“All you need to do right now is listen, and do what I tell you. Got it?”

  He held her gaze, clasped her hand. Water droplets clinging to her lashes were freed to trail down her cheeks as she lowered her gaze. “Yes, sir.”

  He put his other hand on her hip to turn her away from him. Then he brought her down on his knee, her legs split over his thigh.

  “Lean back against me,” he said.

  He slid an arm around her, pressed his lips to her throat and bit her. Her breasts, slick with the water beating on them, rose high as she drew in another breath. Her legs were spread for him, her feet pressed to the outside of his. “Before I go to bed and become comatose for the next few hours,” he growled in her ear, pressing his nose to her wet sheet of thick hair, “I want to make you scream for me. Hard and long enough the echoes will become part of this room, reminding me of it every time I come in here. Put your arms around me.”

  The delicate lines of her neck shifted as she linked her arms around his neck and shoulders. It arched her forward into his hands. He teased her breasts, plucked at her nipples as she squirmed and moaned, as he laid kisses along her shoulders. When he gripped her throat in one hand, he felt her violent quiver, watched her body writhe below that hold.

  He had to have the strength to see this through, and if he exerted himself too much, he’d set off an ill-timed coughing fit. But “make lemonade out of lemons” had been a favorite saying of his father’s. A slow pace worked just fine for his purposes. Rory touched her everywhere, taking his time working his way down.

  As a result, by the time he reached his goal, she was moaning with need, her beautiful body doing a sinuous dance against him. She was rubbing her sweet pussy against his thigh, telling him it wasn’t just the water slicking up his skin. She noticed how he was staring at her in the mirror, watching her, and she almost stopped.

  “Don’t you even think about it. Keep rubbing yourself on me.”

  He made her do that for him for several minutes before getting involved, playing his fingers over her cunt, dipping into it, stroking, tugging on her clit. Spasms bucked her up into a deeper arch, her thighs trembling and fingers clutching him. Her hair was wet and sleek against his shoulder.

  As he stroked and played, whispered to her, she was losing her mind, pleading without words.

  It made him feel even less merciful.

  “Did you touch yourself when you were away from me? Bring yourself to climax?”

  She shook her head.

  “Tell me. Say it out loud.”

  “No…no, sir.” Her voice elevated as he flicked her clit, a more aggressive touch. Another ripple went through her.

  “Did you want to?”

  “Yes…a lot.”

  He concealed his fierce satisfaction as she didn’t get hung up over the words, too aroused to be snagged by it. Like the night she’d said she wanted the ropes. “Why didn’t you?” he demanded.

  She sent him a desperate look, and he tightened his grip. “Yeah, I know you’re having trouble talking because of what I’m doing to you. Which is exactly why I’m making you talk. Answer me.”

  “It felt…wrong. Without your permission.”

  “Right answer.”

  He pushed it as far and as long as he knew he could, and then he tipped her over that edge. He gave her every ounce of pleasure she could handle and then pushed her past that, demanding she go even further. Just as he’d promised, he made her screams echo off the bathroom walls, refusing to let her hold anything back. Her movements became so violent he had to cinch his arm harder around her waist to hold her still.

  There was a God, because the shortness of breath and coughing didn’t hit him until he’d finished her the way he intended. By then she was limp in his arms, draped back against him. It did a hell of a good job restoring his sense of himself, no matter how caveman that sounded.

  She’d kept her arms wound loosely around his neck, and so stroked his nape and whatever else she could reach as he held her, coughed it out, caught his breath. Before she could marshal enough strength to say anything herself, try to turn and check on him, he brushed his fingers over the tender, sensitive lips of her pussy. He cherished the little quiver that went through her, the tiny sound that escaped her throat.

  “I’ve missed that,” he said. “Missed holding you and touching you.”

  “Me too,” she whispered. “So much.”

  Reluctantly, he let her go, though he kept his hands on her, steadying her until she stepped out of the shower, found them both a towel.

