In Dark Woods (Signal Bend Series #4.5) (3 page)

FOUR

“For now, while you’re still immobilized, we’ll focus on blood flow and preventing atrophy. The leggings have been doing that passively, with electric current, but you’re healing well enough that we can add some massage to that. No manipulation yet, but that will come. When we can get you out of the immobilizer, then we can work on regaining and keeping tone and strength.”

The rehab therapist, Julie,
was allegedly massaging his legs as she talked. She could have been rubbing down some guy across the hall for all he could tell. Lilli was standing next to her, watching, learning how to massage him. Her hands on his body, which he could not feel. He closed his eyes and pushed at the shadows that threatened his mind whenever he thought of all he had lost.

He focused instead on what he
still could feel of her. She had washed his hair that morning. Jesus fuck, that had been intense. Almost an hour of her hands in his hair, on his head, really feeling her touch, feeling in the pull of the strands on his scalp something he could remember—the way she pulled his hair when she came. It was erotic. Even without a body that could respond, it was erotic. It tore him apart; it had been nearly unbearable in its intensity, and he hadn’t wanted it to end.

This woman.
His woman. Steady and true. More than he deserved. But she wanted him. Even like this, she wanted him. He hadn’t totally believed it until he’d felt her hands in his hair.

They’d moved him to a different room
in the afternoon, with a little more space and an actual window looking out over the parking lot. The only window in the ICU room had looked inward, at the nurse’s station. What he could see of it.

It didn’t matter
what room he was in, really. He couldn’t see much more than the ceiling, wherever he was. It was now late in the afternoon; the setting sun had cast an orange glow over the pocked white tiles above his bed.

“Isaac.” Julie was standing near his shoulder. He hadn’t noticed that she’d stopped rubbing his legs—why would he?—and moved up the side of the bed. “I want you to try to squeeze this for me.

She set something in his hand.

He could feel its slight weight. He could feel its smooth surface. He could feel the warmth of her hand
s, holding his around the ball. It was a ball. Could he really feel all that? Or was it wishful fantasy? But she was holding her hands around his because he could not do it himself. He could not move his hand.

So he said nothing about what he
thought he could feel.

~oOo~

He could not sleep. They’d changed the drug they were giving him to help with that, and all this one did was make his head spin. He continually felt like he was falling, without any way of stopping himself. It made him sick, and he threw up the gruel Lilli had fed him for dinner.

Throwing up while on
his back became a huge production, as he choked and nearly respirated it, requiring nurses and tubes down the throat, and oxygen delivery. There was no end to the abasements he would have to endure in this new life. But finally, the crisis passed, and he and Lilli were left alone, though now he had the fucking cannula shoved up his nose again. They’d given him something to counteract the sleeping meds. So he wasn’t sick anymore. But he wasn’t sleeping.

T
o ease his distress, Lilli read to him from
Altered Carbon
, until she got to the scene where Kovacs and Miriam fuck like freight trains while on the drug Merge Nine. It wasn’t a sex book. It was a badass science fiction noir thriller, but the sex scenes…were plenty thrilling. Unfamiliar with the novel, she got into the scene before she realized how very detailed it was. He’d read the book so many times the cover was almost shot, so he’d seen it coming.

“‘I settled over her, and my stubble rasped faintly over the sprung smoothness of her belly, my mouth making wet
O
s on its path downward. Then there was the deep salt taste as my tongue tracked down the creases of her cunt’—” Lilli went quiet, and he could sense her reading on silently, looking for the end of that scene.

“Why’d you stop?”
He couldn’t see her from where she sat at the side of his bed, but he could sense her, her proximity and her discomfort.

“Isaac. It’s—damn. It’s not a good idea.”

Because he was a fucking eunuch now. He hadn’t had even a reflex erection, as far as anyone knew. Shit, he couldn’t even touch her. “Because I can’t get you off if it makes you hot.”

“No. Come on, love. Haven’t you had a rough enough night?”

“Read the fuckin’ scene, Sport. Just read it. Like you mean it.”

She was quiet for a long moment, leaving only the hiss of the oxygen, the grind of the IV
machine, the beep of the heart monitor, the hum of the electric current keeping his legs and ass from dissolving into suppurating chunks of dead meat.

