Speechless (4 page)

Stone picked his way to the edge of the water, freed himself
and pictured Eva as he worked his hand up and down, using his pre-cum as
lubricant. Eva lying beneath him as he impaled her, her autumn hair spread out
on the pillow. Eva above him, riding him, her sensitive breasts rocking within
easy reach of his hands and mouth. Eva kneeling in front of him, her mouth
sliding over his cock. He exploded with a rough grunt, his cum shooting in
pulses into the lake. In his imagination, she swallowed everything he pumped
into her before he traded places and feasted on her in turn. She would taste
like peaches and cream, sweet and hot on his tongue.

Damn. He was hard again. He stayed outside for three hours,
staring at the stars, the lake, listening for her voice in his head, trying to
ease the seemingly eternal hard-on that afflicted him. Finally, his cock sore
from all the friction, his eyes closing, he deemed himself exhausted enough—in
more ways than one—to try going to bed a second time. Early morning fog rose
from the water and gathered in the valley as he rose from his seat on the
lakeshore and returned to the cabin.

In the low light of the propane lantern, he watched her
sleep, this woman who trusted him despite all the reasons she had not to, this
woman whose body appealed to him in ways no other woman’s body ever had, this
woman who had somehow, without even realizing it needed doing, begun the long
process of making him whole again. Almost as if she could feel his eyes on her,
she woke and after a moment, opened her eyes and turned them toward him.

Something wrong?
she asked, her mental voice bleary
with sleep.

Stone shook his head. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Her eyes closed again, but he could tell she was still
awake. How much of what he’d realized tonight should he tell her? About how she
made him feel, about his longing for her, about how she’d woken emotions in him
he’d last used…never. Hell, she’d woken emotions in him.

“I can’t do it anymore.”

Sleep?

“Stay away from you.”

She opened her eyes again, met his as well as she could in
the dark, but didn’t say anything.

“It doesn’t change the fact that once you leave, you can
never come looking for me, that these few days are all we have.”

I don’t understand.

“I’m attracted to you, Eva. My fingers itch to touch you, to
bring you pleasure. There’s this ache I can’t shake as long as we’re in this
cabin and ignoring, resisting whatever is pulling us together. But if we decide
to succumb to it, it can only be short-term. A fling, making memories. There
can be nothing more than here and now.”

Stone.
He waited, hearing so many emotions in that
one word, that he could not interpret it.
Every night—at home, here,
anywhere—I wake up afraid of what would happen if I or someone I love were in
trouble. How would I scream? How would I call for help? You’re the only person
who has ever made that fear go away. It’s not your presence, your strength, the
fact that you rescued me. It’s the connection, the knowledge that if anything
bad happened, you would know. Every time you touch me, that knowledge grows
more sure. I’m desperate for you to touch me.

“And when you’re home again? Will the fear return?”

I don’t know. It might be worse than ever. Maybe it will
depend on how deeply you touch me. But I’m willing to risk it for a few nights
without that fear.

Stone stepped closer to the bed. Every intellectual cell in
his body screamed in protest. Everything in his gut, his heart and his soul
rejoiced. He almost screamed at the pain. Then he was at the bed, crushing his
mouth against hers, tasting her, fisting his hands in her autumn hair. She
arched into him, pressing her breasts up so they brushed his chest, holding his
face so he could not break the kiss even if he wanted to. She tasted like
desire, like salvation, like everything he hadn’t known he craved and he fell
into her with dread and relief.

Then she whimpered and Stone broke off, fought to recapture
control of his body, fought to slow his breathing.

“I’ve hurt you,” he said, touching his forehead to hers.

No.

He pulled back and met her eyes. “Don’t lie to me. I can
feel it. I can see it on your face.”

It’s just that everything hurts, every time I move.

“Then don’t move.”

Stone gave his hands free rein, let them travel over her the
way they’d wanted to since he’d brought her back to the cabin. He started at
her face, tracing the lines of her cheekbones and eyebrows and hairline,
brushing the edges of her ears, along her jaw, the backs of his fingers across
her cheeks. She sighed and tilted her face up and Stone could almost read it
with his fingers, the way blind people in movies did. This was something she
had needed as much or more than he had.

Why aren’t I afraid of you?

“I don’t know. Because your mother never taught you to watch
out for men like me?” He realized his mistake even before her expression
flickered with old pain. “I’m sorry. I was thoughtless. Forgive me.”

She died in a car accident when I was twelve. I was in
the car. We ran off the road and an old signpost came through the windshield.
There was glass and blood everywhere. The post had gone right into her.

