“Sure. I’ll keep an eye on him, honey.”

  When Rory finally pushed out of his drug-induced sleep, it was late afternoon. Good. Though it hadn’t been twenty-four hours, maybe it had been long enough he could get himself out of here for an evening check-out time.

  He was weak, fuck it all. And then he got another leveling blow. Daralyn wasn’t here.

  “They had your diet cherry Dr. Pepper,” she said, coming in the door carrying one of those small squat cans that only hospitals ever seemed to have. She’d changed clothes, and was wearing her blue cotton dress she often wore with white canvas sneakers, no socks, as she did now. It was a breezy kind of outfit. Her hair was pulled back in a barrette, but loose so it framed her face in soft waves.

  The constricting band around his chest loosened. He was glad to realize the breath he took was also much easier than it had been last night, though he was far from a hundred percent. He coughed a little, but fortunately it didn’t set off a spasm of hacking.

  She brought the drink to the bedside table and opened a straw, sticking it into the can. He took a sip, eyed her. She looked quietly content but tired.

  “You didn’t get much sleep,” he said.

  “I will at home. The doctor was pleased with your oxygen saturation. It’s closer to normal. Not quite where she wants it, but I told her you had monitoring equipment at home and could keep an eye on it.”

  More important details about last night came back to him. Him waking, falling. Daralyn there. He’d stayed in that bed for hours, and then on the floor…

  Holy crap. He had some clean up to do before he would let her come back into the house.

  “Yeah. Don’t worry,” he said casually. “We can share a cab, but I’ll drop you at your place, let you spend a little time there while I get myself straight. I’m sure you’ve missed being at your place.”

  “Hmm.” She brought his chair from the corner to the side of the bed. “The shower is set up for you, and I brought you some fresh clothes.”

  She gave him a level look, and he felt the stirrings of irritation. “Okay. You know, actually there’s no need for you to wait on me. Why don’t you head on home and—”

  “They’re not going to discharge you without someone here with you,” she pointed out.

  “They will if I tell them I’m leaving,” he said edgily, “with or without their permission.”

  Her lips pressed together. “I’ve already been back to your house,” she said. “I cleaned up your room, washed the linens. It’s okay.”

  No. That definitely was not okay. “I could have done that.”

  The expression on her face said no, he couldn’t have. No more than he was going to be able to get himself into an unfamiliar shower without an orderly’s help, in this condition. Her being right didn’t help, but he managed to check himself a breath before snapping at her.

  All he’d wanted was her to be back, and now he was pushing her away. Because he’d wanted her back on the same terms. Him in control of things.

  As their gazes met, he saw she’d already figured it out. “Is it easier when I’m more broken than you are?” she asked quietly. “When you’re the one taking care of me?”

  He set his jaw, turned the Dr. Pepper around in its circle of condensation, trying to think of the right reply, but she wasn’t done.

  “Do you think it would change how I feel about you, if I sometimes have to help care for you, the way you care for me?” A little break entered her voice. “Or is it that you don’t want me if you can’t be the one always doing the caring and protecting?”

  If she’d swung a bag of bricks at him, she couldn’t have gotten his attention any better. His gaze snapped to her. “I want you no matter what,” he said. “Always.”

  He held out a hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, she took it. He squeezed it. Took a breath. “Say all of it. Everything going through your head, causing that tight set to your mouth. You want to fuss at me. I know the look of a woman who wants to fuss.”

  She looked surprised, but he was the surprised one when she took him at his word. “All I could think about these past few weeks is being back with you,” she said. “Did you think I wouldn’t? Why would you lose faith in me like that?”

  He hadn’t thought of it like that at all, but he could sure see why she would think it. Fortunately, she was pushing on, rather than requiring a response from him yet.

  “I realized that night, with Hayworth…that it was like the first time you told me that asking questions would help you. A relationship doesn’t work if it’s one person taking total care of the other. I have to be able to take care of you, too. That means being able to stick up for myself. Being able to say, ‘I want’… whatever it is I want.”

  She’d taken a breath before she said that last part. He saw how difficult it was for her to say it, even talking in theory. But she’d said it.

  Hot damn, his girl had said it.

  Even though she had to stop right afterwards, take another steadying breath. Close her eyes. He waited her out, holding her hand, stroking her knuckles. When she finally lifted her lashes, she gave him her shy smile.

  “Dr. Taylor gave me this idea. Every time I’m confronted with a situation where someone wants to know what…I want, I visualize that I’m somewhere I feel safe and completely unafraid. First, though, she had me practice saying it in my head. Not out loud. Then she gave me a tape recorder, told me to tape it and listen to it.”

  He couldn’t say a word, because he’d never seen so many rare emotions openly showing themselves at once in her face. He just wanted to watch, afraid he’d miss a single one of them.

  “It was really hard,” she said, her voice trembling again. “It still is. I don’t know why, I can’t explain it. But when I try to…form those words, this overwhelming feeling of dread takes me over. Every time. But she and I kept at it. I failed, a lot. I threw up so often she made me back off of working at it so hard. Said I was pushing myself too much.”

  “Imagine that,” he said in mild reproof, but his hand was tight on hers.

