Speechless (16 page)

It was long dark by the time Stone pulled the car up in
front of the house. His mother was snoozing in the backseat, but Eva stared out
at the blackness of the night, wondering how Stone navigated through the dark.
The headlights didn’t do much good on such a curvy road. But the porch light
was on and lit windows welcomed them back and Eva didn’t mind the dark so much.

David pulled up in his truck behind them and everyone made
for the house. The older generation went to bed right away and Stone
disappeared into the bathroom for a shower, saying he wanted to wash off the
grime from his climb on the bleacher scaffolding. That left David and Eva
sitting in the living room in awkward silence. Eva picked up a magazine, but
found it hard to get interested in the
Field & Stream
she found on
the coffee table.

“You’re good for him,” David finally said.

Eva looked up, startled by his words.

“I don’t know about the time he was gone—he never really
communicated with us—but when he was here…I don’t know. It was like he was made
of stone. Now, he’s flesh and blood. Human. He claims that it’s because of
you.”

Eva shook her head. It wasn’t because of her. Not really. It
was the trauma of Thailand that had broken the stone apart to reveal human
emotion. She picked up her tablet.

“He was already human when I met him, but he tried not to
let on.”

David read her words and chuckled. “That sounds about
right.”

Eva paused a moment before typing out her next words, not
sure she wanted to confide so much in someone she barely knew, then decided
that he was her best confidant at the moment, at least when it came to Stone.

“Sometimes I think he would like to go back to being stone.
I’m worried that if I hurt him, he will.”

David ran his hand across his mouth as he studied her words.
“We always hurt the ones we love.”

Eva nodded. David sat in thought for another long minute
then said, “He has always had his own moral code. Take care of those weaker
than yourself. Deliver justice. Right wrongs. No matter what. I think that if
you hurt him, but that he sees that you are trying to do the right thing—or if
you try to make it right—he will forgive you. And now that he’s finally fallen
in love, it will take a lot for him to fall out of it again.”

Eva nodded. It made sense. He’d been trying to right a
number of wrongs in Thailand. And when he’d rescued her, he’d been taking care
of someone weaker than himself. What would happen, though, if his moral code
came up against his new, still-unknown emotions? She hoped it wouldn’t come to
that.

“Are you two through dissecting my psyche now?” Stone’s
voice reached them from the stairs. Eva looked up at him. He wore sweatpants
and a t-shirt and carried a small gym bag.

You’re too complicated a man to dissect.
Eva said.

David spoke at the same moment. “As if your psyche could be
dissected. I was just telling Eva how you’ve changed since you left.”

“Making the dissection that much more difficult, I suppose,”
Stone said with a smile.
Ready for bed? I have everything we need.

Eva yawned and stretched. She typed a quick “Good night,
David. Thanks.” on her tablet and stood.

“Good night, Eva.” He typed a message on the gizmo before
handing it back and she read it as she crossed to the stairs and her lover who
waited there.

“He’s still a hard man, I think. It will take a lot to hurt
him, but he will find the pain unbearable.”

“What did he write?” Stone asked as she reached him.

Nothing.
Eva deleted the message before he could look
over her shoulder and read it. She smiled at him.
Did you say something
about bed?

He grinned.
Shall we have a roll in the hay?

Eva stepped outside and had to stop to let her eyes adjust
to the darkness. It had been a warm day, but now the sharpness of autumn skated
across her skin with the breeze. The stars were a million pinpricks arching
over them, so close she almost reached up to touch them.

She felt Stone stop next to her, his warmth on her left a
guard against the cool breeze. His presence, still and strong and solid, made
her feel protected, made her self-confident, somehow. She remembered in the
cabin her longing for his approval, like a freshman with a crush on a senior.
His approval—given so freely now as love and desire—made her feel as if she
could do anything.

Why do you love me?

He didn’t answer for a moment and they both stood there
looking up at the stars, their arms just brushing. She could feel him thinking,
looking for the right words.

