Unforgiven (19 page)

What exactly are you teaching her anyway?

“When you know what they’ll say,” he finished. “What they’ll think.”

She shrugged. “I’ve liked every man I’ve had sex with. He’s liked me. I have a hard time getting worked up about that.”

After what I’ve been through
was the unspoken end to that sentence. It sounded very friends-with-benefits, except she still used that casual, half-mocking tone that removed all emotion from the argument. He waited a minute. He was a slow learner when it came to Marissa Brooks, but he
was
learning. If he gave her time and space, she’d talk.

“It’s hard to be alone,” she said finally. “I got lonely. I wanted someone to touch me but I didn’t want to have to promise undying love or link the rest of my life to his just to be touched.”

She’d lived up to everyone’s expectations of the wild, vibrant girl who’d go anywhere, do anything with anyone because she’d been going everywhere and doing everything with him.

Almost everything. Not sex. She’d been more than willing. As desperately as he’d wanted to have her in every way he could, he’d refused, settled for the motorcycle, drinking, partying. He’d lived for those nights at Brookhaven.

It never occurred to him that she’d lived for them, too.

“You taught me that,” she added. “You taught me how much touch can mean, even without sex. I kept looking after you left.”

A steel spike, thin, flexible, razor sharp, slid between his ribs, into his chest cavity. Cutting off his air, his ability to speak. Because he was still silent, she went on. “Good girls make the trade or keep their legs closed. I didn’t do either. That makes me a slut.”

Physical intimacy was impossible to avoid in the Corps. He’d spent the night in foxholes with three other guys, sharing body heat to stay warm, lived in tents with other members of his platoon where his personal space was his cot and his footlocker. He’d held guys when they cried, carried wounded men down trails and up ravines.

He’d been in fistfights that were as intimate as any sex he’d ever had. Until Marissa.

“Needing touch makes you human,” he said before she could say anything else. “That’s all.”

They worked the rest of the day in a silence broken only by brief discussions about measurements, techniques, and a good stopping point. He sent Marissa to get lunch, and while she was gone removed the rest of the rotting siding. They had the sides wrapped when twilight fell. He packed his meager tools back in his truck. Marissa hoisted her tools into her truck bed, then stood by her door for a moment.

“Coming back for more tomorrow?” she asked.

Her eyes were bottomless dark pools in her face. “Yes,” he said. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Get some food in my stomach, take a hot bath, go to bed. It’s a work night,” she said.

“Got it,” he said, still studying her.

She got in her truck and turned the engine over. “See you tomorrow,” she said over the diesel’s rumble.

A train of thought chugged through his mind as he drove back into town. Her father taught her to dream. He taught her to need, then left. Consequently, he’d taught her to endure. Neither one of them taught her anything about fulfillment, or dependability. If she knew anything about that, it was thanks to Chris. Now Adam was back, and according to Keith, taking his place at the end of a line of men teaching Marissa something she needed to know.

He didn’t want to teach her anything. He wanted to give her everything.

None of this was supposed to happen. None of it was part of the plan. But sometimes a mission objective shifted, encompassed more than was originally thought possible. In that case, actions spoke louder than words.

She needed touch. He could give her touch.

17

M
ARISSA KICKED THE
door closed behind her and slumped into one of the two chairs at her narrow kitchen table. She sat there for a few moments, eyes closed, hands loose on her lap, and catalogued her aches. Hands, shoulders, back, thighs were all beacons of pain, flashing intermittently every few seconds, never at the same time. Adam had been a huge help, a capable assistant who didn’t feel the need to tell her how to do something correctly, but his help meant they did more work in eight hours than she usually did in sixteen, so she was just as tired. Sitting for too long wouldn’t help the situation, and the only way to stave off muscle tears was heat. She needed to eat enough that she didn’t get lightheaded in the bathtub, then have a long soak. But first she had to take off her boots.