Eva was as close to sobbing as Stone had seen her through
all the pain and confusion of the last couple days. Sometimes old pain could be
the worst. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” He kept his hands
moving across her face, comforting, reassuring, making no move toward more
sexual caresses. It was enough for now to sit beside her and feel her skin
beneath his fingers.

She was still alive. I wasn’t hurt and I ran to get help.
Now the tears did come and Stone caught them, brushing them away with his
thumbs, kissing the trails they left so she couldn’t tell the source of the
moisture on her cheeks. He thought he knew what was coming, but he let her go
on, speaking the words herself.

I stopped a car, but I couldn’t explain what had
happened. All I could do was point. They drove off and I had to stop someone
else and then a third car. It took half an hour to get the ambulance there.

Half an hour, he knew from experience with accidents like
that, was a hopelessly long time. He also knew and guessed that Eva did too,
that if reached fast enough, people with such impalements often lived, as
unlikely as it seemed. Nothing he could say would take her hurt away, so he
touched his lips to hers, let them linger, transferring some of his strength to
her.

“It must have been awful. I’m so sorry. I wish I could have
been in that first car you stopped.”

Eva shook her head.
He never said so, but I always
thought my father blamed me. I think that’s why he’s never been able to hear
me.

“I’m sure he never blamed you. How could he?” Stone regarded
her. “Do you blame yourself?”

Sometimes.
From the tortured look on her face, Stone
knew that her “sometimes” was really a definite “yes.” He let it slide. This
conversation was probably as close as she’d ever come to confessing her
feelings of guilt.

“Your mother’s death is why you have those night terrors.”

They started a few weeks after the accident, once the
shock wore off.

“Oh, Eva. God damn people who won’t take the time to help or
understand.” He kissed her again. Already he was addicted to her taste. “Let me
help you not be afraid tonight.”

Eva nodded, welcomed Stone’s offer. His touch would make her
forget, could maybe relieve some of the guilt she felt, at least for a while.
Stone let his hands travel beyond her face and she almost regretted their
departure. She’d never imagined that having her face caressed could be so
sensual, seductive and relaxing at the same time. But when he pushed her
t-shirt up and found her bare breasts, cupped them in his rough hands and
circled her nipples with his thumbs, she forgot all regret and pressed upwards,
begging silently for more.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” Stone said, then his tongue brushed
across her hardened, sensitive nipple and she gasped. The pleasure arced
through her body, running in her veins with her blood, and her toes and fingers
curled. He played his mouth over both breasts, sometimes teasing with his
tongue, sometimes filling his mouth with her and suckling, moving back and forth
seemingly randomly, keeping her nerve endings on heightened alert. The
sensations built, flooding her, torturing her with pleasure, with white-hot
flames suffusing her. And when Stone squeezed both breasts and nipped one
super-sensitized nipple, it all exploded, tearing her apart in unending
shudders.

When she could breathe again and opened her eyes, she saw
Stone staring at her.

What?

“Those other men, who didn’t like making love to you because
of your silence, must have been illiterate in body language.”

They didn’t… No one ever…
She couldn’t get the words
out, she was still in too many pieces.

“Shame on them.” Stone’s hands continued their exploration
of her, but more gently, less intensely, with light skimming touches and long,
smooth caresses, deftly missing her scrapes and bruises. “You have a beautiful
body.”

Eva shook her head. She had an average body and she knew it.

“Why is it that the most beautiful women never know how
beautiful they really are? Curves that fit my hand, soft in all the right
places, blending into firm lines and welcoming hollows.” He laid a line of
kisses across her belly. Eva sighed in pleasure, until Stone’s hand landed on
her hip and the worst of her scrapes. She jerked away involuntarily. Stone
froze.

“I’m sorry, Eva. Shit. Are you all right?”

Fine. Tell me you were disoriented by my unparalleled
sexiness and I’ll forgive you.

“You are so delicious, so captivating, that I forgot myself,
forgot everything but kissing you. The last thing I wanted was to hurt you.”
His voice was so full of sincerity, his hands so occupied with touching her,
that Eva could not help but believe him.

You’re forgiven.
And she fell asleep to his continued
caresses.

She woke in the morning feeling better than she had since
before her accident and quite possibly better rested than in all the years
since the accident that had killed her mother, despite being awake for much of
the night. Being tended to, touched, caressed, like Stone had done for an hour
or more could not compare to the hour she normally spent in fearful
restlessness each night. He still slept beside her and she wondered how much
sleep he’d managed to get. He’d clearly been up a while when she’d woken and
he’d still been touching her when she fell asleep for the second time. Again,
he lay on his stomach, his face turned toward her, his arm across her—with her
shirt rucked up his bare arm warmed her bare stomach. She took advantage of his
stillness to study the muscles of his arms, shoulders and back, the tan he’d
gained from being outside—working on the cabin or in the garden?—all summer,
the white lines and puckers of old scars, some dangerously close to vital
organs.

