Emotionally, he’d gone about as far as he could go. He didn’t think he had any more left inside to give. That there had even been this much surprised him. The last few weeks had been exceptionally difficult for him. He’d gotten his life tangled up with Clancy’s again and his father had resurfaced to hover phantomlike in his life.
All he had ever wanted out of existence was to live without complications. To do his job, to make a difference and to keep to himself. It wasn’t much to ask. But it wasn’t working out that way.
On any level.
Dusting his hands off on his jeans, Mitch rose to his feet. Clancy had a sensation that he was dusting her out of his life, as well. “Okay, have it your way. Maybe you’re right,” he said shortly.
Clancy stared up at him, stunned. Her throat felt dry. “What?”
He shrugged. Maybe he’d been a complete fool to go this far out on a limb emotionally. He kicked aside a hand weight on the floor and moved back. He wanted distance between them. A great deal of distance. The air was too charged.
“I said maybe you’re right. Maybe I have been butting against a wall.” He looked at her and shook his head. “Maybe you never will walk again.”
Mitch was saying things that she had shouted at him, time and again. He was agreeing with her. Clancy couldn’t breathe.
She had thought that she could never feel as lonely, as frightened as she had that day she’d woken up in the hospital. That day when Stuart had deserted her and the doctor had told her what her chances of walking were. That day when her entire life had crumbled.
She’d been wrong.
The feeling she’d experienced then was nothing compared to what she was feeling now. She was suspended in space, and the line tethering her to the shuttle had just been severed.
She felt herself drifting away from it. From her one chance at survival.
Clancy knew she couldn’t go on if he meant what he had just said. If he walked out on her. Mitch was her only source of hope. She’d surrendered the right to hold on to it herself and had silently made him the keeper of the flame. She could despair and rage and give up over and over again, as long as he kept at her. As long as he was her safety net.
If he gave up, she was lost.
Panic filled the void in her being. She gripped the armrests for support. “Don’t say that.”
Mitch turned around to look at her, struggling to get his temper under control. “What?”
He was completely confused. She’d just been railing at him, saying the very words that he had repeated to her. One of them was going crazy and he wasn’t sure just which it was.
He had to take it back. He had to. “I said, don’t say that. Don’t you say that to me.”
He heard the panic. Saw it in her eyes. “I’m only saying what you—”
“I don’t care what I said,” she shouted, cutting him off. “I can say anything I want to.” She hit the armrest hard with the flat of her hand, channeling her fury. “I’m the one in this damn chair, not you.” Tears filled her voice as her eyes pleaded with him. “But if you say it, then it’s so. Don’t you see? If you stop believing I can walk, then I can’t. I won’t.”
He didn’t see. She could tell by the look on his face. He didn’t see.
Frustrated, confused, angry, Clancy picked up one of the wrist weights from the table, wanting to heave it at something. At Mitch, at her reflection in the window. At the world.
But as she tried, it slipped from her fingers and grazed her toes as it thudded to the floor.
“Ow!” She couldn’t do anything right, she thought in disgust.
He was about to demand to know what the hell she was doing, but the words evaporated from his mouth as he looked at her.
“What did you say?” he asked, his voice low, reminding her of a panther crouching in the underbrush.
“Ow!” she repeated, shouting the exclamation at him. “Haven’t you ever heard the word ow before?”
Clancy suddenly stopped and sucked in her breath. Her eyes grew wide. She felt as if she’d been transported to another place.
“Ow,” she repeated again, amazed. “I said ow.” The significance erupted, pouring over her like lava from a volcano. Just like that? Could it happen? “Mitch? I—I felt something.”
Her hair fell in her face as she bent her head to look down. She pushed it back impatiently, staring at her toes as if they were foreign entities with lives of their own.
Mitch was on his knees beside her, his palm beneath her toes. He ran his thumbnail along the underside of her foot. “Can you feel this?”
The sensation was blanketed, dull, as if it were coming through layers and layers of gauze. But it was there. She felt it.
She nodded before she could trust her voice to answer. “Yes.”
He pinched the skin just beneath her toes. “And this?”
Clancy nodded again, this time unable to answer. There was a huge lump in her throat that threatened to choke her.
One more test, he thought. One more hurdle. “Wiggle them for me.”
She’d just tried to stand and couldn’t. What if this was all there was? Just a vague something that masqueraded as feeling?
“I don’t know if I can.”
He didn’t hear the protest. He knew she could do it. He willed her to do it.
“Wiggle them for me,” he ordered. A marine drill sergeant couldn’t have been more exacting. When he heard the small intake of breath, he didn’t soften. He couldn’t. This was for her. “Try, damn it, try!”
Clancy clutched the armrests, every single fiber of her being concentrated on her toes. She couldn’t bring herself to look at them, she was so afraid of failure, so afraid of seeing that all her efforts were once again for nothing. That the sensation she’d felt had been just a fluke. She couldn’t stand it if that was all there was.
She concentrated and tried. With all her might she tried.