The tiny living space held all the warmth she pumped into it, so she pushed her watch cap off and hung it by feel on a lower hook in the double row by the door. Then she bent to her boots, unlacing one, then the other before toeing them off. They also went by the door. She sat for another minute while her brain worried over the mantel situation, then pushed the play button on the answering machine.

Alana’s cultured, warm voice bounced around the tiny space, reminding her that the books she’d ordered through interlibrary loan were due back in a week. Marissa deleted the message, then opened the cupboard in search of a can of Chunky soup she could reheat in the microwave and scarf down while the water ran into the tub. The books dealt with the practicalities around cruising in a sailboat; she’d keep the books up to the last minute, rereading them in light of her single experience with sailing.

Going back to work after thirty-six hours had been much harder than she’d let on. Before her afternoon on the
Resolute,
she’d harbored an obsession about sailing, but had no real experience to back it up. Now . . . now she knew exactly what she dreamed of, and didn’t have. She left the unopened can of soup on the counter and walked into the bedroom and picked up the box compass in its lovely wood case. The needle swayed with the movement, but remained oriented north. She knew which direction she would go. West, to San Diego, home of three hundred sunny, breezy days a year.

Knuckles rapped smartly at the door. She set the box compass down and returned to the kitchen. The dark shape cast on the braided mat in front of the door told her who her unexpected visitor was before she put her hand to the knob. She opened the door to Adam, holding a cardboard-topped foil pan of what smelled like hot lasagna. More foil enclosed a loaf-shaped object on top of the pan, which she judged to be garlic bread. Green beans lay in a jumble in steam-condensed sides of a plastic container.

He didn’t speak, just gave her a small, wry smile. The delicious scents drifted into her nostrils on a wave of genuinely cold air, and her stomach rumbled like rocks in a tumbler.

“Is that from Gina’s Diner?” she asked, like it made a difference.

“Of course,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, and stepped back and admitted him into the kitchen, where his wide shoulders and heavily muscled chest promptly took up most of the remaining space and all of the oxygen. He shrugged out of a backpack she hadn’t noticed because the straps were the same color as his black long-sleeved T-shirt. The bag hit the floor with a solid thump, then he uncrimped the edges of the metal pan holding the cardboard lid, and steam rose into the air.

“Still hot,” he said with satisfaction.

“Did you order that ahead?” she asked. The half-empty pan was the kind of takeout container Gina used when she cooked for a church gathering or the Rotary Club.

“I bought the pan and she took it off the specials menu,” he said. “I left some for Mom. She’s delivering curtains to a customer in Brookings. Plates?”

Her mouth watered as she gathered plates, forks, knives, and napkins. “Do you want a beer?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said as he slid two huge slabs of lasagna onto the plates.

He dished up green beans, then took the plates to the table. She followed with a beer for him, a glass of ice water for herself, the loaf of bread balanced on top of her glass.

“Looks good,” she said.

They dug into the food, and once she had a few bites in her stomach she was able to eat more slowly. Gina specialized in comfort food—burgers, macaroni and cheese, steak, lasagna. It was a good, hearty meat-based red sauce, and lots of cheese melted on top. She watched him polish off his helping while she finished a piece of garlic bread.

“Want more?” he asked.

“This is plenty,” she said. “Thank you.”

The helping of seconds he brought back to the table was as large as the first. She watched him methodically decimate the lasagna, and felt a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, as if the exhaustion undercut her determination to keep him at arm’s length. He finished the bottle of beer, then tilted his head and looked at her, his gaze assessing her. “What?” he asked.

“Nothing. Just watching you.” He fit here, with her, at this tiny table. Too bad they couldn’t live out their lives in Brookhaven’s servants’ quarters. “What’s with the bag?”

“That’s my gear for tomorrow.” When she lifted an eyebrow, he added, “I’m throwing myself on your mercy, Ris. The futon’s killing me.”

She could do this. She could let him into the house but keep him out of her heart. “What will people say?” she asked lightly.

