Have to get it off me. Once I do, I’ll feel better. Be able to forget. She hoped, anyway.
They drove in silence and didn’t talk even when they reached Owen’s loft. Leah had the feeling he wanted to say something, but she didn’t give him a chance. The moment he put the key in the lock and turned it, she was past him and through the door, heading for the bathroom.
“Leah—” he began, but she ignored him.
A shower. I need a long, hot shower. When I’m clean, everything will be okay again. It will be like it never happened.
But she couldn’t get clean.
Oh, the stuff melted away under the scalding water, though at first she’d been afraid it wouldn’t. But aside from its strange color and horrible smell—which she seemed to pick up more with her mind than her nose—it acted like ordinary semen. But no matter how many times she washed her hair and scrubbed her body, Leah could still feel it on her. On her face…her breasts…her thighs. Burning her. Branding her. Marking her as disgusting and ruined. Unclean. Defiled.
She didn’t know how long she had stayed in the shower. Didn’t know how long she’d spent frantically scrubbing until her skin was raw. Didn’t know and didn’t care. She would stop when she was clean. She didn’t even care when the water turned lukewarm and then freezing cold. Still she scrubbed because she wasn’t clean yet. Would never be clean.
“Leah?”
Looking up from her scrubbing, she caught a glimpse of Owen’s worried face through the clear glass door of the shower stall.
“I’m fine,” she said mechanically, attacking her breasts again with the harsh exfoliating hand mitt she’d found in the corner of the shower stall. “Fine, Owen. Leave me alone.”
“You’ve been in there for two hours,” he said flatly. “You’re not fine.”
“Yes, I am. Just have to…have to get clean.”
“Sweetheart, you are clean. Look at you. Half your skin’s rubbed raw. You need to stop this.”
“I told you, Owen. Not until I get clean,” she said stubbornly.
“Leah…” He opened the shower door, and she shrank away from him.
“No! Don’t—”
“Don’t touch you. I get it. I know.” He held up his hands and then grabbed a towel. “I won’t, okay? But you need to come out of there now.”
“No.” She glared at him, lifting her chin. “I’m not clean yet. Now shut the door; you’re letting the cold air in.”
“The cold air? Leah, you’ve been in there so long, the water is a lot colder than the air.” Owen put out a finger to test it. “It’s freezing, and you’re shivering.”
“N-no, I’m n-not,” she protested even though her teeth were chattering now. “I’m f-fine.”
Owen frowned. “Leah, come out right now or I’m calling an ambulance and you’re going to the hospital.” There was a ring of authority in his voice she couldn’t ignore.
Scowling at him, Leah gave herself one more swift, allover scrub and then turned off the water. She stepped out of the shower stall and snatched the towel from him to cover her nakedness. She wanted to get past him quickly, to run to the next room and get away, be by herself. But her foot slipped in a puddle of water.
In the blink of an eye, Leah found herself falling. Good. Maybe I’ll break my neck when I land, and this will all be over. Or I’ll hit my head and forget everything. The thought flashed through her brain, but instead of hitting the hard tile floor, she was suddenly caught and held in a pair of strong arms.
“Hey.” Owen looked down at her anxiously, his eyes filled with worry. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said and then burst into tears.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Owen carried her to the bedroom and sat down on the bed, still holding her close. He cuddled her to his chest and rocked her, whispering soothingly that she would be all right—that everything was going to be all right.
Leah wanted to push away from him, to scream that he would make himself dirty too if he touched her. But she didn’t have the strength. All she could do was lean her head against his broad chest and cry. And cry and cry.
“Oh, Leah.” Owen heard the broken tone in his own voice, but he couldn’t help it. It matched the sound of Leah’s sobs. “It’s going to be all right,” he murmured over and over again, even though he had no idea how anything would ever be right again. “It’s all right, Leah. Everything is going to be all right.”
Finally she quieted in his arms. She was wrapped in a towel, but it had come loose, and he could see the tops of her breasts, bright pink from all her frantic scrubbing. This is my fault. I never should have sent her away. I should have kept her here and…and what? Finished what we started? That would have been wrong—terrible, he reminded himself. But a little voice in his head whispered that even if he’d gone all the way with Leah, it wouldn’t have been as wrong or as terrible as what had happened to her in the cheap apartment where he’d found her.
She was breathing deeply now, and he realized that she’d cried herself out and gone to sleep like a tired toddler.
“Oh, Leah,” he said tenderly and kissed her cheek. Then he laid her gently on the bed and turned out the bedside light. He went to the bathroom to take off his scrub shirt and examine the wound on his shoulder. It was a long, shallow slice that had already stopped bleeding. He washed it and put some antibiotic ointment on it and then went back to bed. Careful of his wounded arm, he climbed in behind Leah and held her close, spooning her slender body against his own.
Feeling utterly exhausted, he closed his eyes. But just as he was drifting off to sleep, he had the strangest sensation. It felt like feathers—the softest feathers in the world—brushing gently over his face. Where the softness touched, he felt his forehead smooth, and the aching tension that had been building all night somehow dissipated. His shoulders relaxed, and the cut on his arm stopped stinging. In fact, he thought drowsily, he felt better all over.
