“I guess there’s no chance we can be reasonable about his, hmm?” She looked at him like he was a child in the middle of a temper tantrum. Her cool only ratcheted his anger up a notch.
“If I hadn’t been reasonable, I would have stormed into your office and dragged you out by the hair days ago.”
“Logan—”
“Screw Logan.”
“That seems to be your answer to everything to day.”
“Damn it, Rhiannon. Why would you do that to me? To us?”
“It’s for the best. Things were getting out of hand and I thought a clean break would make them easier.”
“Out of hand? I love you and you just cut me off at the knees like I was nothing. Like the way I feel about you is nothing.”
“That’s not true. You don’t—”
“Don’t tell me how I feel. You seem to think that you can control everything here, that you get to make all the choices for both of us. But that’s not how this is going to work. We’re in a relationship whether you like it or not, and I am not going to be frozen out because you’re too scared to try to make it work.”
“That’s not what happened.” The words burst from her and he watched, fascinated, as her mask cracked right down the middle. Her face crumpled and she turned away.
He followed her, unwilling to let her get her composure back. “Well, if that’s not how it was, tell me, please. How was it?”
When she turned to him this time, it was the Rhiannon he knew and loved staring back at him. “I’m bad for you.”
He waited for her to say more, and when she didn’t, he asked, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You didn’t see yourself after that night—you looked terrible. Exhausted, strung out, in pain. I couldn’t stand it.”
“The woman I loved had just told me that she had been brutally raped. How the hell was I supposed to look—I was devastated.”
“I dragged you into my problems, wrapped you up in them when we had promised to keep things casual. How could I ask you to stay with me when all I kept doing was hurting you?”
“I’m a big boy, Rhiannon. I could have left anytime I wanted.”
“But you wouldn’t. You’re too nice for your own good.”
He barked out a laugh. “Don’t count on that, baby. I’ve spent years dodging around women and their issues, refusing to be drawn in beyond the most casual connection. I’ll be the first to admit Cynthia did a number on me and I’m not proud of how I handled my subsequent relationships with women, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it, either. I never stuck around for the rough stuff.”
“Bull. You think I don’t know you? You think I don’t know what a decent person you are? You never once tried to duck out on me, no matter how freaked out I was.”
“You’re not listening to me, Rhiannon. I stayed because I couldn’t leave. I took one look at your crazy hair and that dimple of yours and I fell. Hard. I love you and your neuroses. You can push me as hard as you want and it won’t matter. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t want to be another Cynthia. I don’t want you having nightmares about me years from now because you couldn’t help me. Because I couldn’t be helped.”
“Cynthia was a manic-depressive who wouldn’t stay on her medication and rejected everything the doctors and I did to help her. You are nothing like Cynthia.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“No, you’re the one who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I loved Cynthia and I watched her self-destruct.”
“And now you say you love me and I’m about to do the very same thing.”
“Honey, you’re so far from self-destruction that you wouldn’t recognize it if it smacked you in the face. You’re strong and you’re such a fighter. You’re on the brink of reclaiming everything—your life, your sexuality, your heart. Don’t sell yourself short because you’re afraid of hurting me.”
“But you can’t love me!” she wailed.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a mess. You saw what I did to you that last night—”
“What did you do to me, besides share the most personal, private side of you? What did you do except let me love you?”
“But I didn’t.”
“You did.” He reached for her, pulled her into his arms. This time she didn’t fight him. “And you may be a mess, but you’re my mess. And I’m not letting you go. No matter how hard you push, I’m just going to push back until you’re willing to accept how I feel about you.”
She buried her face in the curve of his neck. “God, Shawn, I love you so much. I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”
“What did you say?” This time he was the one who pulled away so that he could get a good look at her face.
“I don’t want to hurt you—”
“Not that. The other.”
There were tears rolling down her face, but she was smiling. “Oh, you mean the part about me loving you.”
“Say it,” he growled. “Look me in the eye and say it to me again.”
“I love you, Shawn. I think I’ve always loved you. But I’m scared.”
“Don’t be scared, baby. I’m right here.”
“But that’s what I’m scared of. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Rhiannon, sweetheart, the only thing you’ve done to hurt me is to cut me out of your life. As for the rest, I feel privileged to be along for the ride.”
It was her turn to study him, her turn to look deep into his eyes and see the truth. When she did, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his lips down to hers.
He kissed her, savoring the feel of her against him. Reveling in the fact that she was once again back where she belonged. When he could take the sensual tension between them no longer, however, he pulled away and slowly stripped off his T-shirt.
“Shawn?” She reached for him, the look in her eyes so sweetly uncertain that a part of him wanted to tell her they could wait forever. That he didn’t need the physical side of their relationship until she was ready for it.
But he’d learned from the last time, knew now just how important it was for her to know that he was satisfied with her. Until he made love to her she would never feel secure, never feel like she could give him what he needed.
She was crazy, her thinking completely wrong, but he knew her well enough to know that on this, there would be no changing her mind.
But instead of explaining, he simply said, “Trust me, Rhiannon,” then brushed his lips over her forehead, her eyes. He slid them down the sharp angles of her cheeks to the smooth line of her jaw. Nibbled at that strong, delicious jaw for a while, delighting in the small, broken breaths that eased from her.
When he’d exhausted the possibilities on her glorious, giving face, he slipped lower. Using his lips and tongue softly—so softly—he traced the elegant curve of her neck. Skimmed slowly over the hollows of her collarbone. Nuzzled his way between breasts. Nudged her blouse up and over her head. Divested her of her bra. Then delivered one long, slow lick from her navel to her breastbone.
