weren’t all the way back—he couldn’t lift them, and so far he only had any real control over one hand, but he could move that at will now—and he could feel, really feel, both arms and both hands, one more acutely than the other.

  The doctors were pleased, but not effusive. There had always been a decent chance that he would get his arms back, since he’d had some sensation. A month after he’d been shot, though, Isaac had given up that hope.

  They were no more encouraging that this progress might mean he would walk again, and he was still mostly flat on his back. But Isaac was holding his woman’s hand again, and in this moment, that almost felt like enough.

  “I want to bring Gia now,” she said, as soon as they were alone again.

  “Not until I can hold her. Please, Lilli. Wait until I can hold her.” She nodded, and he breathed a little easier.

  He hadn’t seen his daughter in a month. She couldn’t be in the ICU—and, anyway, he hadn’t wanted to see her when he couldn’t touch her. He’d known he would have to eventually, even if he’d not regained his arms, but he was not ready to face that pain. It was hard enough not to touch Lilli. But his little girl, who would reach for him and not understand why he didn’t reach back? No.

  He hadn’t wanted to see anyone, actually. He’d forbidden anyone but Lilli and Show to see him in the ICU. His brothers didn’t need to see him in his fucking diaper and his fucking oxygen and his fucking immobilizer.

  A throat cleared, and Lilli looked over her shoulder. Isaac could see the smile in her profile.

  “Hey, bud. Come in.”

  Isaac knew who it must be. He hadn’t wanted his brothers to see him like this, but there was one exception. He did not want Bart to go, to leave town, to give up the Horde to save the Horde, without saying goodbye. And now it was time to do so.

  Lilli went to Bart, disappearing from Isaac’s sight. She said something to Bart that he didn’t catch, and then to him said, “I’ll be back in five, love.” He nodded.

  For several seconds, the room was quiet. Isaac waited. He knew it had to be a shock to see him like this. Then Bart came into his field of vision.

  “Bartholomew.”

  “Hey, boss.”

  But he wasn’t ‘boss.’ He couldn’t be ‘boss.’

  ~oOo~

  “Never say die.” With those words, Bart left.

  Isaac lay in silence and grappled with his head. He had done this. He had sent that kid into fuck knew what. The decisions he’d made as President had gotten the Horde to this point. Lilli kept telling him those decisions were club decisions, that they’d all gone in together. But he was the one at the head of the table. He was the one with the gavel in his hand.

  Or he had been.

  Because Isaac had discounted C.J. as an impotent old blowhard, the Scorpions had turned on the Horde. He had seen the man who had been like a father to him. Even when C.J. was balking and pushing back, Isaac had not seen the threat, only the old man past his prime. His blindness—his arrogance—had cost the Horde dearly. Again.

  He hoped it would not cost Bart more. He could only hope. The definition of impotence, he could only lie where he was and hope.

  Suffused with a rage too big to tamp down, he roared. Except he did not have the power to roar. He grunted, as loud and long as he could.

  Lilli ran into the room, up to his bed, and grabbed his face. “What is it? Isaac—are you hurting? What?”

  He could only take another stilted breath and make that impotent, bestial sound.

  He saw it in her eyes when she understood what was happening. Then she grabbed his hand and held it to her face, where he could see. He watched his hand wrap around hers and held on as tightly as his traitorous body would let him.

  Never say die.

  Never say die.

  Ride or die.

  He couldn’t ride.

  FIVE

  Gia was finally asleep in her car seat, and Lilli turned the volume down on They Might Be Giants. Checking the rearview to make sure the volume change didn’t disturb the sleeping toddler, Lilli settled in for the rest of the long drive. She’d made it so many times now that she could drive without paying full attention. She gave her head some rein and let it think.

  Eight weeks ago, after six weeks in the county hospital, Isaac had been released to rehabilitative care. There was a rehab care center on the County campus, but Lilli wanted better for Isaac. If there was even the slimmest chance that he could regain his body, she was determined to find it for him. She was prepared to take him anywhere in the world to find it for him.