While getting ready for bed, he’d imagined he would lie there for hours, blaming himself and worrying about Leah. But somehow after the soothing caress of the feathers, he found he was able to sleep. As he drifted off, he hoped Leah had felt the—angel wings?—feathers too.
Love you, little sister. Love you so much… And then sleep claimed him.
* * *
Leah struggling weakly in his arms woke him up. “Let me go,” she whispered in a voice hoarse from sobbing for so long the night before. “Let me go, Owen.”
“What?” He blinked, wondering what time it was. The light filtering in between the drapes was weak and diffuse. Was it early morning or early evening? Had he and Leah slept the entire day away? Whatever the case, he felt strangely refreshed and clearheaded—ready to deal with what had happened. But was Leah ready to deal?
“Let me go,” she demanded again.
He almost loosened his hold on her as she requested, but then he heard Jael’s voice in his head. “She needs your touch. And she needs to know that, no matter what happened, you still love her.”
“No,” he said, turning her to face him and keeping an arm around her waist. “No, Leah. I’m not letting go until you talk to me.”
“Please, Owen.” Her eyes pleaded with him. “You need to let me go. You…you’ll get all dirty.”
“No, I won’t,” he said firmly. “Because you’re not dirty. You couldn’t be, no matter what he did to you.”
“He didn’t do what you think he did,” she said dully, looking away. “He didn’t…didn’t rape me.”
Owen felt a surge of relief so great that he could barely speak. “Oh, Leah. I’m so glad. I was so afraid—”
“He wanted to, though. He was going to right before you came. He…he rubbed himself all over me. And he kept…kept… It was all over me, Owen. All over me.” Her voice wobbled, and her eyes filled again.
Owen felt like someone had reached into his chest and was crushing his heart. “Leah, honey, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
?
??I don’t want to, but I have to.” She closed her eyes briefly, squeezing them tight, and tears ran down her cheeks.
“Then I’ll listen,” Owen said softly. “To whatever you need to say. But I’m just so glad he didn’t… That he didn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Leah said, looking down. “I’m still ruined. Still dirty and…and defiled.”
“Don’t say that,” he said sharply.
“I don’t know how else to put it.” She looked up at him, her eyes wet. “No other word seems to fit.”
“It’s not true.”
“It is. And he…he kept saying you’d never get there in time. And that even if you did, you’d never want me again.”
“That’s a lie,” Owen said fiercely. “Nothing could ever make me stop loving you.”
Leah looked away. “You already stopped. You stopped when I pushed you too far. Pushed you into…doing things you didn’t want to do.”
“Oh, Leah…” He lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “How can you think that? It was because I love you so much that I stopped. And I did want to do those things—that and more. I just… It was wrong. Wrong, and we both knew it.”
“It doesn’t matter now, anyway,” she whispered. “Even if you did love me and want me. You can’t feel that way anymore. Not now.”
“Now more than ever,” Owen whispered. Then he kissed her eyes, kissing away the tears as he had done so long ago when their long, strange journey of love and forbidden lust had begun. Then he pressed his mouth to hers, a featherlight kiss to let her know he still felt for her as much as he ever had. More, in fact, now that he had almost lost her.
Leah returned the kiss with an eager intensity that surprised him. Then she pulled away, panting a little, and looked into his eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s all right.” Owen brushed a strand of golden hair out of her eyes. “It came over me too. But I don’t think we should—”
“I understand,” she interrupted, the fragile light dying out of her eyes. “It’s okay, Owen. Just let me go.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you. Don’t you understand?” he demanded. “Leah, you’ve been through a terrible experience. The last thing you need is your brother touching you. Doing things…doing things that shouldn’t be done,” he ended lamely.
Leah frowned at him. “But you’re not my brother.”
He shook his head in confusion. “What? What are you talking about, Leah?”
She put a hand over her eyes. “Oh God, I’m so sorry, Owen. I didn’t mean to tell you this way. I wanted to break it to you gently. I found a letter from Mom in my suitcase. I’ve had it forever, but I didn’t want to read it. I thought it would make me miss her more. But it turned out to be all about you. About how you’re”—she looked up at him—“about how you’re adopted.”
“I’m what?” Owen was certain he’d heard her wrong.
“Adopted,” she repeated. “I have the letter back at…at the apartment. I mean, I think it would still be there, but I”—she shook her head, her face going pale—“I don’t think I can go back there, Owen.”
“Of course, you don’t have to,” he said, reassuring her at once. “Never, I promise. And I believe you. It’s just…so hard to take in. All these years… I never had any idea.”
“Neither of us did. How could we?” She shrugged.
“So…are you adopted too?” he asked. “I mean, did Mom and Dad get both of us from the same surrogate or something?”
Leah shook her head. “No. I’m their biological child. But I can see why you’d think so. Mom even said in her letter that no one would guess we weren’t really blood related, because we look so much alike.”
“That’s the truth,” Owen murmured, running a hand through his hair. The sudden news was so much to take in, he felt like his head was going to explode. It was just…unbelievable. “Leah, seriously, you’re kidding me, aren’t you?” He couldn’t help asking.