  His body let him know in no uncertain terms he’d exceeded his limits, and he’d aggravated that pressure sore under his thigh some, but he wasn’t going to regret any of it, not while she had that dazed, soft look to her face. She kept touching him, random, impulsive caresses, and he did the same, neither of them wanting to go without touching for more than a blink of time.

  Eventually, though, he needed to handle the bathroom stuff and tend the sores with ointment before he could lie down. “Go pick out one of my shirts to sleep in,” he told her. She hadn’t brought nightclothes, and he didn’t want her to be cold. The farmhouse could be drafty.

  When he emerged, she was perched on the edge of the turned down bed, waiting for him. She’d chosen his Tennessee bike marathon shirt. The faded design indicated it was one of his favorites, and seeing how the soft, worn fabric molded to her shape only increased its status.

  He pushed himself to the side of the bed, hooked an arm around her waist, nuzzling the tip of her breast through the cotton as he smoothed a hand over her backside. She threaded her fingers through his hair. Lifting his head, he gave her a lingering kiss, and felt her touch on his beard, now clipped and groomed again.

  “Wanting you is going to kill me,” he said. “And I’m okay with that.”

  She gave him a half smile, but as he coughed on the end of that statement, he saw her worry. He wasn’t going to put up with that. But he was aware his exhaustion was showing. He was having trouble sitting up straight, not slumping in the chair.

  “Nothing wrong with me now that can’t be fixed with rest,” he said. “Come to bed.”

  She did, as soon as he transferred himself over to the mattress and adjusted the pillows where they needed to be. She fitted herself against his side, resting her head on his shoulder. They lay there for a while, and he knew she was giving him the opportunity to drift off again. Which he would, soon, but he detected tension in her. Adjusting his head and tipping up her pensive face, he gave her chin and jaw a little squeeze.

  “Tell me how to help you to stop worrying. And I don’t mean me not pulling this shit again. We’ve covered that. What’s in your head that you’re not letting go? I need you to tell me. I can handle anything but causing you pain.”

  Another silence, during which she drew a couple circles on his chest. He’d donned T-shirt and shorts to sleep, so she was creasing and smoothing the fabric. “I know I asked, but the answer, why this happened…it didn’t feel like all of it. And this scared me, Rory. Really, really scared me.”

  He held her closer, pressed his lips to her forehead as she held him back, shuddered. “You’d never have known it. You took charge and handled things like a pint-sized general.”

  She put her mouth to his throat, her breath shallow and warm there. “But if I could understand better…it would help me feel like…”

  “You could head it off next time?” He gave her a squeeze. “You’re not in charge of this, Daralyn. It’s like you going to Raleigh. There are decisions we each make, obstacles we face…having support makes all the difference in the world, but the solutions have to come from within us, you know?”

  Dr. Taylor had told him, sure, but until it stared him in the face in his own behavior, he guessed he hadn’t really internalized it. Or the significance of what Daralyn had done.

  She’d left to become a stronger, better version of herself. And she did that because she wanted to be that person. For him. And for herself.

  Which meant he owed her a nothing-held-back answer to her unspoken question. He took an additional beat, figuring out how to put it into words, but he didn’t have to seek the answer itself. He’d known it all along.

  “When your whole life changes in a blink, and you come face to face with how much can be lost in that blink, it does some things to your head that can’t be undone. You can manage it, handle it better, but it still fundamentally changes something, deep inside. I expect you get that, better than anyone.”

  She was looking at him again and he tipped his head back down to meet her thoughtful hazel eyes. He stroked her shoulder, down her side, felt the nip of her waist and flare of her hip. “Pride’s close to anger. So’s fear. They were all wrapped up in it, this tug of war between me knowing I’d let you go if that’s what you needed, and not being able to figure out the next step if I’d lost you. These past couple years…”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been in love with you for quite a while. Long before that Christmas kiss under the mistletoe.” He smiled at her. “But until you left, I didn’t realize how deep inside me you were. All of a sudden, I saw how much of my life was built out of a picture with you in the center of it. And suddenly, no matter how crazy it sounds, I was waking up in the hospital again, discovering the life I’d planned to have was going to look way different. Only this time, the most important part of it, the thing that filled my heart and soul, wasn’t going to be in it. Do you understand?”

