Eli removed the shower chair and turned on the water and the room began filling with steam. Isa stood in the doorway of the bathroom, looking weary, her arms crossed over her waist.
“Soap and shampoo are in the shower, towel’s right here.” Eli rested his hand on the fluffy gray towel and watched her, worry eating a hole in his stomach. He wasn’t sure how to comfort her. “Do you want my help?”
“No.” She gave him a tired smile. “I won’t be long.”
He thumbed her chin and watched her a moment longer. He understood. Showering was personal. He never wanted help in here either. “I’ll be in bed. Join me when you’re done.”
She gave him a faint nod and he left her alone.
Outside the shut bathroom door, he hesitated, considering going back in there. As tempted as he was, in the end he gave her privacy.
He’d opened a book on his lap but hadn’t read a damn word of it. He thought about her instead. How frightened she must be, how he’d failed her—twice now, arguably more.
A short while later, she came into the bedroom, towel wrapped around her body, hair dripping.
Her chin wobbled, and then she started to cry. Eli was off the bed in an instant, peeling the damp towel from her body and hoisting her in his arms. He’d kept his prosthesis on for this very reason. He suspected she might need him to come for her.
He lowered onto the bed, a trembling Isa in his arms. Her dripping hair and leaking eyes made a puddle on his T-shirt.
He held her in his arms and wrapped her in his blanket.
They naturally moved from sitting to lying down, her snuggled deep in his bedding and him facing her, clothes still on, his eyes on hers.
She sniffled again and he swiped under her eyes with his thumb.
“I’m sorry, Sable.” It was the first words he’d spoken since before she stepped into the shower, and arguably his apology came late.
“Thank you for letting me stay.”
His heart squeezed. The last time they were in this bed, he’d been transfixed by his own grief and hadn’t given Isa the consideration she’d deserved.
Tonight, that changed.
“Thank you for coming back,” he told her, swiping her drying hair from her face.
“Am I back?” Her eyes, red and puffy, sought his. She was so beautiful it hurt.
“I sure as hell hope so.”
When her lips curved, he put a kiss on one corner of her mouth.
“Give me a second.” He disentangled himself from her to quickly pull off his clothes and set aside his prosthetic leg. Back in bed next to her, he maneuvered under the covers until she was in his arms once again. Her cool fingers touched his torso and he wrapped her tightly against him. In the dark, Eli took a vow.
If phantom pain attacked his missing limb, or if he suffered a numb arm, or if his back cramped to crippling capacity, he didn’t care.
In no way was he letting go of Isa until sunrise.
* * *
The bed bounced, a subtle shift, and Isa pulled in a breath through her nose. Sleep’s fingers tickled the edge of her mind, leaving her disoriented, but only for a second. A man cleared his throat behind her, which should’ve been out of place considering she usually woke alone, but there wasn’t a second of hesitation as to who it was.
Elijah Crane.
Eli, who’d come to her house to apologize.
Eli, who’d called the police after she was attacked.
Eli, who’d insisted she come home and stay with him.
Sleep in my arms.
She had. She opened her eyes when he kissed her shoulder. She’d fallen asleep facing him but must have rolled over in the middle of the night. She faced him now. He was propped on his right elbow, hair a mess, eyes hooded and sleepy. Sun poured through the blinds, casting him in yellow light, making his blue eyes shine.
She didn’t speak. Neither did he. She wondered if he was also turning over the significance of this being the first night they’d spent together. Waking up to him felt strangely normal. She was comfortable here—comfortable with him.
He lowered his face to hers, slowly, as if testing her reaction. She gave him the kiss he requested.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked, his morning voice rich and deep.
“Better than I would’ve thought.” Hers sounded more like she’d smoked a few cigarettes.
“That’s good.”
“Thanks for letting me stay last night.”
He pushed her hair away from her eyes. She’d slept on it wet, so no doubt she was rocking some serious floppy bedhead. “No thanks needed, Sable.”