She flushed. “Never. I would never make something like this up. And if you think I would just to…to get you to love me, well, you can forget that. I mean, I know you could never…never want me like that again. Not after what happened last night.”
“How many times do I have to tell you I still care?” He took her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “That I still want you? It…it blows my mind. All these years I’ve been fighting this attraction to you, trying not to care, because I thought I was your brother.”
“Why would you have any cause to think anything else?” Leah was looking down at her hands. “It’s all right, Owen. If you want to keep on thinking that way, I mean. If you want to keep our relationship a brother-sister one. You know—purely platonic. I understand.”
“Platonic? Why the hell would I want that?” He pulled her closer and looked into her eyes. “You know how I feel about you, Leah. How badly I want you. But, well, I don’t want to hurt you. You’ve already been through so much, and last night was so…so traumatic.” He stroked her cheek tenderly. “I don’t want to add to your pain.”
Leah nuzzled his hand, her blue eyes filled with fear and desire. “I know I shouldn’t want your hands on me, Owen. I shouldn’t want anything male within a hundred yards of me after what happened at the apartment. But…but I can’t help it.” She shrugged helplessly. “I feel…better when you touch me. When you kiss me.”
“Like this?” Owen tilted her chin up and fit his lips to hers in a soft, gentle kiss. Once again Leah reacted eagerly, parting her lips for him, inviting him in. Owen felt a huge surge of longing go through him. God, he wanted her so badly. But she was hurting right now, emotionally vulnerable. He didn’t want to take advantage of her. Reluctantly he broke the kiss. “Leah, I want to do this, but…”
“But what?” Leah whispered.
“Nothing.” Owen took a deep breath and looked at her. He had to control himself. Had to take things easy. He didn’t want to hurt Leah, but it was clear she needed him. Suddenly he heard Jael’s voice in his head again. “You have the healing touch; use it to help her. Lay your hands on her and make her well.”
“Maybe…maybe I should at least examine you. If you’ll let me?”
“If you want.” She looked at him uncertainly. “Should I… Do you want me to take off my towel?”
“Yes. I think that would be best.”
“All right.” Leah discarded the towel and lay back on the bed, completely naked. Knowing the trauma she’d just been through, Owen tried to be careful and objective. But he couldn’t help thinking how beautiful she was. And how bare.
“I’m going to touch you, Leah,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “To try to heal you. Like I did before. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” She nodded, and the fragile light was back in her eyes. “But, Owen, are you sure you…you want to?”
“More than I should,” he said softly. “Much more, especially after what you’ve been through. But if… Do you really feel better when I do?” He cupped her cheek and then stroked one hand down her neck to rest just above her breasts.
Leah bit her lip and nodded. “Yes. I don’t know why, but it seems like if…if you could touch me everywhere, he…he…”
“I understand,” Owen said, not wanting to make her say it.
“Then if you could,” Leah begged softly. “It’s like…it’s like your touch erases what he did. All the bad things get wiped away when I feel your hands on me, Owen.”
“Oh, Leah.” Owen couldn’t help himself. He leaned down and kissed her again—a long, lingering kiss that seemed to go on and on.
Leah kissed him back eagerly, opening herself to him completely. Making him want her as much as he ever had…
Owen forced himself to pull away. Stop it. You’re healing her. Not doing…anything else. This is what started all the trouble in the first place.
But he couldn’t help enjoying the silkiness of her skin as he stroked her arms and sides. Couldn’t help loving the
way her nipples got so tight when he brushed his fingertips lightly over the tops of her breasts. But when he started to move on without touching her more intimately, Leah made a soft sound of protest and put a hand on his wrist.
“Please, Owen,” she murmured. “I need…need more. It was all over me. All over my breasts. If you could just…”
“Just do this?” Owen cupped one of her full breasts and stroked upward from the undercurve to lightly pinch her nipple. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he added as she moaned and arched her back, begging mutely for more. “Not so soon after… But anyway, if it makes you feel better…”
“It does. Oh God, it really does.” She looked at him shyly. “But…there’s something that would make me feel even better, I think. If you… Do you think you could kiss me there? Just a little?”
Owen looked at her directly, determined there would be no lies or subterfuge between them. “You want me to suck your nipples, Leah?” he said softly. “Is that what you’re asking me to do?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, please, Owen. Please, suck my nipples.”
He could deny her nothing. He took first one nipple and then the other between his lips. Sucking hard, he pulled each tight, rosy peak deep into his mouth as Leah moaned and wound her fingers through his hair.
Owen couldn’t understand why this was helping her. He’d dealt with victims of violent crimes as a resident during ER rotations, and he knew the last thing Leah ought to want was sexual contact with anyone. But the regular rules didn’t seem to apply to her. Because the more he touched her, the better and freer she seemed to feel. It was as though his touch really was healing her—not just physically, but emotionally too. Owen hadn’t known he was even capable of that. Or maybe this new talent only worked on Leah. For whatever reason, he was determined to keep going until she felt completely better.