She longed to touch him, to trace the lines of his face, his
scars, his muscles, to feel the hardness of his body, but she knew the moment
she moved he would wake up. Given the way his attitude had swung pendulum-like
the day before, she couldn’t guess what he’d want from her when he woke and she
wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But it did not take long for her resistance to
waver and finally give out and she reached a hand across to brush at a lock of
his hair. It was heavy and silky and she burrowed her fingers into it. That
woke him. He took a deep breath before opening his eyes and when he did open
them and look at her, it was with such intent regard that she withdrew her hand
and had to fight the urge to bite her lip like a nervous child.

The silence stretched out, Eva waiting and Stone seeming to
ponder her, almost as if he were trying to place her. Finally Eva risked a few
words, tired of the suspense of waiting for his reaction.

Thank you for last night.

He smiled slowly and Eva felt relief bloom inside her. “No
fears?”

No fears. You have to give me my turn to touch, though.

He smiled again. “Before or after breakfast?”

After. And I want to wash somehow.

“It will have to be a sponge bath. I’ll heat water for you.
I’ll be happy to help.”

Eva smiled.
Last night wasn’t enough for you?

“There is no enough when it comes to you.” His smile
disappeared and he rose quickly to his feet. “Breakfast or bath first?” And
just as quickly, Stone was back to business, all flirting and tenderness hidden
.

Bath.

“I’ll heat some water.”

Stone’s offered help, Eva discovered, was less helpful than
it might have been. His hands kept wandering to parts of her he’d washed six
times already. Eva leaned back in her chair as he ran a warm washcloth over her
breasts yet again. Somehow, she couldn’t find it in her to complain, or even to
redirect him. She managed most of her sponge bath herself, doing the more
private parts of her body while Stone was outside. But she’d had to ask for
help with her bad leg, propped carefully on the other chair and he’d tended to
it with care, doing his best not to hurt her, washing even the bottom of her
foot and between her toes. It was when he’d moved up her thigh that he’d first
diverged from his task. His obvious enjoyment of her body helped to ease her
embarrassment at being naked in his presence.

He followed the rough washcloth with a quick flick of his
tongue. Eva jerked in her chair and laced her fingers through his hair, wanting
to both push him away and hold him to her at the same time. She never got this
kind of attention from men, even the few times she’d had someone she could call
a boyfriend.

Stone, stop.

“Why?”

She groped for a reason, something other than “it makes me
uncomfortable”, which was the truth, but not a truth she wanted to admit.
I’m
hungry.

He gave her breast one last wipe with the cloth and looked
up at her. She turned her face away from him, knowing he could read the truth
on it, or at least know that there was more to her request than a desire for
breakfast.

“Don’t turn away from me,” he said, command in his voice.

She resisted, but he continued to stare at her and she
turned her head to look at him. “Eva—” But he didn’t go on, seeing something in
her face that gave him pause. “Do you want to try to wash your hair before
breakfast?”

Eva nodded. Her hair felt like a rat’s nest. The shampooing
was a little more complicated than sitting in a chair for a sponge bath. Stone
put a wide bowl on the table and scooted Eva’s chair around so that she sat
with her back to it, then slowly leaned the chair back, balanced on two legs
and supported by the table. With a cup, he poured warm water over her head
until her hair was wet through, then lathered, using his fingers against her
scalp.

You’re better than my stylist.
Eva told him and he
smiled as he leaned over her. He smelled of man and wilderness and Eva wanted
to run her hand down his bare chest, across his broad shoulders, memorize the
feel of his skin. She resisted, knowing that after her earlier protest, she had
no right. She closed her eyes, wished she could close her nose. She did not
want to give in to him, to the pleasure he gave her, did not want to accept it,
for fear he would take it away from her. But she needed his touch. Needed to
maintain whatever it was that drew them together.

“Eva.”

She opened her eyes to find him staring at her.

“It won’t be like yesterday,” he said. “I won’t do that to
you again.”

She nodded, wanting to believe, not sure she should. And
even if she did believe, not sure she should act on it. His original idea—to
ignore and cut off their connection—might have been the better one after all.
He’d been right about intensifying emotions though she wasn’t sure he had many
emotions to intensify. When the time came for her to leave, she’d be the one
hurting. He might regret the loss of his willing captive, but no more than
that, unless he changed radically.