  She had not needed to go far. One of the most highly regarded centers in the world, specializing in paralysis rehabilitation, was in St. Louis. It was also one of the most expensive centers, and their insurance was not remotely keeping up with the pace of the cost of his care. It hadn’t been keeping up in the hospital, and it was paying for even less of the cost of the rehab center, proportionally.

  They had always been financially strong, and they were neither of them extravagant people. Isaac had been on solid ground when they met, and she had the sizable inheritance from her father. Then, they had bought the Keller property and built the B&B on it. And they’d donated the money to get the town library open and running. And then Isaac had been shot.

  The B&B was doing well, but she’d funneled a lot of the profits back into it, raising the salaries of the employees, keeping everything running at top form, improving services. She’d laid out a decent sum to improve its appeal as a venue for smaller-scale weddings. In terms of money that actually went into their personal accounts from the business, it was creating only a modest income. Enough to live as comfortably as they had been, but no more.

  Isaac was still nominally the President of the Night Horde, and as such, he got his larger cut from their protection payments and other income. But he’d also paid his larger share of the cost of starting the wine bar, which was not yet open for business, and thus far was only sucking on the shriveling teat of the Horde’s accounts.

  And then there was the cost of her staying most of every week at the Residence Inn across the street from the rehab center. That was on them completely. But she wasn’t leaving him alone. If he was alone for more than a day, the depression came over him so hard he gave up entirely, and she was afraid he’d hurt himself—or worse. He had his hands and arms back, and he was a smart man. Even in the rehab center, he could figure it out. So she stayed close and let Shannon and Show continue to raise their daughter well more than half the time.

  Though he had regained feeling almost to his waist, Isaac was still paralyzed from that point down. But with full use of his arms and hands, he’d built back a lot of strength. He was strong and able to sit up with little help. He had mastered his wheelchair quickly and could get himself in and out of bed without help, once he was secured into his brace. As long as she stayed close and he could keep despair at bay, he worked hard at his therapy, and he had made a lot of progress in these eight weeks at the rehab center. More than anyone had given them cause to hope.

  Lilli would sell every holding, every belonging, her own blood before she’d take him away from a place that might help him to walk. Maybe even one day to ride.

  But she was beginning to worry that she might have to.

  Show had conf
ronted her about it a week or so ago. Learning that Dom, on Show’s word, had checked into their private accounts, Lilli had been livid. She’d punched Show, and he’d let her. Then he’d forced her down to the couch and insisted she tell him exactly what was going on with the money. Bubbling at the brim with stress and worry, under the meaty hands of the only person she trusted to be steady with the information, she’d told him. And she’d sworn him to secrecy.

  Isaac didn’t know. He didn’t know how much it was all costing, or how much their accounts were depleting. She wouldn’t tell him, she couldn’t, because he would demand to be moved back to County. She wouldn’t let that happen. No matter how long he had to stay, she would figure it out. She would figure it out.

  She would.

  But she was tired. She was so fucking tired. She hadn’t slept through a night in more than three months. Her brain never stopped. Never. When she was with Isaac, she was focused on him, encouraging him, keeping him feeling connected to Signal Bend, working out schedules for visitors, talking with his care specialists. And all the while, in the back of her head, was the constant pull of Gia, whom she saw when she went home one night a week, and then when she drove back and forth to bring her to St. Louis every weekend.

  Last week, when she’d gotten home and held out her arms, Gia had turned away and held more tightly to Shannon. Just for a moment, and then she’d reached out. But that moment had been filled with blades.

  When she was away from Isaac, she was a knot of worry, knowing how quickly his mood turned when he was alone, how little patience he had for the slightest hiccup. Even bumping his chair into a doorframe would cause a fit of fury.

  She felt like her life was being run by other people—and it was true. Shannon and Show were keeping their child and their house. Show was running the Horde. Omen, of all people, had taken over the library. Lilli just circled outside it all, her only task in life to get Isaac on his feet. To help him regain himself in a way that was real to him.