They shared another quiet moment before Eli leaned forward again. This time when his mouth moved on hers, he opened, an invitation for her to go deeper. She accepted, her tongue tangling with his, warm and wet. He slipped his hand beneath the sheets covering her, palming her breast and thumbing a nipple. Her truncated breaths filled the air as her hand sought his shoulder.
“Eli,” she whispered as his fingers brushed over her belly, closer, closer to where she wanted him. He paused, as if he was unsure, so she gave him permission. “Touch me.”
He kissed her again, cupping her intimately before he dipped a finger along the seam of her.
“Wet,” he said, his voice low and reverent.
“I want you.” She gripped his biceps and parted her lips to let loose a gasp when he continued to tease her. Eli watched her as she watched him, his fingers dancing between her folds, unseen beneath the blankets. Each slick glide drawing her closer to the abyss.
Raising one hand, she palmed his beard, stroking her thumb over his bottom lip as she writhed from pleasure that only his attentive, rough touch could deliver.
He moved his fingers faster, faster…until she clutched and came, her eyes squeezing closed as her body bowed off the bed. Heart ratcheting, bloodstream pumping, she lazily opened her eyes to take in the man who’d guided her to the pinnacle with little effort.
He’d known what she needed last night. And he knew what she needed this morning.
“How do you do that?” she asked on a pleased sigh.
He placed a kiss on her nipple, then on her lips. “Do what?”
“Know what I need.”
“You seemed tense.” His lips tipped, his eyes blinking in that ultraslow way she found enticingly sexy. “Now you don’t.”
She let out a long hum of satisfaction. He wrapped a hand around her butt, squeezed, then let go to fall to his back.
Isa rolled over and wrapped an arm around his bare chest, admiring the swell of pecs and biceps, the tattoos that swirled over his arm. Flowers and waves, a sunrise, a cross. A plethora of scenery and images that meant enough to him to be immortalized on his skin for as long as he was on this planet.
“Your body is beautiful,” she murmured, dropping her chin on his chest.
There was a palpable hesitation in the air, one she didn’t ignore.
“I guess guys don’t see themselves as ‘beautiful.’” She traced a line down his chest and drew a circle around his belly button with the tip of her finger. His abs tightened, each bump standing out from his skin. Her fingers followed to his cotton boxers. He was hard and ready and grunted when she gave him a gentle squeeze.
A rough exhalation tickled her cheek and she wiggled into a comfortable position on the bed. On her side, chin on his ribs, her fist gripping the thick ridge of him.
“You are, though,” she said as his eyes sank closed. “Completely beautiful.”
* * *
Eli tugged Isa up his body and kissed her, his tongue dancing with hers. Much as he liked her touching him, he wanted her kissing him more. When he pulled away, satisfaction brimmed in her dark eyes. Satisfaction he’d put there. After the scare she’d had last night when he’d insisted she come home with him and lie safe in his arms, in his bed, he considered this happy, sated look a success.
“I was going to return the favor,” she murmured against his lips, her hand flat on his stomach and inching lower.
“Were you now?” Her touch was amazing, but it wasn’t what she was doing to his body that had him losing his breath; it was what she’d done to his heart. This exotically gorgeous woman draped over his body, drawing a line down the underside of his arm, had sneaked in there without his knowing.
He cared about her. In a way that was different from anyone before her.
She traced the muscles along his abs. She’d said he was “beautiful” but he knew what beautiful was, and it was Isa. Still, he couldn’t help feeling a modicum of pride that she admired his body.
He’d built muscles because he’d needed them. The more strength he had in the rest of him, the easier it was to maneuver with his new leg. But she hadn’t differentiated what parts of him were beautiful. She saw and accepted all of him. It was a sobering realization, and not one he was used to.
“I like you like this.” Her hand moved back up to his chest and her full mouth, lush and welcome, smiled at him.
“Like what?” His voice, craggy and low, held a note of lust. Whenever she touched him, it infiltrated the space between them.
“Relaxed.” She opened her mouth like she was going to say more, then shut it. Which wasn’t like her. Isa said what was on her mind regardless of what Eli wanted or what he thought.
“And?” he found himself asking.