No wonder he couldn’t sleep without the good drugs. It sounded like a machine shop in here.

Finally, she started reading again. And she did read it like she meant it, like she was into it. For several pages, it went on. And it was hot. Even as his dead body ignored the titillation, his head did not. He was overwhelmed by the urge to grab Lilli and shove himself inside her.

None of which he could do—not grab, not shove, and there was nothing to put inside her.

Ever again.

S
he was right. He should have let her stop reading the scene.

When the chapter was over, she asked, “Is that what you wanted? Did you get what you wanted?”
She sounded angry.

“No. I’m sorry.”

She stood and leaned over him, putting her hands around his face, as she so often did now. The only touch they had. “When I couldn’t get close, after what happened to me, do you remember what you said? You told me that it didn’t matter if we ever had sex again. That all you needed was me and Gia, in your life. Were you telling me the truth?”

“Yes! God!”

“Then why do you think I need more? What I need of you I still have, love. As long as you’re with me, I still have you. All I need.”

~oOo~

She slept that night with her funky bed-chair pushed up close to his bed. When the night nurse came in—a skinny dude—he was nice enough to do what he needed to do without waking her. Isaac was grateful; Lilli didn’t sleep much, but she was doing okay this time, only waking once or twice. On this night, without the good drugs, he did not sleep at all.

He could
sense the weight of her hand on his, as if through padding. He lay staring at the ceiling, willing his body to let him really feel her hand, its warmth, it smooth softness, its strength. He willed his body to let him touch her, to let him hold her, if only to fold his fingers over hers.

There was nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing happened. Nothing.

And then, as the ceiling tiles began to brighten with weak dawn light, there was something. Like a faint current, a tremor of muscle, that he could feel move down his arm to the hand Lilli was holding. Maybe it was an illusion, but Isaac could feel the sensation returning, as if following the wake of that tremor. And then he turned his hand under Lilli’s and folded his fingers over hers.

She woke with a start and sat bolt upright. He couldn’t see her
well, but he could hear her, and he could feel her hand jerk in his. He closed his hand tighter; he didn’t want to lose her.

“Isaac?”

“Morning, Sport.” He smiled. It felt like his first smile in a very long time.

~oOo~

He still failed all the tests on his legs and his torso, nearly up to his pecs, but his arms were coming back. They weren’t all the way back—he couldn’t lift them, and so far he only had any real control over one hand, but he could move that at will now—and he could feel, really feel, both arms and both hands, one more acutely than the other.

The doctors were pleased, but not effusive. There had always been a decent chance that he would get his arms back, since he
’d had some sensation. A month after he’d been shot, though, Isaac had given up that hope.

They were no more encouraging that this progress might mean he would walk again
, and he was still mostly flat on his back. But Isaac was holding his woman’s hand again, and in this moment, that almost felt like enough.

“I want to bring Gia now,” she said,
as soon as they were alone again.

“Not until I can hold her. Please, Lilli. Wait until I can hold her.”
She nodded, and he breathed a little easier.

He hadn’t seen his daughter in a month. She couldn’t be in the ICU—and, anyway, he hadn’t wanted to see her when he couldn’t touch her. He’d known he would have to eventually, even if he’d not regained his arms, but he was not ready to face that pain. It was hard enough not to touch Lilli. But his little girl, who would reach for him and not understand why he didn’t reach back? No.

He hadn’t wanted to see anyone, actually. He’d forbidden anyone but Lilli and Show to see him in the ICU. His brothers didn’t need to see him in his fucking diaper and his fucking oxygen and his fucking immobilizer.

A throat cleared, and Lilli looked over her shoulder. Isaac could see the smile in her profile.

“Hey, bud. Come in.”

Isaac knew who it must be. He hadn’t wanted his brothers to see him like this, but there was one exception. He did not want Bart to go, to leave town, to give up the Horde to save the Horde, without saying goodbye. And now it was time to do so.

Lilli went to Bart, disappearing from Isaac’s sight. She said something to Bart that he didn’t catch, and then to him said, “I’ll be back in five, love.” He nodded.

For several seconds, the room was quiet. Isaac waited. He knew it had to be a shock to see him like this. Then Bart came into his field of vision.

