Lush (13 page)

She nodded.

“I see a strong, beautiful woman who went through hell and back. I see my wife and the mother of my child. I see a woman who has no idea how incredibly sexy she is. You have more power than you realize. He left you memories you don’t know what to do with, but he didn’t take anything from you. Not as far as I can see.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No. I’m not. You might not believe me now, but someday you will.” He leaned in slowly and brushed a kiss across her lips. “I think it’s time we do that thing I promised and go to sleep. Poppy will be waking up in a few hours.”

He held out his arms for her, and she snuggled into his side with her head on his chest.

He turned out the light. “I love you.”

She couldn’t move, afraid to break whatever spell Cal was under. Of all the things he’d ever said to her, what he’d just proclaimed had to be the most hopeful thing she’d ever heard. She felt the weight of his words like a blanket wrapping itself around her and working through the cracks in the walls she’d built just to survive another day. He loved her. He really, truly loved her.

After a few moments his breathing evened out. He was asleep, so it was safe to say what she’d wanted to tell him for days.

“I love you too, Cal Sellers,” she whispered.

She could’ve sworn she felt him smile in the darkness.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Over the next week Cal came to her room each night, knocked on her door, and waited for her to open it and invite him in. Lucy had gotten used to sleeping in his arms. She’d taken him into her body just about every way, but somehow taking him into her bed felt more intimate than any of the sexual stuff they’d ever done. By the end of the week she was ready to once again renew their sexual relationship.

So when he knocked on her door that night, she answered it completely naked. His mouth fell open, and he stared at her.

“Are you going to come in or not?” she asked, trying hard not to feel insecure.

Cal hadn’t seen her fully naked since she had Poppy. There were other changes to her body like the burn on her shoulder and the scar on her hip where she’d gotten cut when Kevin had pushed her down and she hit the corner of the glass coffee table, breaking it. If she’d answered the door to him fully dressed, she might have chickened out.

He moved so fast into the room he created a breeze. She closed the door and leaned back against it, trying to strike a seductive pose, but she wasn’t all that sure she pulled it off. He was still staring at her as though he couldn’t stop. He
liked
what he saw. That revelation gave her courage she couldn’t have mustered on her own.

“I was thinking,” she said, sauntering toward him, “that we’d try option number forty-seven.”

He bobbed his head.

“You don’t have any idea what option number forty-seven is, do you?”

“No, but I like the way it starts out.”

His words emboldened her further. “So I could tell you that it’s the one where you stand on your head—”

“There’s an option where I stand on my head?” He shook his head. “Never mind. I don’t care.” He shucked his boxer shorts and stood before her, ready for any option. “Where do you want me?”

“On the bed.”

He backed up, never taking his eyes off her, until his calves hit the edge of the bed. He sat down. “Now what?”

She walked toward him, adding a little extra bounce to her step that made her breasts jiggle. He seemed to like that. A lot.

“Jesus, darlin’,” he breathed, his gaze focused on her chest.

“Number forty-seven is the one where we can’t use our hands.”

He looked up at her then. “No hands? At all? What if I want my hands here?” He put his palms up as if to cup her breasts. She felt it as though he’d actually touched her. “What if I want to slide my fingers here?” He turned one hand and made a forward motion with two fingers pretending to stroke into her with them. She clenched her thighs together, his phantom touch making her throb for the real thing.

She put a knee on the mattress between his legs and grabbed her breasts, presenting them to him. “Are you saying that you only want to use your hands on these? I’m disappointed in you, cowboy. I thought you were more creative than that.”

He leaned forward, his gaze on hers, and licked one of her nipples, giving her an exquisite chill. “Oh, darlin’, if this is a challenge, I’m up for it.”

“Mmm.” She raised her knee, stroking up then down the length of him, eliciting a groan from him. “I see how up you are.”

“Shall we make a wager?”

“On what?”

“Who will use their hands first.”

“What’s the wager?”

He leaned in and licked a circle around her belly button. She was already wet and dying for his hands on her, and they hadn’t even kissed yet.