  Her face filled with emotion. “Yes,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I understand how that feels. Realizing things could change in a blink. Only for me, it was the opposite. Suddenly, life went from being dark and difficult, where I was alone, to a place with love, and encouragement, light. So many things to learn and see and know… It was marvelous, and terrifying, because I didn’t trust it.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t believe it wouldn’t disappear, that it wasn’t all a lie. That fear hasn’t left me. But trying to figure out what was expected of me, so it wouldn’t be taken away... It’s exhausting. Some days managing that fear is all I can handle. But then there was you.”

  Her fingertips slid along his throat, down to his collar bone. “You…the way you felt about me, how I felt about you, it changed all of it. What happened with Hayworth showed me that I really could lose everything, but not in the way that I feared. I had to figure out how to hold onto what mattered. Give you everything.”

  She adjusted closer, and he banded both arms around her. Her voice was muffled against his chest. “Ever since the first time I looked at you and knew you noticed me…the way I noticed you, I knew what mattered the most to me.”

  She shuddered. The more words she pushed out, the more he could tell she was fighting that involuntary reaction, the nausea and fear. He understood the steps a person had to take, when coddling them wasn’t helpful. He also understood when a person was asking too much of themselves all at once. Fortunately, that intuitive part of him that was getting stronger all the time knew a Master’s job description included putting on the brakes when a sub was doing that.

  He tipped her face up again, brushed his lips over her nose, her eyes, her cheeks. “I want you to embrace everything you want for yourself,” he said, giving her a steady look. “But you can take all the time you need saying aloud something you tell me a hundred other ways. Be at ease on that. I love you.’”

  Pain and relief were in her smile, but also joy and hope. They were okay. When she wrapped her arms around him, he held her, and that contained all the things they needed to say to one another for now.

  They were both okay.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “I could get used to this,” Rory said.

  “You don’t make enough money to get used to this. Neither do I. I’m just lucky to have a rich female friend.”

  Brick smoked a cigar, lazily reclining on a giant unicorn float in the heated pool. Rory, drifting with a pair of blue swim noodles under his arms, sent him an amused look.

  “What did you do to earn the privilege of using her house while she’s in Spain? Are you her boy toy?”

  Brick snorted. “Gutter brain. She’s seventy. Admittedly a very hot seventy, but she’s told me to keep my hands to myself.” He smiled fondly. “We’re cut from the same cloth, anyway. Even without the age difference, we’re too compatible to be together. But I helped get an arson case involving her son solved, after it had sat on a cold case pile for a couple decades. We became friends.”

  He gave Rory a critical look. “You’re looking a lot better. Sound better, too, than when we talked on the phone.” He tilted his head toward the other side of the pool. “You’ve got a good nurse.”

  “She’s not my nurse. She’s a ninety-eight-pound tyrant with more eyes than a spider.”

  “She looks great in that swimsuit, though.”

  “You can keep your hands to yourself there, too.” Rory pointed a loaded finger at him and Brick held up both hands, grinning.

  Not that he’d needed any encouragement to look in that direction, since he did it about every minute or so, but Brick’s comment inspired Rory to follow his glance. While he and Brick had drifted to the deeper part of the pool, Daralyn had stuck to the four and half foot end. Today had been her first swim lesson, and while there were plenty of swim noodles to use as flotation devices, she’d been practicing stroking where her feet could still touch.