  She squared her shoulders. “Then I did it. Maybe only once a day, and only something really easy…for everyone else. Like telling the staff what I…wanted for lunch.”

  “You’re talking to a guy who had to learn how to put his shoes on without taking a header out of his chair. I get it.”

  She met his gaze, smiled. “Yes. You understand things like that. Which is part of why I think we fit so well sometimes. You understand how hard it is. You also know how it feels…to want it so badly. For it to be easy, the way it is for everyone else.”

  Yeah, he did. Her hand was holding his just as tight. “I wish I could have been there to help you,” he said.

  She gave him a surprised look. “You were. You did.” She laid her other hand over his, holding it between both of hers. Her mouth was soft. “The safe place I imagined, where I feel completely unafraid, was your arms. That’s the way I feel, every time you’re holding me.”

  Well, hell. He pushed the bedside table out of the way so he could tug on her, pull her onto the bed and wrap her up in those arms she was just talking about. He wanted to kiss her, but thanks to the meds and everything else, it felt like a skunk had died in his mouth. There was only so much he’d inflict on the woman he loved. Plus the rest of him smelled like a sponge bath with hospital soap.

  It didn’t matter though. With those words, the way she looked at him, she told him she was back to stay. She wanted to be with him. Which meant he had every reason in the world to get his act together.

  She let out a little sigh, relaxing. “I’m so mad at you,” she said to his chest. “You can’t ever do this again. Not ever.”

  He’d never been so thrilled to hear a woman say she was pissed at him. He managed to contain his ebullience with a grave smile, though.

  “You got it.”

  He realized then what was different about her. Confidence. Daralyn had discovered confidence in herself, over and above the darkness that clutched her. The tool she’d been missing in her arsenal. She’d figured out a way to get it, forged from her own will and determination.

  As he’d always said, she was stronger than all of them.

  She might occasionally swing and miss with it, or find it too heavy to lift on her own all the time, but she had it. And she had him.

  He eased her back to meet her gaze squarely. “Okay, listen. I know I’m a stubborn ass. However, despite current evidence to the contrary, I have a good grasp of the condition I’m in, and what I can handle. I’d really like to take a shower at home, with my own set up. If you wouldn’t mind being around for that, I could use…”

  “A spotter?” She gave him a smile, her eyes warm.

  He nodded, although he also gave her a harder look. “But you’re not my nurse. Got it? That’s not in your job description for this relationship.”

  She tilted her head to the side, her hazel eyes thoughtful. Her hand rested on his shoulder, her thumb tracing the line of it, up to his neck, and it felt damn good. “But we can take care of each other, right?”

  “Yeah. We can do that.” He cleared his throat. “Fair warning, though. I’m not great about someone taking care of me.”

  “Imagine that.”

  The light in her eyes said his girl was teasing him. God, he loved her. He loved her so much.

  “Smartass,” he said with a gut-easing grin, pinching her. Then he sobered. “Part of it is what you’d expect. Guy, lots of testosterone, doesn’t like to be babied. But the other part of it is when I was wallowing in self-pity, I let my mom and others care for me like I couldn’t do anything for myself. So I associate accepting someone’s help as regressing toward needy, selfish asshole again. I’ll try to recognize when that’s happening, if you don’t mind being patient with me while I’m learning.”

  “All right.” She nodded. She’d put her other hand on the opposite shoulder, was sitting facing him, her hands spread out on him like she didn’t want to stop touching him any time soon. Her scent was earth and water, lavender and clean, female things. It was all he could do not to crush her to him, hold her a couple hours.

  “I can’t imagine your mother letting you wallow,” she said. “She was so good about not letting me get bogged down in things.”

  “She figured it out for you before she figured it out for me." He shot her a wry look. " Maybe because I'm a boy and mothers are weird about their sons. They tend to coddle us when they should kick us in the ass. But she got there eventually, thank God, though I deserved more kicks than she gave me for pushing her to it.”

  And on that note… He cleared his throat. “Thanks…for cleaning up my room. For all of it.”

  At her soft look, he wrapped her up in his arms, humbled by everything she’d said, done, and obviously meant so fervently. “Most of all, thanks for coming home to me.”

  “You are home to me,” she whispered.

  He couldn’t have asked for a better home health assistant. Most people automatically tried to get ahead of him, make suggestions, be proactive because that was how they thought they’d be most helpful. They didn’t stop to think that he’d been doing this a while and likely knew the best, most efficient way to handle the task. She followed his direction to the letter.

  Once he was sitting in the shower, he noticed her lingering, leaning in the doorway. He thought of how her hands would feel on his shoulders and chest, his back. He wasn’t up to sex, but having her naked and close enough to touch…he’d have to be dead not to be up for that.

  “Take off the dress,” he said.

  A quiet, weighted moment, then she pulled her dress over her head, her pulled-back hair funneling through the neckline and then falling to her back. She was wearing a light blue bra, the straps etching her delicate shoulders. The matching bikini style panties outlined her mound and point of sex in the same sweet cotton fabric.

  He swallowed, staring at her. He wanted to touch her, hold her, inhale her. Be with her. He remembered, forcefully, just how much he’d missed her.