“Because you face everything that confronts you with
strength. You’ve never let fear stop you. Because you trusted me when you had
every reason not to. Because you question everything.” She could hear the
amusement in his voice at that, but it grew serious again the next moment.
“Because you make me want to be one of the good guys. Because you seem to think
there is something in me worth redemption. Because you’re beautiful.”

Eva could not answer him. Such a combination of light and
dark could have no easy response, only the swelling and rending of her heart.

Stone looked at her. “I’ve said too much.”

Eva shook her head.
Those were the
real
reasons,
weren’t they?

“Reasons for what?”

For everything that happened between us in the cabin.

“I suppose. Some of it. I did not want to corrupt you with
everything I’ve seen and done, but at the same time you made me feel so…I can’t
describe it. Human. Normal. Worthy. Vulnerable. Needed. I couldn’t stay away.
That probably accounts for the—how did you describe it?—teenager with PMS
behavior. It’s as if being near you could make me purer somehow. Loving you
makes everything in my past, especially the past fifteen years, a distant
memory.”

I don’t know that I want that responsibility, Stone.

“It’s not your responsibility. It’s mine, to be the man you
make me want to be.”

Eva swallowed hard, not sure that distinction made her life
any easier.

“I didn’t want to burden you with my ghosts,” Stone said.

Eva turned to face him and slid her arms around him.
You
wouldn’t be you without your past and your ghosts. If my sharing your burden
makes it easier to bear, then I’m glad to carry it.

Then she rose on her toes and kissed him. She had meant it
as a reassuring kiss, one meant to ease his ghosts, but he took it over after
the first second, held her to him with both hands on her face and devoured her,
eating at her mouth, plunging his tongue in to taste her with a voraciousness
Eva had never experienced before. It was contagious—Eva became aware of an
emptiness inside her that only Stone could fill. He was her strength and her
sustenance and she craved him. She gave an exhalation of breath that would have
been a whimper and Stone broke the kiss and led her, hand-in-hand, both of them
breathless, to the barn.

Eva followed him up the wooden ladder into the loft and
gasped. Sometime before they’d left for the game, Stone had found time to
arrange bales of hay into a nest, lined with blankets and layered with pillows,
lit by battery-powered camp lanterns. The hard, emotionless man had somehow
turned into a romantic. And Eva knew exactly what she wanted to do with him.

Strip.
She grinned at his arched eyebrows.
I want
to fill my hands with you. Let me tend to you, Stone.

The slow smile on Stone’s face told Eva he remembered as
well as she did exactly what had happened the last time she had tended to him.
He shucked the long-sleeved shirt he’d been wearing as a jacket, then his
t-shirt, leaving him bare-chested in the lantern light. Eva’s hands itched to
trace his sculpted muscles, but she resisted, keeping a few steps away from him
to better enjoy the show.

Slow down
, she ordered. She could see his momentary
resistance to her control in the way his muscles tensed. She met his eyes and
after the smallest of moments, the tension went out of him and he complied,
reaching slowly for the button on his jeans. Eva felt herself grow hot at his
submission, at his ceding of control to her. His shoes were off now and he slowly
pushed his jeans and briefs over his hips and down his thighs. His erection
already stood up, its darkened head and slight curve enticing her to come and
touch, come and taste. Some people made a big deal about size, but Eva knew all
that really mattered was that Stone fit her perfectly, as if one of them had
been the mold for the other.

Lie down on your stomach.

He obeyed without hesitation this time and Eva took a moment
to admire his bare butt, back and legs before she stripped herself, as quickly
and silently as she could manage.

“Are you going to leave me shivering here in suspense?”
Stone asked. Eva smiled to herself as she straddled him, sitting on his tight
butt and running her hands up his back. He started and she could feel him fight
down his automatic instinct to turn and brace for a fight.

You won’t be shivering long. The hero of the day deserves
a massage, if he can lie still for it.
Eva pressed the heels of her hands
into Stone’s muscles along his shoulders, used her fingers to ease his arms.