  She did look good in a bikini. It wasn’t overly skimpy, but nicely revealing, and a cherry red that looked good with her brunette coloring. Amanda had helped her pick it out when Brick had invited them to meet him here for the day. The house in Waxhaw was a millionaire’s version of a log cabin, with lots of screened porch, natural wood, and a thick cluster of surrounding forest to buffer the eight-acre property. The enclosed and heated pool was well vented and surrounded by windows so clear it didn’t have that usual stuffy indoor pool feeling Rory disliked.

  Brick dropped off the float and moved over to the side, all the while puffing on the cigar. He removed it from his mouth, gestured. “I’m headed back in to handle some work stuff. Probably take me about an hour or so.”

  When Rory lifted a brow, Brick met his gaze with a twinkling one of his own. “In case you don’t understand the language of Obvious-land, you’re not going to be interrupted for a while. Do what you want with that.”

  As he watched his friend lift himself out of the pool, those insanely thick muscles rippling over his back and arms, Rory shook his head. “You know, you’re not as much of a dick as everyone says.”

  Brick put the cigar out and palmed the stub. “Just remember all that love when you become my brother-in-law.”

  “Thomas is already married. You’ll have to kill Marcus to get him, and my money’s on Marcus.”

  Brick flipped him the bird on his way back into the house.

  As Rory smiled, he gazed thoughtfully after his friend. Brick’s cigar smoke hadn’t seemed to bother Daralyn the way cigarette smoke did, but Rory knew Brick would have doused it in a second if it had.

  From the time they’d met in high school, they’d gotten along. But they’d become even deeper friends after his accident, not the usual thing. Disabled people often lost friendships they had before their injuries, or the bonds of those old friendships loosened. Priority and perspective changes forked them onto a path separate from the things that had kept them linked. But Brick had moved from the old circle into the new, becoming a key bridge between them. It was largely because of him that Rory’s local high school buddies had remained current friendships. Brick had helped them regain a comfortable footing with one another, find a new look to their connection.

  If he had no blood family left in the world, Brick would be the closest thing Rory had to a brother. A day like this just reinforced it. Brick had learned about Rory’s close call when he called to check in with him about Daralyn’s status, pleased to learn she’d returned home. As such, it hadn’t surprised Rory that several days later the firefighter had called back, casually suggesting they come spend the day with him at his friend’s pool.

  Normally, a pool party wasn’t the best option for a guy getting over a brush with pneumonia, but a heated indoor pool in this kind of setting? That was a different matter.

  Rory lay back on the noodles, just floating. The sun coming through the windows was warm on his wet skin, and he was relaxed, breathing easy. He could get back to his normal workouts in a couple days, start rebuilding his strength where he wanted it. He had definite plans for that recuperation.

  His lips curved as a fine-boned hand slid along his back, his side, up to his shoulder. Daralyn emerged on his right, brushing her lips against his biceps. He curled an arm around her, the noodle giving him the support so that he could bring her close to his side, let her twine her legs over his under the wavering, sun-sparkled water.

  “I have my own personal mermaid,” he said.

  “If you can catch her,” she said, sliding out of his hold to circle him, displaying her newfound swimming abilities. She enjoyed the water, was comfortable in it, turning and twisting like a mermaid in truth. As she backed away, she sent him a teasing look beneath her lashes.

  She was flirting with him, his shy girl offering a delightful glimpse of her inner female minx. He gave her an unimpressed nod, laid his head back to feel the sun again and then struck, lunging over the right noodle to snag her around the waist. She let out a little yelp.

  He’d timed his attack, the momentum carrying him and her in a turn that brought him to the ladder in one or two strokes. He hooked himself with one arm, pushing her full up against the ladder steps. With his free hand he took a nice handful of her ass, curving his fingers under the edge of the red bikini bottoms to stroke.

  Her lips parted, her eyes darkening. He felt where every one of her fingers pressed into his wet shoulders, against his neck, and as she moved them to curl in his short hair. Relishing the give of her breasts against his chest, he touched his mouth to her neck and tasted Daralyn, chlorine, and the faint coconut scent of sunblock.