Rhiannon gasped, arched, while her hands moved restlessly over his shoulders and back. “Shh,” he whispered, unbuttoning her jeans and easing them down her legs.
She was wearing panties as soft and pink as she was. Cut high in the hips, they rode low over her flat belly and he grinned as he slipped his tongue under the waistband.
She jerked, trembled, clutching at his hair to hold him in place.
But he would have none of it. He drew back so that he could look up at her. “You’re in control here, Rhiannon. You tell me what you want and how much. And no matter what’s happening, if you want me to stop, you tell me and I’ll stop.”
“I know it’s you, Shawn, and I know you won’t hurt me. Make love to me. Please.”
Moving out from beneath her grasping hands, he stood and stripped off his clothes in a few quick movements. Then he was sinking onto the bed with her, pulling h
er into the circle of his arms. Relishing the feel of this woman he loved more than he’d ever loved anyone pressed so tightly against him.
Rhiannon wrapped her arms around Shawn, holding him as tightly against her as she could manage. It felt so right to be here with him, to cradle his head against her breast as her body yearned for his. She prayed with everything inside of her that she wouldn’t mess it up, that she wouldn’t end up turning him away again.
“Shawn, I’m sor—”
He cut her words off with a kiss, so tender, so exquisite that it brought a new tightness to the lump at the back of her throat. “Don’t,” he whispered, his wicked blue eyes calmer than she’d ever seen them.
Leaning her head to the side, eyes still locked with his, she offered him her mouth again. He took it and the sudden pressure of his lips on hers was like finding herself again—sweet, warm and so familiar that it brought tears to her eyes.
A groan rumbled low in his chest and she grinned—thrilled at how easily she could make this strong, powerful man want her. Equally excited about how quickly he could do the same to her.
His hands weren’t steady as they shimmied her panties down her legs, but they were capable. Everywhere they touched ignited a small fire within her, every skim of his fingers was a little zing adding to the emotions already pulsing within her.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured as he caressed her ankle with tender lips, his lips running along her scars with a tenderness and appreciation that couldn’t be faked.
She wanted to be. For him, she wanted to be everything. Sliding her hands down his spine, she toyed with the rigid muscles under her hands. So strong, so capable, so ready to take on her problems as his own. What had she ever done to deserve him?
She started to tell him how she felt, but he silenced the words with another kiss. And then he was rolling across the bed, spinning with her, lifting her above him as his mouth swept over the curve of her breast.
He settled her astride him gently, her knees on either side of his hips. “You’re in control, Rhiannon. You take as much or as little of me as you want.”
She paused, savoring the feel of him against her. And then—with a single fluid motion—made them one.
She rode him slowly, sweetly, cherishing him with her body the way he so obviously cherished her. Immersed in him, wrapped up in the feelings that arced between them with each slow glide of her body, she kept the rhythm languid, steady.
Even as the tension began to build in her, the ache between her thighs becoming more and more unbearable, she kept it dreamy, drowsy.
Even as his hips arched beneath hers, and the hands that had caressed her so gently turned rough in an instant, she kept it leisurely, lazy.
Need was a living thing within her, but she pushed it back again and again, unwilling to have their moment end so soon. She’d waited so long for this, to be held in the arms of a lover who understood and treasured her, that she wanted it to last forever.
But the need continued to build until sweat poured from him, from her, mingled as she leaned over him and brushed a kiss across the muscles directly over his heart.
“Now, Rhiannon!” Shawn’s hands clamped on her thighs like a vise. “Please, I need you. I need you now.”
There they were, the words she’d been waiting to hear all along, without even knowing it. Because she was suddenly as desperate as he was, she let him take control for the last few seconds. One powerful thrust, another, and they plunged over the edge of the world. Together.
When it was over, when she was wrapped in Shawn’s arms and her heart had finally slowed to something resembling normal, she told him in the clearest voice she could muster, “I love you.”
“Good. Because you’re going to marry me.”
“Really?” She lifted her head and stared at him. “It’s customary for a man to ask a woman if she wants to marry him.”
“Yeah, well, it’s customary for the woman not to drive the man who loves her completely around the bend, and that hasn’t stopped you.”
“Funny.” But she settled on the bed next to him, her head cushioned by his rock solid biceps. “We both know I’m too old for you.”
“Shouldn’t I be the one to decide that?” he asked. “Or maybe what you really mean is that I’m too young for you?”
“Yeah, right.” But when she looked into his warm, summer-sky eyes she couldn’t help smiling. Shawn would take care of her, in sickness and in health. In good times and in bad—and she would do the same for him. He was that kind of man.
Still, there was no reason to make it too easy for him. “We both know I only keep you around because I like the idea of my own personal boy toy.”
“Do you, now?”
“I do.” She reached between them, stroked him, reveling in the way his breath caught and his eyes turned smoky. “Unless you object?”
“Well, if you insist.” He sighed heavily. “It’s a burden I’m prepared to bear if it means keeping you happy.”
“Oh, I insist, all right.” She rolled on top of him, took him inside her again.
“Thank God.”
He arched beneath her and she gasped as pleasure shot through every nerve ending she had. She started to lower her head to kiss him, but he stopped her with a finger on her lips. “Marry me, Rhiannon. I don’t want to live without you.”
“Just try to stop me.”
And then he was kissing her and she was kissing him right back, giving herself up to the joy and love she had found where she had least expected it.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7645-5
UNGUARDED
Copyright © 2010 by Tracy L. Deebs-Elkenaney
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