In His Arms: A Nature of Desire Series Novel Read online

  He’d had a loving family and friends who’d supported him, every step of the way. She'd spent her first fifteen years with people who never cared what she wanted, except to use it against her. No one in her corner.

  She glanced at the vintage Coca-Cola clock on the back wall. It said three-fifteen, and her ride to the community college was coming at three-thirty. Just like that, the nervousness was back. Double the strength.

  “I guess…” Her voice quavered, her eyes slammed shut, and her knees buckled.

  “Shit.” He hit the brake locks on his chair and grabbed her elbow. He couldn’t stop the fall, but he slowed it down. She went to one knee by his feet, but her kneecap glanced off his carbon footplate and his steel-toed work shoe.

  “Darn it,” she whispered.

  He heard the helpless despair that turned the gee-golly-whiz word into a profound oath of self-condemnation. And he refused to allow her to go there.

  “Breathe through it,” he said. “Just breathe. You’re fine.” He gathered up her long, thick ponytail so he could reach her nape, knead it with strong fingers. He wanted to soothe, be gentle. But seeing her on one knee before him, her head bowed, other reactions surfaced. He could feel her breath against his abdomen. Her hand was gripping his knee.

  What surged up in him was too certain and powerful to be wrong. He might question it later, but not now.

  He tightened his hold on her hair, let her feel the pull against her scalp. Her breath stilled, and the hand on his knee curled. He could see her fingers pressing into his leg. Yeah, he’d somehow known she’d react that way. He caressed her neck with a firmer, sure-fingered stroke.

  “You’re going to school, and you’re not only going to be fine, you’re going to love it, do great things with the stuff you learn. Become a rocket scientist or something. Straighten up for me.”

  She lifted her head and shoulders, bracing her hand on his thigh to stand. Instead of letting her make it all the way to her feet, he grasped her under the arms and brought her forward. He’d intended to turn her sideways, but her knees naturally parted, and he kept the forward motion, lifting her so she straddled him. Since his chair didn’t have arms, her legs slid past his hips, her calves finding a natural resting spot on the wheels.

  Hell…finally. He had some elusive traces of sensation at the tops of his thighs, enough to conjure what her backside would feel like, pressed against his lap. Her thighs and knees brushed against his hips, his waist. That input from his nerve endings to his brain was heaven.

  Even more importantly, having her legs spread loosely around him distracted her, which seemed to pull her away from her worries. Maybe he could get a straight answer out of her, help drive them away completely.

  “So what’s the problem?” he asked bluntly. She blinked, moistening her bottom lip. Her hands were on his biceps, teasing a million responses from his flesh.

  Stop thinking about that. Think about her.

  “Tell me, Daralyn.”

  She gestured helplessly around her. “I’m okay here with… At the store.”

  She’d been about to say, “With you.” But as much as he loved knowing she felt safe with him, the crumpling of her features, reflecting the defeat her fears created within her, was a bigger concern to him.

  Everyone wanted to be needed. But being needed through wanting and craving was way different from being needed as a place to hide from the unknown. He knew about that kind of fear. The first months after his accident, it had kept him paralyzed in ways that turned his wheelchair into a prison.

  “When I’m here, and it’s not time to leave, I get excited, thinking about going to school.” She was trying hard to steady her voice. Trying not to shake. Her fingers continued to curl against his flesh, convulsive kneading. “Happy, even. Now it’s time to do it, and I’m thinking about the people, the noise, all of it. It’s like walking along the edge of the ocean, my feet in it. It looks so amazing and big. One part of me thinks being in it would be wonderful. But then I think about getting swept away from shore so I can’t get back. Untethered… Unmoored.”

  She pronounced the word carefully. She kept a journal, and he’d seen her make entries when she heard words she liked or didn’t know. At fifteen, she’d been close to illiterate. Learning to read had been the first thing that had brought her out of her shell. He remembered her and Les sitting on Les’s bed, Les going over English basics with her.

  Sometimes he wondered if he was being fair, wanting her. Maybe her first true relationship should be with someone fresh and new, who could see her as she was now, rather than a culmination of her past.

  He’d quizzed himself on that, ruthlessly. Was he going after her, interested in her, because she had been broken? Did he want her because he could feel powerful with her in a way he couldn’t anymore with the confident cheerleaders who’d once fawned over him? They’d loved his six-foot height and strong legs, his ability to pick them up and tease them.

  And what about her? Was she drawn to him because he was safe? Known?

  Yet as he looked at her pale face, felt her anxiety, he knew he wasn’t going to back off. He had an idea, supported by that gut feeling he’d had when he’d tightened his hand in her hair.

  Still holding her in his lap, he fished out several more things from behind the counter. He’d had to shorten a length of chain for Kenny Fisher earlier in the week, and he’d dropped the eight-inch remnant behind the counter. It wasn’t a girl’s bracelet kind of chain, but 3mm links, extra durable hardware. Retrieving that, a spool of wire and the pair of small pliers with them, he nodded toward her left hand. “Hold it out to me. Palm up.”