“Winner gets to pick the next ten options,” he answered.

“Five.”

He glanced up at her and traced the under slope of her breast with his tongue. She sucked in a breath.

“Not very confident, are you?” he asked.

“No, I’m curious to find out which option you’ll choose first. I don’t want to wait ten nights to find out.”

“Darlin’, I’d be glad to do all ten of your options tonight.”

“Now who’s not very confident they’ll win?”

“Even the loser wins in this bargain.”

She bent down, forcing him to lie back, and placed her hands on the bed on either side of him. Brushing her nipples up the length of his body from groin to chest, she answered, “True. It’s a win/win wager.”

“Jesus, darlin’. Do that again.”

She obliged, pressing her breasts together and stroking his penis with them. He stacked his hands behind his head and watched her. On the third downward stroke she licked the head, swirling her tongue around it. He moaned and started to reach for her, but pulled the gesture before he touched her.

“Come here, darlin’. I want to kiss you.”

“Mmm, not yet.” She worked him some more until his hips lifted off the bed and he growled at her to stop. “What? Don’t you like what I’m doing?”

“I want to be inside you when I come.”

“But you were just bragging about doing it ten times tonight.”

“I lied.”

He somehow made a move with his legs that flipped her onto the bed next to him. In a second he was on her, pressing the full length of his body to hers, his mouth covering hers in a kiss that let her know how much he wanted her. She wrapped her legs around him, bringing him right where she wanted him most. He changed the angle of the kiss, and suddenly she was hot and desperate for the feel of him inside of her. She pressed her hips up then down, rubbing her clit against him. Close, so close.

He pulled his mouth from hers and looked down at her. “This is the stupidest option on the list. I want to touch you so bad. Here…” he rocked his hips, sliding himself against her slickness, “…and here.” He bent his head and drew one of her nipples deep into his mouth.

She fisted the sheets as he kept up the pace and then she came, her arms going around him and holding him to her.

“You lost,” he said, a self-satisfied smile lighting up his face. He rocked back and thrust all the way into her.

She froze, then pushed at him. “Get out! Get out of me!”

It took Cal a second to comprehend what she was saying. He was finally inside her, finally home. When her words hit, he pulled out of her and backed away, up and off her entirely until he was standing beside the bed looking down at her panicked face.

“What?” he asked. He’d been right there. What had he done wrong?

“You can’t be inside of me like that.”

Putting his hands on his hips and closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. In, then out, until he felt like he had some kind of control over himself and wouldn’t jump back on top of her.

“Okay,” he said after a while. “We don’t have to do this.” But Jesus God he wanted to. More deep breathing.

She moved…to the other side of the bed. The cold hand of despair reached down inside of him and fisted in his chest. He’d screwed this up. She’d trusted him and he blew it. Completely. He’d never get her trust back. He realized she’d pulled something out of the nightstand drawer and was handing it to him.

“—this on,” she said.

He looked at what was in her hand. A condom. She wanted him to wear a condom. Relief flooded him first. He hadn’t totally fucked this up. And then confusion set in. What in the hell?

“Why do I have to wear a condom? There hasn’t been anyone else since you.”

She withdrew her hand with the condom, and he could’ve hit himself upside the head for his stupidity. He should’ve just put the damn thing on and asked her about it later.

She got very nervous then, crossing her arms over her body. “I’m not going to be totally in the clear for another two months. Anyone I’m with has to wear one.”

He couldn’t wrap his head around what she was getting at. “Clear of what? Aren’t you on the Pill or something?”

“Yes, but the Pill doesn’t protect against HIV.”

She said it like he was stupid or something, which at the moment he sort of was. And then it hit him, and he took a step back.

“Your son-of-a-bitch ex gave you HIV?”

“No. I don’t know. I won’t know for a while. I’m not in the clear yet. Neither is Poppy.”

“Poppy…?” He reached a hand out to the bedpost.