Water cascaded over her as Stone rinsed the last of the
shampoo out of her hair and she suddenly remembered the wash of peace she felt
the night before, when she’d woken expecting her usual fears and finding
instead Stone’s solid presence. That wave of relief made it all worthwhile.
Still, she would do well to try to keep a rein on her emotions, especially
those that would bring her pain later. She could enjoy him while she had him
though.

Stone leaned over her with a final cup of warm water and as
he poured it slowly through her hair, she skimmed her fingers across his bare
chest, tracing his ridges of muscle, following lines of old scars and circling
his nipples. He froze, one hand still twined in her hair and his chest expanded
under her fingers as he sucked in a breath. His skin was warm and smooth, his
body at once solid but with enough give at the pressure of her fingers to be
welcoming. She’d heard built men—which Stone clearly was—described as brick
hard, which always sounded off-putting to her. A man’s body should have all the
things bricks didn’t have—warmth and flex and rounded edges that would welcome
her own curves when she lay against him.

She smiled and warmed at the thought of lying against Stone,
falling asleep with her head resting on his bare shoulder or chest, a leg
across him, her arm around him and his around her. When she was whole again,
they could… She stopped the thought. When she was whole again, Stone would be a
memory, gone forever. Her hand dropped to her lap and Stone straightened and
stepped back. Eva expected him to say something that would show he’d read every
thought on her face, but instead he just closed his eyes in a long blink and
took a deep breath before opening them again. Then he righted her chair, all
four feet on the floor and rubbed a towel gently over her head.

“Ready for breakfast?” he asked, as he draped the towel over
the back of the other chair to dry.

Eva nodded.
I want to get dressed.

Stone’s eyes roamed her body. “I could refuse. I like
looking at you. Then I could touch you whenever I wanted, taste you like I did
last night.”

Only if you agree to go naked, too.

He smiled, shook his head. “Let me see what I can find for
you to wear.”

Eventually, she was able to dress in a pair of cut-off sweat
pants—too big for her, but easy to get on over the splint on her leg and
adjustable with the drawstring waist—and a t-shirt. She felt like she was at a
slumber party and walking—hobbling—around in her pajamas. But she was at least
comfortable and Stone’s eyes didn’t rove over her body quite so frequently.

She sat at the table for breakfast, a nice change from
eating in bed propped up against the wall. Conversation lagged, but Eva didn’t
care. She was almost afraid to think anything, for fear Stone would read her
thoughts, let alone actually say anything that would give away more than she
was willing to express to him. She was so often frustrated by not being able to
have an easy conversation that when she was with someone who could “hear” her,
she tended to spill out all the comments she had saved up over past
conversations and observations she’d made during group discussions in which she
could not take part. With Stone everything was different. He already knew so
much of what passed through her head just by reading her face. And he was a man,
not her girl friend or female colleague.

She wanted to know him the way he apparently knew her, but
without giving anything more of herself away to him, just in case he didn’t
like what he saw. She hadn’t had this craving for approval since she was in middle
school. But there was something discerning about Stone, something that
suggested that he didn’t genuinely like very many people and that to be one of
those people made her very special indeed. It was juvenile she knew, but she
couldn’t help it.

Stone didn’t seem to mind the silence either, since he did
nothing to break it. He watched her though and by the smile that floated across
his face every once in a while he was seeing something amusing in her
expression or thoughts or both.

She tried not to look at him, tried to keep her eyes on her
scrambled eggs, but she could not help watching him eat—the muscles in his jaw
working, the way he took very precise bites of his food, working across his
eggs and toast in rows, keeping the edges of both regular. His fork never
clinked against his plate and he took full swallows of coffee instead of the
slurpy sips most people—Eva included—used for hot beverages.

She still couldn’t figure out what made him so attractive.
He had a hardness to his face that Eva suspected was intended to keep people at
arm’s length, even if he did it subconsciously. Even when he smiled it was as
if he was enjoying some private joke or pleasure entirely separate from her. It
made him no more accessible, brought him no closer to her. Only when he was
reading to her or touching her did it seem he allowed the distance between them
to lessen. She did not understand the dichotomy of this separateness and their
very clear connection. No logic could explain it. Just as no logic could
explain why she could not get her fill of looking at him. His face was far from
the perfection Hollywood suggested every leading man should have, just a little
too long and thin, his skin a little too weathered and the scar on his forehead
was a thin line over and behind his left eye, a reminder that he had probably
lied to her about being a consultant.