“Bartholomew.”

“Hey, boss.”

But he wasn’t ‘boss.’ He couldn’t be ‘boss.’

~oOo~

“Never say die.” With those words, Bart left.

Isaac lay in silence and grappled with his head. He had done this. He had sent that kid into fuck knew what. The decisions he’d made as President had gotten the Horde to this point. Lilli kept telling him those decisions were club decisions, that they’d all gone in together. But he was the one at the head of the table. He was the one with the gavel in his hand.

Or he had been.

Because Isaac had discounted C.J. as an impotent old blowhard, the Scorpions had turned on the Horde. He had seen the man who had been like a father to him. Even when C.J. was balking and pushing back, Isaac had not seen the threat, only the old man past his prime. His blindness—his arrogance—had cost the Horde dearly. Again.

He hoped it would not cost Bart more. He could only hope. The definition of impotence, he could only lie where he was and hope.

Suffused with a rage too big to tamp down, he roared. Except he did not have the power to roar. He grunted,
as loud and long as he could.

Lilli ran into the room, up to his bed, and grabbed his face. “What is it? Isaac—are you hurting? What?”

He could only take another stilted breath and make that impotent, bestial sound.

He saw it in her eyes when she understood what was happening. Then she grabbed his hand and held it to her face, where he could see. He
watched his hand wrap around hers and held on as tightly as his traitorous body would let him.

Never say die.

Never say die.

Ride or die.

He couldn’t ride.

FIVE

Gia was finally asleep in her car seat, and Lilli turned
the volume down on They Might Be Giants. Checking the rearview to make sure the volume change didn’t disturb the sleeping toddler, Lilli settled in for the rest of the long drive. She’d made it so many times now that she could drive without paying full attention. She gave her head some rein and let it think.

Eight
weeks ago, after six weeks in the county hospital, Isaac had been released to rehabilitative care. There was a rehab care center on the County campus, but Lilli wanted better for Isaac. If there was even the slimmest chance that he could regain his body, she was determined to find it for him. She was prepared to take him anywhere in the world to find it for him.

She had not needed to go far. One of the most highly regarded c
enters in the world, specializing in paralysis rehabilitation, was in St. Louis. It was also one of the most expensive centers, and their insurance was not remotely keeping up with the pace of the cost of his care. It hadn’t been keeping up in the hospital, and it was paying for even less of the cost of the rehab center, proportionally.

They had a
lways been financially strong, and they were neither of them extravagant people. Isaac had been on solid ground when they met, and she had the sizable inheritance from her father. Then, they had bought the Keller property and built the B&B on it. And they’d donated the money to get the town library open and running. And then Isaac had been shot.

The B&B was doing well, but she’d funneled a lot of the profits back into it,
raising the salaries of the employees, keeping everything running at top form, improving services. She’d laid out a decent sum to improve its appeal as a venue for smaller-scale weddings. In terms of money that actually went into their personal accounts from the business, it was creating only a modest income. Enough to live as comfortably as they had been, but no more.

Isaac was still nominally the President of the Night Horde, and as such, he got his
larger cut from their protection payments and other income. But he’d also paid his larger share of the cost of starting the wine bar, which was not yet open for business, and thus far was only sucking on the shriveling teat of the Horde’s accounts.

And then there was the cost of her staying
most of every week at the Residence Inn across the street from the rehab center. That was on them completely. But she wasn’t leaving him alone. If he was alone for more than a day, the depression came over him so hard he gave up entirely, and she was afraid he’d hurt himself—or worse. He had his hands and arms back, and he was a smart man. Even in the rehab center, he could figure it out. So she stayed close and let Shannon and Show continue to raise their daughter well more than half the time.

Though he had regained feeling almost to his waist,
Isaac was still paralyzed from that point down. But with full use of his arms and hands, he’d built back a lot of strength. He was strong and able to sit up with little help. He had mastered his wheelchair quickly and could get himself in and out of bed without help, once he was secured into his brace. As long as she stayed close and he could keep despair at bay, he worked hard at his therapy, and he had made a lot of progress in these eight weeks at the rehab center. More than anyone had given them cause to hope.

Lilli would sell every holding, every belonging, her own blood before she’d take him away from a place that might help him to walk.
Maybe even one day to ride.