“He was with his other wives. And while I was pregnant…”

She let that hang in the air between them. All of a sudden his legs wouldn’t hold him anymore, and he collapsed onto the bed. Dropping his head into his hands, he cursed her ex and this whole fucking situation.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He could hear the anguish in her voice. None of this was her fault, and yet here she was paying the price. His idiocy in his office had led to this. All of it could be laid at his door. Once again she’d left him speechless and with the overwhelming feeling that nothing between them would ever be fixed. It certainly would never be the same as it had been
before
.

Before he’d thought himself cock of the block and thrown her away like she was nothing. Before she’d found out she was pregnant with his child. Before she’d married that bastard who had done unspeakable things to her.

“I wish you would’ve told me before you answered the door like that.” It was all he could think to say because it would’ve changed everything.

“I’m sorry.”

More deep breaths. He had to know everything now. Right now. He couldn’t walk the minefield of her past without some idea of where not to step. “What else?”

“What?”

“What else do I need to know? What else haven’t you told me?”

“That’s it.”

He nodded. Okay. He could handle this. He could handle anything for her.

“I take medication that reduces the chance that the virus will set in,” she said. “But it doesn’t protect you one hundred percent during sex or oral sex. So I have to ask you to wear a condom during sex and you can’t go down on me and I can’t give you a blowjob without protection. I can’t do everything with you that I want to because he might’ve given me an incurable disease. I’m dirty.” Her voice broke on the last word.

He glanced at her over his shoulder. It was the only movement he trusted himself to make.

She tried to cover herself with the edge of the sheet. “He made me feel dirty, and now I can’t stop feeling that way. And I don’t know why you want me. I’m not normal. I don’t know if I can ever be normal. I’m just so tired of feeling dirty. I’m tired of being broken and dirty and ugly.”

She sucked in a hiccupped breath. “And I hate the way you’re looking at me right now because it makes me feel like you’ll never look at me the way you used to. Always what happened to me will be all you see, and I can’t take it. I can’t stand that I have to make you wear a condom because being with me could kill you. And I hate that it could kill our daughter. And it’s my fault.”

Her words ate at him, digging at his insides until all that was left was a sharp ache for what she’d been through. So that was why she never let him go down on her. He’d figured it was a new aversion having to do with what her ex had done to her. The bastard had ruined so many things for her and here she was trying to take the blame for something that simply wasn’t hers to take. “It’s my fault.”

“How in the hell is it your fault?” she asked, her misery punctuated with anger. “Does everything always have to revolve around you?”

“If I hadn’t been so stupid and fucked around with my secretary, all of this would never have been. All of it. So yeah, I’m taking the blame because it’s mine to take.”

He stood across the wide, yawning gap of the bed from her, knowing nothing would ever be as it once was between them. “I swore the day you walked out of my office that I’d be better and do better. But I can’t stand what happened to you. I can’t stand it. It’s all because of me. And I try to find a way to fix things, but then I turn around and they’re so much more fucked up than I thought, and I wonder if they can ever be fixed at all.

“And then you hand me a condom and tell me that what I set in motion not only hurt you deeply, but it could kill you
and
our daughter. And I can’t fucking fix that!”

“Who asked you to fix it?”

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Live with it just like the rest of us.”

He held out a hand. “Give me the condom.”

She put a knee on the bed and tentatively reached across the space to lay it in his palm. He took it between two fingers and looked at it. It wasn’t like he’d never worn one. Except for those couple of times with Lucy—one of which he guessed had led to Poppy—he’d always been diligent about protection. This condom represented more than their past, it represented a potential future of medication and medical tests and suffering.

All of Cal’s imaginings of more babies with Lucy dried up along with the saliva in his mouth, and he couldn’t form the words that would tell her it was okay. It would be okay. Because it wasn’t fucking okay, and maybe it never would be.

He set the condom on the nightstand. “Do you still want to do this?”

“Do you?”

Yes. And no. He wanted to show her that he didn’t see her the way she saw herself. But he didn’t think he could get it up with everything she’d said still laid out between them. She could die. Poppy could die. He’d just gotten them back, and now he could lose them.