“I don’t give a damn,” he said. The silence stretched between them, then he said, “I’ll earn my keep.”

“What do you have to offer?”

His gaze went lazy, heated. “Massage.”

Her flirtatious mood disappeared. She sipped her water. “And this has nothing to do with what I said this afternoon about needing to be touched.”

“No, it’s got everything to do with that.”

At least he was honest with her. “It’s really not necessary,” she said.

“Think of it as an experiment,” he said angelically. The tone of his voice made her smile, but the heat in his eyes made her belly drop six inches in a hot rush. “It’s just a massage, Ris. You still have to ask me for sex. You have any massage oil?”

As a matter of fact, she did. She nodded, then stood to clear the plates, but he stopped her. “I’ll do that. Go get ready.”

In the bedroom she turned on the bathroom light and closed the door partway, leaving a narrow swath of light across her unmade bed. She got a bottle of massage oil from her nightstand, stripped, then crawled between the flannel sheets and pulled the covers to her chin to stay warm while she waited.

Adam closed the bedroom door, turned the baseboard heat to high, and stripped down to his boxer briefs. He climbed into the bed but to her surprise he arranged them so he leaned against the headboard, with her back to his bare chest, the covers pulled up to her neck. His heart beat solidly against her spine while he pulled the elastic from the bottom of her left braid and began to loosen the plait.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

“Just relax,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”

He had her, all right, tucked into his body, his erection thickening in pulses against her bottom. But she could handle the inevitable conclusion to this massage—taking him inside her body. It was the possession he took when he learned her secrets that scared her.

He unraveled her right braid, then slid both hands into her hair and massaged her skull with strong fingers. A wave of relaxation so strong she shuddered under its force coursed down her nape and into her shoulders, where it lapped and eddied against her tight muscles. He kept that up for a few moments, fingertips urging the muscles under her scalp to soften, surrender. She let her head tip forward, felt the tight resistance in her nape. Her hair slid forward around her face, darkening her vision while his hands move to either ear. He massaged her earlobes between thumb and forefinger, then moved up the outer curve of her ear and back down again. Her head drooped on her neck.

“Where did you learn to do that?” She’d had massages before, from other guys, usually halfheartedly as a warm-up to sex. They lasted five minutes before the hands on her back shifted to her breasts or her ass. Adam would get there eventually, but he was making an effort. A real effort.

“The base had all kinds of amenities, including therapeutic massages. At twenty bucks for an hour it was a smoking deal. After a week on patrol, humping over a hundred pounds of gear up trails and down ravines, it was worth every penny. Apparently massage heals sore muscles better than anti-inflammatories.” Using both hands, he swept her hair over one shoulder, baring her nape. His thumbs stroked either side of her neck before he grunted disapprovingly. “Lie down on your front.”

She shifted, automatically placing her hands under her forehead until he guided them down to her sides. He gently tucked the flannel sheet around her hips, leaving her back bare from nape to the top of her ass. With her eyes closed, each sound registered distinctly in the dim, quiet air. The click as he flipped open the massage oil bottle top, followed by a little gurgle as liquid trickled out. The slick sound of the oil between his palms. Then his big hands spanned her back, his thumbs slipping along the groove on either side of her spine, the tips of his fingers trailing over the outer edge of her ribs, curving down to her breasts and abdomen. With a firm, slow touch, he squeezed her shoulders and upper arms, then stroked down again.

“You’re tight,” he said. “Knotted up.” On the next sweeping pass over her back, his thumbs probed at various spots on her back, one just above her left shoulder blade, another at the small of her back, a third just below her ribs.

She stiffened when he pressed a little harder. “You know what you’re doing?” she mumbled.

“I can’t name the muscles and I don’t have a fancy technique, but I won’t hurt you.”

