If he let himself get caught in what this place had meant to her for so long, the darker side, he’d approach this as something to get done quick, so he could get her out of here. Until they could change it, make it reflect what she wanted it to look like.

  But while he was in the bathroom, he’d heard her thumping pillows, telling him she was shaking the dust out of them out on the back porch. Despite the dismal look of their surroundings, with the quilt on the bed and the front and back porch doors open, letting in the fresh air, the sound of birds, he could focus on what mattered.

  She wanted to make this into their home. He’d prove to her that it could be done. He could help give her that, starting right now.

  As he transferred himself onto the bed, she adjusted to make room for him. He stretched out and took her hand, guiding her so she was leaning over him. He put his hand on her hip beneath the shirt, stroking soft flesh. Her hair framed her face as she gazed at him, the soft ends tickling his stomach. He tugged the strands. “This is getting long. I might eventually be able to tie you up with it.”

  The flicker of heat in her gaze brought back several recent, very good memories of things they’d done with rope. “You like it long,” she said.

  “Yes, I do. But I’d love it short, or anywhere in between. As long as it’s on your head.”

  He moved his touch up her side, having plenty of room under his shirt to find her small curves, the lines of her ribs, following them around to her back so he brought her down to him. He cupped her face with the other hand, brushed his mouth over hers. Kissed her deep and long before easing back.

  “Why did you want my shirt?”

  “To remind me of who I am now. Not who I was then.” A slight smile, tremulous. “To give me more courage.”

  “You look damn good in it. And I’ve never met a braver person in my life.” He slid his touch down the front, found a puckered nipple beneath the fabric. Her breath drew in, those subtle signs of arousal that drew him in, made him want to give her less subtle ones. “Lie down on your back,” he said, low. “And open your legs for me.”

  Her pupils darkened. She eased to her back, stretching out, keeping her hand on him, though she plucked at the shirt with the other hand. “Do you want me to take this off?”

  “Yes. I’m going to cover you with me.”

  Her eyes widened, but the brightness in her eyes, the eagerness, captivated him as she arched in a wonderful way to take the shirt off. He was already turning on his side, their bodies choreographed to one another’s movements. When she had it above her head, he gripped the shirt between her wrists, arresting her movement. He slid his other arm underneath her, keeping her in that arch as he descended upon her breast and took the nipple in his mouth, suckling deep.

  A part moan, part cry was wrested from her throat, and she pressed herself more urgently to him. He kept her arms where they were with the pressure of his hand on the shirt, reveling in having her helpless like that, taking every bit of pleasure he could give her. His mouth moved over her nipples, her breasts, her sternum. Another time he’d enjoy what was between her legs, but she was aroused enough for where he wanted to go.

  As he drew back to look at her, he opened his jeans, worked them off his hips. He pushed them down to his thighs one-handed, using his arm strength to lift his hips enough to manage it. When he took himself in hand, stroking, his cock responded quickly, telling him the prep he’d done in the bathroom was taking effect. He pulled the cock ring from the small pouch in his pocket, showing it to her before he dropped his hand down between her legs.

  “Need you to slick this up some more for me.”

  She let out a breath as he pushed the ring inside her opening, worked it in her wet heat while playing with her swollen flesh with his fingers. Then he withdrew his touch reluctantly, but only to slide the ring onto his cock, fitting it to the base.

  He gave himself another several moments of stroking himself while looking at the beauty of her trembling body. Then he lifted himself on one arm and maneuvered over her so he could brace and lower himself between her spread thighs.

  He’d practiced it, and in this moment where it seemed everything was going their way, the shift on top of her was as smooth as he could wish. He did manage to plant his palm on that thick mane of hair. It held her head in place, pulled on her scalp. From the way her breath shortened at the hint of restraint, he thought she didn’t mind it. But he didn’t want to rip her hair out of her scalp as things became more insistent. So when he murmured the quiet command to her, she freed her hand from his shirt and swept her hair away and above her, him adjusting his palm briefly to make that easier.