  After all that had happened in the past day, he might have doubted he’d have the brass tacks to let this side of himself come forward, but he guessed this proved it wasn’t a switch he turned on and off. A Master’s desires rose up hard and strong in him, craving to be voiced. Refusing not to be.

  His gaze locked with hers. “Take it all off,” he said. “I want you in the shower with me.”

  The words made her get still all over, except for her lips, which parted, and her hazel eyes, which flashed with joy and hunger. She wanted that from him, too. Maybe she, too, had worried that things had changed. The way she trembled, the light in her eyes becoming a deep shine, told him she’d needed to hear that demand from him.

  And seeing that nothing she’d done to care for him had diluted the Master-sub feeling between the two of them? That was something he’d needed, too.

  She unhooked the bra, folded it onto the dress she’d left on the counter. Slipped out of the sneakers and panties. She looked so good to him. He repositioned his feet so his knees were spread. He was already reaching out to her as she eagerly crossed the bathroom and joined him in the shower.

  He banded his arm around her waist, spread his hand out on her buttock as he brought her close. He nuzzled her small breasts, teasing one nipple with his lips before simply pressing his face there, feeling her hands rove over his shoulders as he held her tight.

  “I love your shoulders,” she whispered in his hair. The spray of heated water mixed with her voice, matching the fluid rush of feeling through him.

  “I love all of you,” he said. He was caressing her with his mouth, his hands, just needing to touch her everywhere. And that scent…he was never doing without it again.

  At length, he made himself ease back, found the soap and handed it to her. “You deserve a clean guy.”

  Smiling, she took the soap, turning it in her palms to create a lather. Then, with a flick of her lashes at him, she dropped to her knees. If she’d intended to incite a pure male groan of need, that gesture would have done it.

  He’d installed a mirror on the back wall of the shower, a practical decision that helped him do skin checks while bathing. As a result, he now had another view he’d gladly exchange for the promise of heaven, because it was already here, kneeling before him.

  She started with his feet. He watched her run her fingers over them, then up his calves, knees and thighs. When she soaped his genitals, his cock hardened in her hands, so she was thorough there. He tipped his head up to the spray, closed his eyes and let what she was doing spread out inside him in the places he could feel it.

  Then she was moving again, standing between his legs, sliding her hands without hurry over his chest, upper arms. He took that time to put his mouth on her breasts again. A slow open-mouthed teasing with tongue and teeth, deep suckles that had her breath drawing in and her body leaning into the cradle of his. She circled her arms over his shoulders and back again, fingers digging into his hair.

  She’d missed him, too. He could feel it in her hunger, every bit as strong as his.

  He curled his arm around her, hand cupping her buttocks, kneading the soft flesh there as he suckled. When the soap dropped out of her hand, he smiled against her flesh. The soap swooped down toward the drain, stayed there.

  He didn’t have the strength to have sex, do the things to keep himself hard, and then hold her on him, help her rise and fall in the way that would bring her to the peak he wanted to see. But the desire to do so would give him the incentive to get his ass back on track, get better sooner than later.

  In the meantime, there was a reason why God had given him ten very clever fingers. And an active imagination.

  “Get the soap,” he said.

  The drain was behind his shower chair, so she had to lean around him and down, past his arm. When she did, he shifted his grip to keep her there, hold her over his thigh as he did a more thorough exploration of her backside. He wet his fingers in his mouth, providing lubrication the water lacked, but that was just to get him past the opening to her sex. A well of slippery honey was waiting for him, sucking his fingers in. He muttered a reverent oath as he slid three in, slow and easy.

  She’d pulled in a breath, her fingers spasming on his biceps. The soap was forgotten as she braced herself against the shower wall with a flat palm. When he ran a thumb over her clit, began to tease it, he heard her hand slip a few inches over the tile wall. Another gasp broke from her lips.

  Glancing toward the mirror, he saw her lovely bottom poised for the flat of his hand, the folds of her sex visible between her legs, his fingers buried between them. It gave him the spurt of adrenaline necessary to keep holding her.

  From the way her body began to ride his fingers, her rhythmically clenching muscles, he knew he was on the track he desired. He kept going until he noticed the trembling in her back and thigh muscles, how she was trying to maintain her footing. He slid his fingers out of her reluctantly, but before he brought her back up, he tightened his arm around her to hold her in place one more moment.

  He smacked her ass, hard enough she yelped. As he guided her back to her feet in front of him, he leveled a hard gaze on her.

  “You had to take care of yourself, and I respect that,” he said. “But I still get to take it out on your ass for leaving me. You’re lucky I don’t have a belt close to hand.”

  Though if he did, the image that came to mind wasn’t striking her with it. Instead, he thought about roping it around her hands, strapping her to his headboard and feasting on her, caressing her, bringing her to climax several times, until she begged him for mercy. The potential for dishing out sensual punishments was limitless. When he was done, she’d have some enduring memories to remind her not to leave him again.

  Her startled look had resulted in a biting of her bottom lip, and a mix of emotions on her face. She was wondering if she needed to apologize to him for leaving, but he fixed that.