But she was beginning to worry that she might have to.

Show had confronted her about it a week or so ago. Learning that Dom, on Show’s word, had checked into their private accounts, Lilli had been livid. She’d punched Show, and he’d let her. Then he’d forced her down to the couch and insisted she tell him exactly what was going on with the money. Bubbling at the brim with stress and worry, under the meaty hands of the only person she trusted to be steady with the information, she’d told him. And she’d sworn him to secrecy.

Isaac
didn’t know. He didn’t know how much it was all costing, or how much their accounts were depleting. She wouldn’t tell him, she couldn’t, because he would demand to be moved back to County. She wouldn’t let that happen. No matter how long he had to stay, she would figure it out. She would figure it out.

She would.

But she was tired. She was so fucking tired. She hadn’t slept through a night in more than three months. Her brain never stopped. Never. When she was with Isaac, she was focused on him, encouraging him, keeping him feeling connected to Signal Bend, working out schedules for visitors, talking with his care specialists. And all the while, in the back of her head, was the constant pull of Gia, whom she saw when she went home one night a week, and then when she drove back and forth to bring her to St. Louis every weekend.

Last week, when she’d gotten home and held out her arms, Gia had turned away and held more tightly to Shannon. Just for a moment, and then she’d reached out. But that moment had been filled with blades.

When she was away from Isaac, she was a knot of worry, knowing how quickly his mood turned when he was alone, how little patience he had for the slightest hiccup. Even bumping his chair into a doorframe would cause a fit of fury.

She felt like her life was being run by other people—and it was true. Shannon and Show were keeping their child and their house. Show was running the Horde. Omen, of all people, had taken over the library. Lilli just
circled outside it all, her only task in life to get Isaac on his feet. To help him regain himself in a way that was real to him.

Because nothing she could say or do seemed to convince him that he could have a life without his legs.
At his best and brightest, he would only pay lip service to the idea that he could survive a life off the road. Without her to goad him, cheer him, kick his ass for him, he would just give up.

She was so fucking tired.

With a glance in the rearview to make sure Gia was still well asleep with her little purple stuffed unicorn clutched in a pudgy fist, Lilli turned the volume back up on They Might Be Giants and had herself a good, hard cry as she sped down I-44 to Isaac.

~oOo~

He was sitting in his chair when she walked Gia into his room. He looked good—the hours of daily therapy had given him his upper body back and then some. Even in the six weeks since he’d been able to sit in the chair and roll it on his own power, his shoulders had filled back out, and his arms were even bigger than before. He’d put back on about half the weight he’d lost in the hospital. He was still wrapped in a hard back brace, from just below his arms to his hips, and his legs had lost a lot of their bulk, but Lilli thought he looked virile, his hands in black fingerless driving gloves and his biceps bulging.

When he saw Gia, he grinned openly, his face losing the shadow of gloom that was otherwise on it constantly.
For Gia, and for no one else, Isaac found some light.
Because
of Gia he found that light.

“There’s my squirt!”

Gia shook free of Lilli’s hand and ran to Isaac, yelling, “Daddy, whee! Whee, Daddy!”

She climbed up his legs and settled immediately into his lap. “Okay. Hold on, G. You ready?”

She hooked her hands into his brace. “Whee, Daddy!” He rolled out of the room, turned the chair, and sped down the hallway. Gia yelled, “Whee! Whee! Whee!” all the way.

When he got to the corner, he locked the wheels and drifted into the turn.
Gia squealed with delight.

~oOo~

When Lilli got back from dropping Gia off at home on Sunday afternoon, Isaac wasn’t in his room. She went down the hall to the nurse’s station. Lately, she’d been caught off guard every time she went through the halls here. Everything was festooned with glittery green and red decorations. It was nearly Christmas. She no longer thought of time passing in terms of seasons and holidays. Time was only meaningful to her in the way that it measured Isaac’s progress.

Kelly,
a burly male nurse, was the only one at the desk.

“Hey, Kelly. Have you seen Isaac?”

He looked up from his charts. “Yeah—he was going down for a soda, I think. That was a while ago, though.”