She felt like she should say something, carry on a conversation while he worked on her back, but the honest truth was that his hands on her skin created a distance between her mind and her mouth. The words would come from very far away, deep inside her soul, seep from her slack mouth and into the cocoon of her bedroom. She’d already said too much, but Adam made it so easy to talk. He’d hurt and been hurt. He’d seen horror and suffering. He was unflappable, and he didn’t judge. At the end of the telling, he’d open another door for you. Offer absolution, and a future. Stand with you as you walked through the door.

But she had to take the first step.

A sigh shuddered from her at the thought. To counter it she focused on his hands. The oil coating his palms softened the scrape of his callouses against her skin, but the lingering slight roughness somehow kept the contact from being purely therapeutic.

“Do you have blisters?” she asked, the words sluggish and muffled by the flannel pressing into her face.

“Stop thinking, Ris,” he said, his voice low, calm. The repetitive glide of his palms against her back lulled her into that drifting black space, until his thumbs returned to the knotted muscle above her left shoulder blade. He focused on that knot, rhythmically swiping one thumb, then the other, over the tight muscle, deepening the pressure until she felt more than heard a pop and the knot released.

“Better,” he said with satisfaction as he continued to knead the spot.

“Much,” she said. “You have strong hands.”

That was the appeal, having all that strength devoted to giving her pleasure in every sense of the word. Holding the hammer and pry bar, lifting siding, offering lasagna and garlic bread, massaging knots from her muscles, caressing her breasts, holding her hips as he pounded into her from behind . . . all for her. Licking flame flickered along nerve endings he wasn’t touching. She shifted restlessly under him.

“Too hard?”

“It’s fine,” she said. Her erogenous zones were pressed to the flannel sheet, yet heat continued to pool deep in her belly.

“Turn your head to the other side.”

She did, and he went to work on the knot beside that shoulder. This one proved more stubborn, and he left it for a minute to knead the slackening muscles along her spine and in her lower back before he returned to the stubborn knot. Unexpectedly, his hand slid up to grasp her nape, massaging her neck with a firm grip that made her all but purr. When he applied both thumbs to the knot again, it dissolved.

With it went the last of her restraint. She’d never known touch like this. Touch meant sex. It meant rough fingers on her nipples, a belly against hers, hair-roughened legs shifting over her inner thighs as a man’s shaft stroked into her. It meant a fist in her hair when she wanted it, the sensitive, thin skin of a hard cock stretching her lips, pressing against her tongue. She gave nothing real to the man in her bed, nothing truly herself because he asked for nothing real, nothing truly herself.

For Adam she would give everything. He coaxed longing to life like flame in a campfire, kept it simmering until the edges of her skin dissolved into the space around her. She writhed again, the soft texture of the flannel sheets stimulating her nipples from awareness to need. Trapped and desperate, she braced her forearms against the mattress and pushed, lifting her upper torso off the bed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She peered over her shoulder at him. “Lift up,” she said.

When he did, she rolled once again to her back and stretched her arms over her head. Sweat gleamed on his face and heavy shoulders, and his cock strained at the elastic of his boxer briefs as he stared down at her exposed torso.

“Please,” she said.

“Always,” he said, then bent forward, using his body weight to apply pressure to her shoulders, collarbone, and upper arms. The muscles stretched and loosened even as the need tightened deep in her belly. She arched a little, trembling as his hands swept down her ribs to her hip bones, fingers still massaging her back while his thumbs swept over her abdomen. He repeated the movements, with each stroke caressing more of her breasts but never quite touching her nipples.

She held her breath in anticipation, released it on what was rapidly becoming a pleading sigh. When he finally did close his thumbs and forefingers around her nipples, pleasure cracked through her body and into her pussy. She undulated but his hands moved, stroking down along the indentation of her waist until only his thumbs met just above her mound, still barely covered by the flannel sheet. Her gasp wasn’t just in anticipation of those thumbs spreading her sex for his tongue; his fingers dug deep into her buttocks, finding muscles tight and sore from kneeling or crouching all day.