Her eyes screwed to the ceiling, before she admitted, “I was going to say open, but you’re not open, are you? You’re more like a screen over a window. I can see in, but I can’t get in.”
Isa’s honesty made him want to squirm. She wasn’t wrong.
“I’m…not skilled at being open,” he said, feeling his brows pinch over his nose.
“You’re kidding.” She gave him a good-natured eye roll.
Open spaces were a threat. As a military man, they were a matter of life and death. As a man who’d lost his mother tragically, they were a matter of internal pain he couldn’t escape. Letting someone in—letting himself out—equally dangerous. He knew well the feeling of putting himself on the line and feeling the slap of disappointment, of heartbreak.
His mother had broken his heart into bits when she died.
After a gap of a few breaths, Isa spoke again.
“I’m not sure what we have here.” She pushed up on one elbow, not bothering to cover her body with the sheet. Goose bumps prickled her tan skin, her breasts rising when she inhaled. If anyone had practice at being open, it was Isa. In that way she was a hundred times braver than he was.
“I like you, Eli.”
He held his breath and waited for the but. For her to tell him it was over. Maybe she’d worried as he had after last night that he hadn’t been able to keep her safe—that his scaring off a mugger was a little too close for comfort.
His heart hammered an uneven pattern. He worried she’d tell him she couldn’t be with him because he wasn’t enough. He’d never be enough for the woman who deserved everything.
“But…,” she started.
His heart seized like it’d been peppered with buckshot. He didn’t want her to go. Not after winning her back.
“…I can’t keep guessing what’s in your head,” she finished.
He was so shocked she wasn’t reciting a Dear John letter, he blinked at her in silence. Maybe it was that relief that made him offer her more. “What do you want to know?”
“Do you really believe you’re bad luck?”
He blew out a laugh, but it was a desperate attempt to keep her from knowing that she’d hit the nail pretty damn close to the head. “Not exactly.”
He chewed on his thoughts another few seconds before committing what to share.
“Good things…don’t chase me.”
“Life is about you chasing good things, Eli, not the other way around.”
He thought of last night. Of the position she’d been in. Of his presence there. Of the swamping guilt and seething anger he’d felt at not being able to chase that asshole down. At the very least, Isa deserved someone who could protect her.
“A lot of bad things happen when I’m around.”
“Are you afraid you’ll screw up?” She shrugged. “We all screw up.”
“Some screwups come with a hefty price, Sable. Screwups like letting my two men lead resulted in them losing their lives.” He tipped her chin. “Screwups like you being attacked because your attacker didn’t believe I could fight him off.” Quietly, he added, “And I didn’t.”
“No.” She shook her head, but he ignored her attempt to make him feel better. He knew what happened. He’d been there.
“It’s a fact, Isa.”
“It’s bullshit, Eli.” Her gaze sharpened and never left his face. “You came for me after I left, and that was a miracle. If you hadn’t showed at all…” She batted her lashes like she was fighting tears. “I don’t want to think about it.”
He was in awe of her strength. He’d rather take a Taser to the nuts than have this conversation. Especially when fear returned—that prickling spike of adrenaline as he recalled her ear-piercing scream for help. His stomach twisted even though she was here next to him, completely safe in his bed.
“What happened to me is not your fault.” She touched his face. “I could have been robbed, raped. He could have climbed those stairs and broken into my house while I was in the shower.”
He’d thought about that, too.
“You heard what I told the officer. That guy’s eyes were wild like he was high on something. He was twitchy. Strange. He hadn’t been lying in wait and carefully plotting. Maybe he saw you in the shadows, maybe he didn’t. It could have happened at any time.”
He hadn’t stopped to consider that. He hadn’t considered much of anything other than the fact that he’d failed her.
“But if I wouldn’t have shown up at your door, you never would have been outside.”
“If you wouldn’t have shown up at my door, Eli, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
He frowned. He was grateful she was here. He valued her safety first, but she wasn’t wrong. She was in his arms and in his bed because of last night.
“So…you’re moving in with me,” he stated, his dark humor hitting its mark when she laughed lightly.