When Mitch said nothing, she knew that she had failed. Slowly, she opened her eyes. She was drenched in perspiration and breathing heavily, like a woman who had run a long distance.
And missed her goal.
Mitch raised his eyes to her face, his mind embracing what he’d just seen. “It moved.”
“What?” Clancy’s voice trembled as she breathed the word. There was a buzzing sound in her head and she was afraid that she was going to faint.
“Your toe...it moved.” He looked up into her face. “It moved, Clancy,” he said solemnly. And then his voice swelled with the joy that was filtering through him. “It moved!”
Mitch swept her up into his arms and rose, holding Clancy to him. He swung her around the room. “Your damn funny little toe moved.” He pressed a kiss to her hair. “You did it!”
She was crying again, crying as she embraced him. She could feel the heat of his body as it permeated his shirt. She was getting the shirt wet, staining the blue material with her tears. But they were tears of joy, so that made it all right.
She shook her head violently, denying his words. “No, you did it. You bullied me into it.”
Tears laced her lashes like tiny diamonds. They scattered as she blinked them away. There was love in her eyes as she looked at him. “I don’t know what I would have done without you, Mitch.”
He purposely ignored the look in her eyes. “Try to hold on to that thought. There’s a lot of work ahead of us, Clancy.”
She knew there was. If this were a race, she’d only be lacing up her running shoes at this point. But she did have the running shoes and that was what counted.
“I don’t mind.” Clancy’s voice softened as she looked at him. This was because of him, she realized. All because of him. She wouldn’t fool herself into thinking otherwise. “As long as I can hold you.”
Control of the situation was taken completely out of his hands.
The look in her eyes erased every single good intention he had. The love shimmering there blotted out his resolve and broke down the barriers he could have sworn wer
e in place when he had first decided to move in and help her. He was disarmed, and surrender was looming imminently on the horizon.
He tasted her a moment before he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her.
And in so doing, he relinquished any control over his destiny. Any restraint that he had foolishly talked himself into believing he had. It ran through his fingers like water.
God, it felt so good to hold her like this, to have her in his arms and kiss her the way he used to. With passion and hunger. He was losing his way again and for now, he didn’t care.
But this time there was more. He could sense the difference even as he felt himself coming undone. There was a layer of passion that hadn’t been present before. A fine, rich layer, forged out of the challenge they had faced together. The challenge had brought them closer, melded them. Galvanized them. Where her resolve ended, his began. As far as this was concerned, he was her other half.
The feeling extended beyond the challenge.
Clancy’s arms tightened around his neck as she abandoned herself in his kiss. Her emotions had been stirred to a fever pitch of despair and then elation. There was no way she could push them back into a neat little drawer now.
She didn’t want to.
What she wanted was to feel again, to feel like a woman.
To be Mitch’s woman.
The taste of his mouth on hers had caused her emotions to grow, expand. Explode, like nitroglycerine left out in the sun.
Like a man on the edge of a precipice, Mitch tried to draw away before he plummeted. But it was too late. She wouldn’t let him.
He wouldn’t let himself.
He dug deep. A strand of strength still held, one lone strand against the hurricane of emotions that beat so wildly within him.
“Clancy, I don’t want to hurt you,” he murmured against her mouth. But even as he did, her taste intoxicated him, ignited his blood.
Damn, but he wanted her. He had always wanted her. There was no escaping that. All he had managed to do was find a way to live with his need.
“You’ll hurt me only if you stop,” she answered. She felt light-headed. The room was reeling. If he pulled away now, she didn’t know how she could cope. “Mitch, I want to feel like a woman again.”
He looked into her eyes and knew she meant it. How could he possibly refuse her? But he knew what it meant to begin their affair all over again. The same ending waited for both of them. He couldn’t let that happen. For her good. Hers.
Doubt filled him. His eyes unintentionally swept over her legs. “But—”
She placed her finger to his lips, stopping his protest. “The feeling’s gone only below my thighs.” Tears spilled on her cheeks as her mouth quirked in a smile. “And my toe works now.”
She melted his heart. She always had. “Oh damn, Clancy, this isn’t right.”
“Yes,” she whispered against his mouth, holding his face in her hands. “Yes, it is.”
For such a fragile thing, she fought dirty. He was lost before he even began to resist. “I can’t hold out against you.”
Clancy ran her hand along his cheek. She could feel the beginnings of stubble forming. Her smile filled her eyes. “Then don’t try.”
It was all he needed. Mitch felt the last strand that tethered him to common sense snapping. And then he fell headlong into the wildfire she created within him.
He couldn’t help himself.
With Clancy in his arms, Mitch walked to her bedroom. His heart was hammering as he gently placed her on the comforter.
Silently, she raised her arms to him, afraid that he would back off at the last moment.
But he didn’t.
He came to her because there was nothing else he could do. Nowhere else in the world he could go. Nowhere else in the world that existed, except for this bed, this woman. This haven.
Clancy splayed her hand inside his shirt, against his chest. The warmth radiating from him penetrated her. Went all through her. She could feel him.
She could feel.