  “Put your hands on my forearms,” he told her, and watched them settle on his braced arms. “Bring your knees up so they’re brushing my ribs.”

  It would open her further. Even more importantly, he could feel her legs against his body. She did it, her hazel eyes luminous. “You’re on top of me,” she whispered.

  “I am.” A faint smile curved his lips but he knew the gaze he had on her was serious, intent. “I’ve wanted you under me like this for a long time.”

  She touched his face, a tentative, needy gesture. “It feels…wonderful.”

  “I hope it’s about to feel even better to you. Guide me in, Daralyn.”

  He watched her move her hand between them, close her fingers around his erection. As she put him into her body, her lips parted. When he saw the flex of her stomach muscles, he knew she’d clenched those inner muscles on him, to keep stroking him. Fuck, he would love to feel it the way he once had, but there was nothing about this moment he would trade. Every live nerve ending he had was feeling this, ten times more acutely than before he’d been paralyzed.

  His knees had stayed at the angle he’d planted them, also something he’d experimented with. He didn’t want them slipping and taking him out of her at the wrong moment. As he started moving, using his upper body strength to thrust into her, he kept it slow and easy, also to make sure he held his position where it needed to be.

  Slow and easy worked for her, because her eyes had already started to burn with need, her breath coming more rapidly as he moved. She was stroking his arms, sometimes curling in so he felt the bite of her nails.

  When he whispered his permission, she moved her hands to his sides and down to clasp his hips, her thumbs pressing high enough he felt their pressure. Her grip on his ass would help him drive deeper into her. She was helping him stay with her, give her this. Give them both this.

  She knew to be careful with her nails below his waist, but right now he didn’t care if she forgot. He could check later. He didn’t want anything to inhibit or distract her from where this was going.

  “Mine,” he whispered, gazing down at her. He’d feared saying that to her too often, or in the wrong moment. He hadn’t wanted her to think she had no choice except him. But now he knew she understood choice. It still wouldn’t come easy for her, maybe not for a long time, but she’d proven she could decide what she wanted, and make it known to him in the ways she trusted him to understand. So he had no more fear of telling her what he wanted.

  “Yours,” she said, matching his fierceness with her own. Her body was lifting to his, the two of them moving the way water moved, with no conscious thought. Nature simply existed, flowed, went the direction intended.

  He was going to give Red a lifetime supply of mulch for his yard, because though he felt the burn in his arms, back and shoulders, it wasn’t a strain. Every part of him he needed to make this work was a hundred percent on board.

  Watching the climax build in her face, in the eagerness of her body, that burn faded, replaced by something else.

  He would always remember how it felt to run across the football field, to soar, and have his body give him everything he needed, willing to give him even more. He’d never thought he’d feel that again. But that was just another gift love had given him. That Daralyn had given him.

  “Come for me, baby.”

  Daralyn shattered, calling out her pleasure to the fields behind the house, taking flight with the birds. He watched it sweep over her body, that sensual helplessness that was nothing but God’s gift, a way to lose oneself, let go of everything that didn’t matter. Even if it was just for that moment.

  But sometimes, when it was this good, that moment spun out, paved the path to a life of the same. The climax grabbed him then, too, and the way it made his body jerk, his arms tensing to hold himself, apparently spurred on her aftershocks. Her hands were on his arms again, digging in, and he relished watching her nails leave crescents there. Her legs locked high over his back to hold him tight. He didn’t even care that it called for one more additional burst of strength from him, to hold them both.

  Right now, he could carry the world.

  After they rested some, they got dressed and headed back to her cottage. She was going to make dinner and Rory assumed they’d relax, do some of the usual things they did on a weeknight. They had work tomorrow and she’d have school in the afternoon.

