Chapter Twenty #3
He walked straight to the closed door of her bedroom with her, and turned the knob to let them in.
She’d a moment to be glad it was such a small room that he couldn’t miss the bed, and another to be distantly pleased that she’d made her bed this morning, before he murmured with satisfaction, “Now this is the right place,” let her down, and followed her as she came to rest on the high feather mattress.
Then she thought of little but what he was doing with her.
She’d been married, had laid with a man before, but no man had ever touched her as he did, or how he did, and even more—she thought with sudden shocked pleasure that set off a wave of terror that ebbed to sheerest delight—where he did.
His heart rose when he finally touched her where he’d yearned to, because his blind fingers found no fault, only warmth and the damp heat that told him he was wanted.
But not so much as he wanted her, he was sure of that.
He wasn’t sure she could ever match his longing for her, but went on kissing and caressing her, determined that her desire at least come close to equaling his before he sought to end it.
Her world shrank to the size of his hands; its perimeters, the height of his wide, hard, smooth shoulders; its depth, the endless plumb of his kisses and its sound, her pulse and his soft breathy inchoate murmurs of praise and encouragement.
His world was measured by her slowly deepening kisses, bordered only by the swelling curves he found and claimed and charted, as he reached his limit and went beyond it in order to ensure that he found hers before he went further.
Because for all his delight, he never dared lose himself in it, being constantly aware of how soon it might end in a discovery that would be the death of it.
With all that he’d done in a hard life, he’d never known a harder thing than to stay aware of this, when he found her so intoxicating.
But he was determined to be as an artist, allowing himself to be caught up in the creation of what he was doing, while all the while remaining ever vigilant, aware, in some small part of his mind, of the result he must work toward.
Still, there are certain mechanics involved in any art, and he could only hope his skill was sufficient to get them over and done with quickly enough to escape her notice.
Because for all his need, he had to draw away so that he could draw off the last of his clothes—he would not come to her like a hasty stranger paying for quick pleasure in the night.
Only as he did, did he realize that she’d left a small lamp glowing in the room.
Because after he’d rid himself of the troublesome garments and looked back to her, he could see her eyes widen as she looked down at him.
He drew up his leg as he sank back to the bed, trying to conceal himself.
But her face was still, and her eyes full of pain.
She’d hinted that her husband had always kept his clothes on, but he didn’t know what else he’d done, or she’d seen. Once again, Gray silently cursed a world that had made her so close to him and yet so far from him in freedom of expression.
“I can’t help that,” he said, leaning toward her, kissing her forehead, as he yearned to do more, but dared not when she looked so stricken.
“It’s how I’m made. I’ll go turn down the light, if you look away,” he offered.
“It don’t feel half so bad as it looks,” he said a little desperately when she didn’t answer him.
“Oh, but I’m sure it does,” she breathed, as he damned her dead husband to the last circle of hell. “How dreadful,” she cried softly.
This wasn’t the time he wanted to explain the workings of his body to her.
Words would end what they’d begun, because it wouldn’t be long until she’d be thinking about her own body if he started discussing his.
He sat back, careful to keep his knee raised as a barrier against her fascinated stare, and ran a hand through his hair in frustration, trying to think how to distract her.
Obviously, seduction wasn’t his game. It was for colder-hearted men than himself, he decided in despair, as he realized the needs of his body and the wants of his soul were clouding his mind and deadening his usually glib tongue.
“Oh, poor Gray,” she said softly, her hand coming out to tentatively touch the foremost of the great welter of scars on his flexed leg. “How it must have hurt you! I’d no idea.”
“Well, it wasn’t so bad, and it doesn’t bother me much anymore, although it isn’t pretty,” he said in confusion.
Then he fully realized what she’d meant and added incredulously, “You mean—it’s my leg you were staring at?
My leg? And not my—ah,” he groaned, realizing his mistake as her wandering hand stopped caressing his scars.
“Oh,” she said, lifting her hand and lowering her eyes.
“No, not your—ah,” she said, and then distinctly giggled.
“Not that I’ve ever seen anything like—in real life,” she added scrupulously, “because Father has a book, a very naughty one—although he says it’s art—about the history of acting, and there’s an illustration of an ancient Greek production of Lysistrata where the actors strap on big, wooden—ah…
” She paused, merriment and embarrassment vying for ascendancy in her eyes.
“Anyway,” she said, her lips quivering from the effort of keeping them straight, “that’s more frightening, I promise you.
You are…actually lovely, I think,” she said before her voice died to a whisper and faded away.
But so everything about him was lovely to her, this stranger who’d become half her life. He seemed so perfectly made; so powerful, clean, and right in his nakedness that the only shame she felt at being with him like this was that she couldn’t hope to compare to him.
She sat up in bed, her hair barely covering over those high, uptilted breasts he’d so lately held, her own leg tucked sideways to hide her last secret from him, and he thought his heart would melt with love for her.
It didn’t matter what hidden flaw nature had given her, she was, whatever it was, enough perfection for him.
And when she looked into his suddenly grave and adoring eyes, she saw it.
It was impossible to say which of them moved first, or which of them held the other harder, or whose need was stronger. She felt no fear when he lay down with her, and he felt no doubt when he turned her to him so they became one writhing form on the bed; one newly created being seeking peace.
But there were some things even love couldn’t change. Despite all her desire, she couldn’t help but know what he was finally attempting to do with her, and for all the words at his command, he couldn’t ask her to do more than what she was already doing at his touch. But she didn’t yield.
He paused, his desire pure pain now. She lay beneath him, accessible to him, but entirely closed to him.
At the final moment, she’d locked against him.
How much of it was her doing and how much nature’s, he couldn’t know.
He stroked the hair back from her moist forehead, and put his own damp one against hers as he rested for a moment, wondering what in heaven’s name to do next.
“I was just thinking how we got here,” he lied, breathing hard, trying to buy time before all their time slipped away.
“How I picked you up and marched in here. Now, what if you’d had one of those new kind of beds that fold right up into the wall?
I was trying so hard to be the hero. I’d have walked smack into it.
And with what I was leading with, it would have made the damage to my leg look like nothing in comparison! ”
He felt the tremor in her breast, and then the trembling in her throat, and worried as much as he cursed himself for his clumsy, stupid, barnyard attempt at humor.
“Oh Lord!” she whispered, shaking with mirth as she envisioned it. “Now how would you explain that?”
And then she laughed. And in that moment of laughter, she opened to him, heart, soul, and body—because there is no fear that doesn’t flee in the face of laughter.
She felt the sudden pain, and it was considerable, but nothing to the pain in her heart.
Her eyes flew open. Gray lay motionless above her, as though in worse distress than she was, his face strained and drawn, a previously unseen pulse beating in his forehead, his blue eyes glazed, and his breath coming with effort.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she cried as she tried to pull away from both the pain and the knowledge that she was at this last extremity finally proven deficient, proven flawed.
“What?” he asked on a gasp, “What are you sorry for?”
He wouldn’t let her move so much as an inch, and so she lay pinned beneath him, weeping, “Because it won’t work, because I’m…imperfect,” she managed to say, as the new pain ebbed and flowed away, overwhelmed by shame.
“Hannah, darling,” he breathed in her ear with effort, somewhere between a chuckle and a sob.
“It worked, it did, it is. There’s nothing wrong with you.
Oh girl, there’s nothing wrong but my clumsiness.
Everything’s fine,” he moved to show her.
“It couldn’t work better, ah,” he said as his movements caused him to let go of his hard-held control.
“Ah, love, it’s fine, it’s so fine, it’s too fine… ”