“I have pepper spray. I’ll be on alert.”
“And have a male employee stay late to walk you up. Finish your work upstairs and never ever head up there after dark unless—”
Her fingers pressed to his lips. “I promise.”
Her words made him want to promise her things right back. But he wasn’t the man he used to be and fell short of being the man he should be. Crushed beneath that realization, he refused to make Isa a promise and not deliver. He wouldn’t fail her again.
Isa fiddled with the edge of the sheet. He admired her raspberry-tipped breasts, bared and beautiful. She was gloriously naked and not hiding from him. That was the crux of who she was—someone who didn’t hide.
Meanwhile, Eli had behaved like a hibernating bear.
“Have you ever lived with someone?” she asked suddenly.
He waited for his fight-or-flight response to kick in. When anxiety didn’t lodge his throat, he counted it as progress.
“Yes,” he answered. “You?”
“Never. Not a romantic interest, anyway. I lived at home and with a friend from college, but I’ve mostly been on my own. Josh wanted to move in together, but it felt wrong.”
“You held back.”
“I guess so. I knew we weren’t right, but I’m not sure I know what ‘right’ feels like.” She flicked Eli a glance and then looked away, and in that brief exchange, he understood exactly how she felt. He’d spent years not knowing what ‘right’ felt like and had eventually determined that relationships never felt right. They just were.
“Her name was Crystal.” Eli slid an arm beneath the pillow under his head. Isa had asked, and dammit, he was going to give her a complete answer for a change. “She and I met through a mutual friend. We dated for three or four months and then she moved in when I deployed. She said it’d make her feel closer to me if she was around my things.”
He stole a glance at Isa, who was riveted, yet also looked like she didn’t want to hear any of this. He couldn’t blame her. Here he was sharing and he didn’t want to talk about it at all. But Isa deserved the truth. If she wanted it, he’d give it to her.
“Do you want me to continue?”
She nodded, and he honored her request.
“Whenever I was back, she’d insist we go house-hunting or talk about financial plans for our future. I would be trying to acclimate to civilian life again, settle into a temporary schedule, and Crystal wanted to play house.”
“She loved you.” Isa’s voice held a truckload of disappointment. He tried to alleviate her fears.
“Maybe.” Love wasn’t something they’d talked about. Crystal knew what he was like—that he didn’t embrace the sentiment of swapping four-letter L-words. If there was one thing he hadn’t been successful with at all, it was love. Hell, he didn’t even know what it was in regard to anyone who wasn’t related to him. “She wanted children, a family. A house with a yard. I don’t want that.”
“Not ever?”
Great question. He didn’t feel as opposed to it as he used to. “Now I’m not sure what I want. I’ve changed in a lot of unexpected ways since I’ve come back.”
Changing had scared him more than anything. He used to know who he was…who he’d been his entire life. After literally losing a part of himself, he wasn’t sure who he was anymore. Or who he would become.
Isa snuggled down in the bed next to him, hands in prayer beneath her cheek. Her dark eyes wide with hope as she watched him and he watched her.
“So this…what we have. It’s enough for you?” Her tone was careful.
Sometimes it was more than he could handle, but he knew better than to tell her that. Instead, he took one of her hands and laced their fingers together, hoping she’d take what he was about to tell her the right way.
“I’m not sure I can give you more, but I’m not done with us, either.”
The light in her eyes dulled. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“That’s fair.”
It wasn’t. He didn’t like her heavy acceptance, but he also didn’t want her to leave. What he was asking of her made no sense. She should never settle for less than she deserved. Not running her parents’ business, not a jackass ex who only wanted to use her as a cog in the wheel of his future. But if she’d stick around long enough for Eli to figure a few things out…he’d take it.
“I need you,” he admitted. “So if you wouldn’t mind staying a little while long—”
She was on top of him in an instant, her wild hair tickling his face, her plush lips crashing into his. Eli wanted to be the man she deserved, but there was a selfish part of him who wanted her any way she’d have him.
He kissed her back, sifting her hair through his fingers and trying not to think about the fact that she, too, could run through his grip like sand.