  Marcus and Thomas hailed them as they pulled in, though, and invited them to share the dinner they were making. Since he could tell she was amenable to that, they did. Afterward, instead of heading back to the cottage or his place, they found themselves on his brother’s back porch. Though Daralyn was diligent about her studies, the day had taken its toll. When Rory moved himself onto the porch swing to share it with her, Daralyn eventually slipped from leaning against his shoulder to lying with her head in his lap, dozing while Rory shared a beer with Thomas and Marcus.

  He’d lifted his legs into his nearby chair to provide a more even pillow for her. As he stroked her hair, he felt a deep contentment.

  To confirm it was justified, he gave Thomas and Marcus an expectant look. They were sitting in the pair of rocking chairs facing him, Marcus’s long legs stretched out so the toe of one bare foot brushed Thomas’s, stretched out in his direction.

  “Is she asleep?” Thomas asked, low.

  Rory nodded. “She’s exhausted. But in a good way, I think. Burton gone?”

  “Absolutely.” Thomas’s eyes glittered. “Brick followed him sixty miles, then had his cousin in Monroe pick up the trail and follow him another hundred. Looks like he’s headed to Asheville and the mountains. The mountain communities are a lot more close-knit than people realize, and Brick’s cousin knows people. He’ll spread the word. As a sex offender, Burton’ll have to register wherever he settles. We’ll make sure he does, so he’ll be on law enforcement’s radar. His cancer prognosis is about nine months, so hopefully we won’t have to worry about it much longer.”

  “If we couldn’t send him to hell, we at least sent him on his way,” Marcus added. “Owen has his face pasted up on the wall at the office, and every one of his deputies has memorized it. The neighbors go without saying. Anyone sees him come back, we’ll know.”

  “Good.” Rory glanced down at the woman asleep in the curve of his arm. “But you know what? I think she did as much as any of us to convince him there’s nothing for him here.”

  “Yeah. She’s not going to be anyone’s victim. Not ever again.” Marcus tapped his beer to Thomas’s and sent Rory a teeth-baring grin. “Don’t discount your own contribution,” he added. “You’ve got a hell of an arm. Next time I’m in a fight, I want you at my back.”

  “I think you should put him in front,” Thomas said. “He hits harder than you do.”

  “Let’s not get carried away stroking Cripdick’s ego.”

  “No stroking involved. Just stating facts.”

  “I’m very uncomfortable with the topic of stroking around you two,” Rory said, deepening Marcus’s grin and earning a chuckle from Thomas. They were quiet for a while, drinking their beers while Rory played with Daralyn’s hair, caressed the round shape of her shoulder, the slope of her arm, crooked over his thighs. The sun had set a while back, turning the sky all the usual brilliant colors, and now the stars were coming out over the open fields and the forest beyond. Lights from distant farmhouses, their neighbors, dotted the landscape.

  He couldn’t ask for anything more from life. He’d defended the woman he loved, stood by her, with the family and community who stood by them both. Tomorrow he’d work in the store his parents had started, and he’d continue to make successful. It was a hell of a good life.

  “I want to ask her to marry me,” he said abruptly. “But I think I should wait, give her time.”

  Thomas lifted a shoulder. “You have plenty of it. All the time you both need.”

  “When you do, it will only confirm what everyone else can see. Especially Daralyn.” Marcus met his gaze. “She’s yours, but it’s pretty clear she sees you as hers, too. You’re already bound to her in every way that matters.”

  Bound. Connected. Those were the right words. Several years ago, he never could have predicted this moment. A moment where he was happier, more content, than he’d ever been in his life, even when he had the use of his legs.

  He wondered if Daralyn felt anywhere close to that, and then thought about what she’d said earlier, about hope. I think some way down deep part of my soul took it as a sign of hope. Hope that my life could be something different.

  What was it Tyler Winterman had said? “Love can surprise you in so many ways.”

  When he shared that out loud, Marcus grimaced. “Probably copped it off the cheesy inspirational wall poster of one of his corporate weasel friends.”

  Thomas grinned at Rory. “You won’t get anything good from him about Tyler. Not until he has that sculpture.”