  An authoritative tone, easy as breathing. It was the way he talked to the seasonal help, the high school kids who helped unload Christmas trees in December.

  But they sure as hell didn’t respond the way she did. He exhaled the command and she inhaled it, responding by lifting her arm.

  She had a scar on it. The discoloration was faint, but the puckering of the skin was noticeable on a six-inch track of tender skin under her forearm. He thought it was a burn scar, but Daralyn had never offered any information about the old injury. Since it didn’t seem to bug her, and her worst scars were on the inside, making her self-conscious about one on the outside didn’t seem to serve a useful purpose.

  He looped the chain around her wrist, figured out the length he needed, then removed it again. Sliding off his class ring, he laid it in her palm. “Hold onto that a minute.”

  His initials were stamped in black on the square middle, his school name outlining it, the school’s mascot and graduation year on the dark gold sides. Her fingers closed over it, one of them slipping inside the ring to anchor it in her palm. She caressed the silky inside of the metal as if seeking the heat of his body. Maybe he was just imagining that, but the surge of feeling in his chest said he was right.

  He used the chain and wire to form a bracelet, the ring the connecting centerpiece. After he fastened it on her, he ran his callused fingers over and around the whole thing to ensure nothing was jabbing her. As he caressed the soft skin, her pulse rate increased.

  Registering the reaction, he glanced up, deliberately letting his gaze roam over her features. She had silky eyebrows, a fair forehead and straight nose. Then there were those very distracting pale pink lips. He wanted to place the heat of his mouth over them.

  Her lashes swept down over her cheeks, but her wrist stayed willingly in his grasp. He kept his thumb coursing over that velvet stretch of skin below the bracelet as her fingers trembled. The chain was snug enough she would be aware of it there, the class ring a heavy, masculine weight at her pulse point. She’d folded her fingers forward, so one of her fingertips rested inside it again.

  “Daralyn.” His voice had roughened, and he kept it that way. “Do you think about that kiss at Christmas?”

  Her lips parted, her cheeks getting that charming pink color.

  “Look at me."

  He didn’t think he was b
reathing when her gaze raised to his, held. The golden-green color had deepened, the pupils big and dark. "Tell me," he said softly.

  “Yes. I do."

  "Every night?"

  Her eyes sparkled a little, showing some spirit he liked. A lot. "I have other things to think about than just that."

  "That wasn't a no. I plan on kissing you again, really soon. So if you die of a panic attack, I won’t get that chance.”

  Her lips curved, her eyes lighting in a way that shot heat straight through every nerve-rich part of his body.

  “Okay.”

  Though it was the last thing he wanted to do, he guided her to her feet. When her gaze fell naturally to his lap, she quickly looked away.

  No big surprise, the pressure of her body had inspired a reaction. While he took immense pleasure in thinking about her gorgeous ass being on his lap, he couldn’t get hard from just the thinking. Psychogenic erections, the term for that, weren’t something he could have any more. But reflexogenic, caused by direct physical contact to his cock? Damn straight.

  The press of her lips together, the significant sudden absence of that trembling in her fingers, told him she wasn’t upset by it. In a polite world, he’d make things easy by pretending he hadn’t noticed her noticing. He wasn’t feeling polite. Instead, when his steady, silent regard brought her gaze back to his, he locked her into a full acknowledgement of it.

  She’s a woman now. As Marcus had said.

  A crackle of gravel in the parking lot outside told him the community transport van for the college had arrived. But she still didn’t look away. It was as if she knew he had to tell her she could. His reaction to that was so strong, he considered pulling her on his lap again.

  But Marcus had been right about that other thing. She’s everything. Her happiness, her well-being.

  “Daralyn,” he said in measured tones, gripping his push rims so he didn’t reach for her instead. “Go on before you miss your ride.”

  She swallowed. Turning away, she collected her backpack and picked up the lunch box. When she reached the door, she pulled it open, making the shop bells mounted over it ring. The chain on her wrist clinked against the knob.

  “See you in a while,” she said, shooting him a shy glance.

  “You sure will.”

  A small smile, and she stepped out, letting the door close behind her.

  He moved to the window. At the open door of the roomy passenger van, she hesitated. There were five people in it, in addition to the driver. Since Daralyn had her head lowered, as if she were thinking, he got ready to go out there and give her reinforcement if she needed it.

  Then she curled her fingers over the chain, the ring. Taking a deep breath, she gripped the rail and mounted the steps into the vehicle. When the door closed, she had settled gingerly into a seat next to a nerdy-looking guy staring at his phone.

  The van pulled away, trundling out of the parking lot and accelerating once it was on the paved road.

  He sat in an empty store, his heart aching, desire coursing through him. She’d been gone five seconds, but the Daralyn-sized empty space in the store had the density of a black hole.

  Truth Number One. He wanted her, and he didn’t want to hold back on that any longer.