“Okay, thanks.
”

She headed down the hall to the rec room, where there were vending machines, couches, tables and chairs, a big
shelving unit full of board games—a place for patients and their families to stretch out a little. She didn’t see him in here, either, but then she looked out the wide window and saw him sitting on the patio. It was dusk on a December evening in Missouri and not even ten degrees above freezing, and he was out there in his t-shirt and sweat pants. Lilli crossed the room and pulled open the slider.

“What are you doing out here, love?”

He turned his head and smiled at her. His smile was so much different now. Always a sadness at its corners. “Hey, Sport. I like it out here. I don’t know why, but the cold makes me feel almost normal. Like when my face goes numb it doesn’t feel like the other parts are wrong.”

She pulled up a chair and sat next to him. “Okay.” They sat together
in the cold until dark was full on the night.

~oOo~

Later that night, Isaac hoisted himself into bed, using his arms and the triangle hanging over the bed. Lilli helped him get rid of the back brace and take his shirt off, and he relaxed onto the bed. As had become their routine, he turned on the television, and she kicked off her shoes and climbed into bed with him. She tucked her head on his shoulder, against his strong neck, and ran her fingernails over his chest, through the hair on it. Because he could only feel to his navel, she concentrated her attentions above it. Groaning, he pulled her ponytail loose and combed his fingers through her hair.

His chest had
regained its chiseled tone. He was still so gorgeous, so solid.

She loved this part of their day best of all, when they were quiet and close, when he was touching her. They would lie like this for hours, talking or being silent, just together, until he slept. And then she would go across the street and try to shut her head off for a couple of hours, until she could come back to him.

Tonight, on a downstroke as he ran his fingers through her hair, he carried on downward until he reached the hem of her top. He curled his fingers under and dragged the hem up, exposing her belly. And then both of his hands were on her bare skin, the flat of one on her back, the fingers of the other teasing her belly.

“You’re so thin, baby. I can feel your ribs.”

She shrugged but didn’t answer. There was no time anymore for working out. There was barely time for eating. She had more important things to do.

He continued caressing her skin, and she closed her eyes against the emotion surging through her. He hadn’t touched her like this since he’d been shot. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want him to stop, but she didn’t want to start down a road that would end for him in a chasm of depression.

When his still-calloused hands moved upward, and she felt his palm cup her breast—the sensation so intense, even through the silk of her bra, that she gasped and flinched—she covered that hand with hers.

“Isaac, don’t.”

He shook her hand away and pulled the cup of her bra down so he could flick at her nipple. Awash in emotion and sensation, she whimpered. “Isaac, please.”

“Let me get you off, baby. I want to feel your pussy in my hand
. Let me get you off.” He was panting, and it worried her. He still had some trouble keeping his breath.

But his words drove her wild. Now she was frantic with excitement, and she sat up and
got off his bed, divesting herself of her clothes as quickly as she could. He watched, his eyes focused and fiery. “Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he rumbled.

She climbed back up to lie next to him, but he patted his legs. “On me.”

So she sat on his lap, hooking her arms around his neck, and pressing her mouth to his. She felt his hand on her face, his fingers tense, and his thumb pushed gently down on her chin, opening her for his tongue. They kissed ravenously, virtually feeding off each other, as his hands held her and touched her. One hand tangled in her hair with an iron grip, holding her head to his, he explored her body with the other. She had missed his touch more than she’d allowed herself to acknowledge, and now it was everywhere—over her thigh, her ass, her side, her belly, over her breast, her neck, her arm. He returned to her breast again and again, brushing the nipple gently and then pinching it abruptly, swirling his fingers around it and then pulling it sharply, until she thought she’d go mad. She moaned into his greedy mouth, the sound undulating in time to the movements of his hand.

For her part, she slid both her hands into his hair and held herself as tightly to him as she could, wanting all the contact she could find, wanting him to feel her everywhere he could. And then, at long last, he pushed his hand between her legs. She reared backwards, against his grip, away from his mouth, and cried out.

“Oh, baby. Oh, fuck, I missed the feel of you wet on me. Oh, fuck.” He shoved his fingers into her, making them rigid and then pistoning them in and out, his thumb pressed on her clit. She came hard and nearly right away, her body flailing and out of her control, biting down on her lip against the scream that rose up into her mouth.