  “I’ll buy it for pennies at his estate sale when he dies,” Marcus said, unruffled. “Which should be soon. He’s ancient. In his fifties or something.”

  “Says the guy who’s hit his forties. Cradle robbed my brother.” Rory chuckled as Marcus tossed a balled-up napkin at him. “Since Tyler seems to feel the same about you, I’m betting he has some clause in his will that it can’t end up in your hands.”

  “I’ll sweet talk it from Marguerite.”

  “Yeah.” Thomas snorted. “Nobody sweet talks anything from that Mistress.”

  Daralyn shifted, turning so she was facing Rory’s abdomen. She wrapped her arms around his waist and drew her legs up, snuggling in like a cat. Then she murmured something. Rory leaned in. “What, baby?”

  She glanced up at him, her eyes heavy lidded and sleepy. “I would love to marry you,” she said. “A spring wedding. Outdoors.”

  Then she subsided back into slumber. Rory stared down at her, distantly hearing Thomas and Marcus’s chuckles.

  “When a woman finally decides what she wants,” Marcus said, “not even a Master can stand in her way.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  That was true, but Rory also knew stating things so directly was still new to her. A decision as big as marriage? He wasn’t going to hold her to something she’d likely said while halfway asleep, after a really tumultuous day.

  So over the next week, as they returned to a normal schedule, it was definitely in the upper part of his mind, but he didn’t bring it back up. They did their work at the store, she attended her classes. She was already planning what she’d take next semester. Then there were plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Les would be home for a prolonged break, and Julie and Des would join them for both holidays. Rory’s mother was making plans for it. Rory placed the Christmas tree order and started lining up the help he’d need to get them unloaded and delivered to the ordering customers.

  In the middle of all those usual things, he and Daralyn had started working out designs for her reclaimed house. They obtained a copy of the existing floor plan from the courthouse and pinned it to a drafting table they set up in the back of the store. The tracing paper taped over it would reflect the renovation ideas they were bouncing back and forth.

  On the day they’d added that tracing paper, Daralyn had set the tone for where they were going with the project. In the top corner, she abolished any past reference to the Moorfield brothers by printing four words in bold block print.

  The Wilder Moss House.

  When Rory saw it, he took the pencil from her. As she watched, a puzzled half smile on her face, he marked through what she’d written and wrote the correction below it.

  The Moss Wilder house.

  He handed the pencil back, closed her fingers around it. “I know why you put my name first,” he said. “And I appreciate the respect. But this is you, reclaiming what’s yours. Your name should be first.”

  The rest of that day she’d seemed thoughtful, but when he saw her stop at the drafting table, trace her fingers over the name, look toward him with a shine in her hazel eyes, he knew he’d made the right call.

  As they worked together to sketch out the changes they wanted to the house—a more open layout that would require mostly gutting the interior, and customized options on the kitchen, bath and outside porches for full wheelchair compatibility—he pulled in contractors for bids on the changes that he and his buddies couldn’t do themselves. He’d also revamp the storage shed, so it would be a workshop and workout area for him.

  Des had already agreed to re-roof both the house and storage shed with architectural shingles. Their only cost would be whatever the shingles cost him. He wouldn’t hear anything different from them on it.

  Even so, their ideas required a budget that would take about six months of saving before they’d feel comfortable beginning the first major renovation step. While Marcus and Thomas were willing to front them the money, or even gift it, that wasn’t the way Rory operated, and Daralyn was on the same page on that.

  However, his girl did mention that, if the minor repairs needed to make the place inhabitable “could be done,” it “might be nice” to go ahead and move in. She dropped the hint a couple times, in various ways.

  Each time she did, he hedged on agreeing to it or setting a date. He didn’t tell her why, which he knew was starting to cause a problem. It showed in the pucker between her brows that grew deeper each time. Though he was usually forthcoming with her on things, he wasn’t on this. Instead, he would move on to another topic, or simply tell her, “We’ll see how the repairs go.”