The joy the knowledge brought created rainbows inside of her. A profusion of rainbows and storms. Somehow, it seemed fitting. Mitch had a way of making the unusual happen.
But then, she had always thought that.
Mitch tucked her against him, savoring the feel of her small, soft body beside his. He was afraid of staying. He was more afraid of leaving.
Though his blood pumped hard within his veins, he schooled himself to go slowly. There were regions yet to be explored. He had no idea just how much she could or could not do and he didn’t want to mar the moment for her. Not for anything in the world.
With his eyes on hers, watchful for any sign that would indicate she wanted him to stop, Mitch unbuttoned her blouse and aroused both of them. His fingers slowly glided along her quivering flesh, parting the material until it fell away.
When it did, he lowered his mouth to the swells of her breasts, lightly grazing each. Her skin felt like silk and tasted of heaven.
He felt her heart pounding beneath his lips.
The battle that might have raged within him to pull back was lost without a single shot being fired.
And he was hers.
Carefully, he removed her blouse from her arms, then unfastened her bra. Her breath quickened, matching the rhythm of his.
Clancy moaned as his hands roamed her breasts. This was what she wanted, what she had yearned for. He was touching her the way he had once done. Making her his the way she now knew she’d always been.
The aberration with Stuart had been just that, an aberration. An attempt to heal and forget. Because Mitch had left her.
She knew now that she had never forgotten. One taste of his mouth had told her that. Her body was like a flower that had been held captive in the dark and was now suddenly being drawn into the light.
“Oh, how I’ve missed you,” she murmured against his skin.
Frantically, she tugged his shirt from his shoulders, wanting to feel his skin against hers. Wanting to feel everything.
The exhilaration was overwhelming.
It was the first time she’d felt really alive in more than a month and she clung to the sensation, to the rush that was building within her.
He wanted to tell her that he had missed her, too. That when he had walked away, a part of him had remained. And another part had died.
But he couldn’t. The words were all locked up inside of him and he didn’t know how to release them. He’d never known.
He could only make love with her. As he had countless times in his mind.
Chapter Eleven
He didn’t want this to be happening. There were grave consequences to be faced, consequences he was well acquainted with. He’d endured them before. Endured and overcome. But just barely.
Like an alcoholic who had finally conquered his craving, Mitch knew that once he gave in, once he had her again, there would be no turning back.
He would find himself at the beginning of that long, torturous maze. Wanting her more than he wanted to breathe.
It was too late.
He was there now.
Like a man dying of thirst, his mouth slanted over hers, drinking deeply of the sweetness he’d gone so long without.
It did no good to tell himself that this was wrong, that it was upsetting the peace he had finally established for himself. That in surrendering to his emotions, he was obliterating the narrow path he’d resigned himself to walking.
It didn’t matter.
All that mattered was Clancy. The feel of her, the taste of her. It drugged him, blocked his senses and made him crave more.
Always more.
He wanted her, Clancy thought, nearly crying the words aloud. He really wanted her!
After all this time, he was finally here, loving her the way she remembered. The way she’d yearned for. His hands were on her, gentle, stroking, stoking the flame within her body with every movement.
Like oil spilled on a fire, she burned harder,
brighter. Stronger. Clancy arched against him as best she could, wishing with all her heart that she could be for him the way she once had been.
Once she had moved beneath him and over him agilely. Their arms and legs had become as tangled together as their emotions. Now she could only cling to him.
She had to work twice as hard with what she had to make him feel about her the way he once had.
Work twice as hard to keep him from looking back and regretting. No matter what lay ahead for them, for her, no matter what their futures would be, together or apart, she never wanted him to regret making love with her.
Mitch had always been a strong man. He’d had to be. The world showed no pity, made no exceptions. Only the strong had a prayer of surviving. With Clancy, it was different. With Clancy he wasn’t strong. He was as weak as an abandoned kitten. His fate was entirely centered in the palm of her small hand. It was almost as if he possessed no will of his own.
The only thing he possessed was desire. And it was consuming him.
Wanting to feel her against him, Mitch shrugged out of his shirt and tossed it aside. He vaguely remembered kicking off his shoes.
Clancy felt torn apart. Under different circumstances, she’d be wiggling out of her own clothes, willing, eager, causing a frenzy of fabric to fall by the wayside. But she couldn’t now.
She framed his face with her hands, stopping him just before he kissed her. “You’re going to have to do a lot of the work.”
Her breath caught in her throat as his fingers dipped down and lingered over the swell of her abdomen. The heel of his hand pressed intimately against her hip as he trailed small, concentric circles that made the core of her desire pulsate with longing. “It’s only work if you don’t enjoy it.”
“Do you, Mitch?” She needed to hear him say it, to admit it to her just once. She needed to be assured that he desired her even a tenth as much as she did him. “Do you really?”
Did he have to say it? Couldn’t she see it in his eyes? He knew without looking that it was written there. And she had always had such ready access to his soul.
“Damn, you know I do.” He pressed a kiss to her throat and felt her moan vibrate against his lips. “I always did.”
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