“I’m no hero.”

Tonight you are, to that boy and his mom and everyone
else who saw what you did. But I’m guessing it’s been a while since you climbed
on those bleachers and your muscles might be sore.

“How did I get so lucky as to find you?”

I’m not as generous as you think. I’m doing this as much
for my own gratification, you know. I need to touch you.

Stone answered her with a groan of pleasure as she worked at
a knotted muscle. After thoroughly exploring his back, Eva raised herself up
and turned around so she faced his legs and went to work below his waist. She
intended to massage his legs, but her hands kept getting distracted by his butt
and she smoothed them across the rounded cheeks over and over, teased the crack
between, explored between his thighs. Stone shifted beneath her, groaning
again.

“Eva.”

She loved the way he said her name, the gruffness of his
voice, thick with love and desire.

“You’re torturing me.”

You’re not enjoying your massage?
She asked, amused.
I
could stop. Maybe it would be better. Should we go back to the house?

“No! God, Eva, I can feel you dripping on me.”

She laughed from sheer pleasure at the effect she was having
on him. Again she rose up.
Roll over.

When he lay face up, she lowered herself, her folds nestling
over his erection and she leaned forward to continue her massage of his legs.
His hands fastened to her hips, tried to make her move against him, but she
resisted his efforts to take control, sitting still for as long as he tried to
move her. Only when he let go did she continue the massage—and the movement of
her labia against his erection.

He moaned and his hands found her butt, caressing but not
trying to control and she let him continue, showing her pleasure by pushing
back into his touch.

“Eva, stop teasing. I need you. Now. Fuck me, damn it!”

She glanced over her shoulder at him, saw his clenched jaw
and fierce eyes and smiled at him.
I’m not finished touching you.

“Two can torture, you know.” His fingers traced the crack
between her cheeks, up and down, up and down and Eva was surprised at how much
she enjoyed the touch. Then he pressed a finger against her back entrance,
entering her a half inch. She bucked against him at the invasion, then stilled,
unsure if she wanted to pull away or push against his finger. He pulled his
finger out, then pushed it in again, a little farther this time, with slow
gentleness. Eva released her breath in a pleased sigh at the stretch, at the
stimulation of all those nerves she hadn’t known could be pleasured.

“Like that?”

Yessss.

“Put my cock in your pussy and I’ll give you more.”

And just like that, Stone took control. Eva rose onto her
knees, took Stone’s erection in her hand and guided it into her. Stone bucked
beneath her and shouted his pleasure and Eva echoed him with a mental moan at
how he filled her, at the double penetration and extra fullness. In this
position, she could see where he entered her, see her labia embracing his cock
and it filled her with awe.

“Move, Eva.”

His words startled her out of her reverie.
What?

“Move. Ride me.”

She rode him and he matched her rhythm with his hips and
with the finger in her back entrance. The pleasure built in her core, higher
and higher, Stone’s grunting only fueling the fire. If she didn’t come soon,
she would dissolve into ash.

“Touch yourself.”

Eva cupped one breast in one hand and sent her other hand
lower. When her fingers found her clit, she went up in flames. Stone followed a
heartbeat later.

When Eva could move again, she lifted herself off him and
collapsed into his arms, her head resting on his shoulder. Stone pulled a
blanket over the two of them.

“Kiss me,” he whispered and she obeyed, then fell asleep.

Stone woke her in the middle of the night with soft touches
and his mouth on one nipple, licking and sucking and nipping. She arched into
him, still half-asleep, not even bothering to open her eyes. He covered her,
only releasing her breast when his erection was positioned at her opening. He
pushed into her slowly, rocking against her, laying kisses down her neck and
across her shoulders, lacing his fingers through hers, where he held her hands
above her head. She loved the way he filled her, making her feel complete with
him inside her.

“No more torture,” he said softly, before kissing her lips.
“You are so irresistible. What will I do if I lose you?”