  Truth Number Two. Maybe he was channeling some bizarre Fifty Shades thing that he’d absorbed by falling asleep to late night TV, but that didn’t fit. He wanted to say that kind of thing wasn’t him or her, but their reaction to one another during those odd moments said otherwise. And yeah, he’d looked at some of this stuff online, but he hoped like hell he’d stumbled on the wrong places, because he’d seen things he… Fuck, he didn’t even want those things in his head.

  But some of it hadn’t repelled him. Just the opposite. That disturbed him more than the stuff that had.

  That brought him to Truth Number Three. He needed to talk to Marcus. Because there was another reason Marcus’s words had taken up residence in his head. The online sites had helped Rory realize it, too.

  Marcus wasn’t “just” Thomas’s husband.

  Marcus and Thomas split their time between Marcus’s penthouse in New York City and a 1940s farmhouse they’d bought here. A few months back, Rory had come by to see Thomas. He’d used the ramp that Thomas and Marcus had included in the house updates right after they purchased it to access the porch.

  Seeing the front door standing open behind the screen, Rory had pushed into the living room, calling out. Nothing. The house was empty. They weren’t in the nearby barn, where Thomas had his loft art studio and Marcus his home office, but the cars were under the port. Which meant they were likely on the back porch.

  The door to that was open, allowing a cross breeze through the house. Because the adjacent windows were also open, he glimpsed Marcus and Thomas before they were aware of him.

  Thomas was against the wooden porch railing, clutching it on either side of him in white knuckled hands. Marcus had him pressed up against it. His strong hand was wrapped around Thomas’s throat as his lips cruised over his cheek.

  Rory started to retreat, fast, but before he did, he heard Thomas utter a single word.

  Rory hadn’t needed to see Marcus’s face that day to know what expression it wore. The satisfied growl of response had told him.

  The fevered look Thomas sent toward Marcus was one Rory wanted to see on Daralyn’s face. And that word… Rory had never heard it used by anyone in his world. Yet it had come back to him again and again since then. Only in his imaginings it came from Daralyn’s lips, said in the same way Thomas had said it to Marcus.

  With desperate yearning, but also an absolute certainty that the person who owned that word could answer that yearning and desperation.

  “Master.”

  So yeah, he needed to talk to Marcus. No matter his aversion to learning more about his brother’s sex life than he really wanted to know, he wouldn’t dive deeper into uncharted territory with just a gut feeling. No way was he going to risk fucking with Daralyn’s head.

  That said, he also didn’t want to treat her like china. He knew better than most not to assume someone was too fragile to handle something because of what they’d been through.

  The way she’d teased him just now, about having other things to think about than that kiss? That had been damn close to flirting. Like she might one day feel safe enough to mouth off at him, the playful way a woman did when she felt safe with a man.

  He wanted to kill her uncle and father for treating her the ways they had, but she’d been stronger than the both of them. He believed in her strength.

  He was a man who wanted to treat Daralyn like a woman. She could tease, defy or confront him all she wanted. He’d never hurt her. He’d celebrate that confidence, even as he’d challenge it, in ways she might just crave. Maybe she needed that.

  He had an unsettling feeling he sure as hell did.

  Chapter Two

  After he closed the store for the day, Rory decided to settle himself by doing his evening workout, a few miles on his bike on the Hickman Road loop. Then he transferred to his regular chair and headed for Thomas and Marcus’s place.

  By road, they were a few miles away, but as the crow flew, it was a matter of crossing several fields. During the growing season, they offered sweet potato, watermelon or squash crops. When they were little, he and his siblings played with kids on those farms, so they’d worn down a regular path between the fields. Now there was a paved pedestrian and bike path, part of a county-wide greenway project funded by taxes.

  As Rory left the path and crossed the road to Marcus and Thomas’s driveway, his gaze went to the guest house on their property. Daralyn’s house.

  When Thomas and Marcus bought the Hill place, it had included a rambling farmhouse, a barn and an outbuilding, plus a few fenced acres. The outbuilding had been renovated into a guest house that included a bedroom, living area, kitchenette and bath, as well as a screened patio. All cozy-sized, the whole place about a thousand square feet.
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  They’d offered it to Daralyn, her first home on her own. In exchange, she cleaned Marcus and Thomas’s place and house-sat for them when they were in New York. Despite her protests, they also paid her for that work.

  She loved the little house, and had decorated it to her tastes. Strings of white lights lit up the patio area, more noticeable with the sun going down. She’d bought up a bunch of dollar store hummingbird and flower solar lights, which provided a small rainbow starfield in the bed of pansies that fronted the porch. Shepherd’s hooks held chimes that danced over the flowers when the wind blew.

  Thomas and Marcus encouraged her to stay in the main house during their New York absences, but she only used their kitchen on occasion, for the cooking that couldn’t be done in her kitchenette. The flat screen didn’t interest her. She’d watch short bursts of TV with Rory’s family, usually excusing herself partway through a program, and she had no interest in having a television herself. He’d never seen her make it through a full movie, even one she seemed to enjoy.

  She preferred to read her books. Most nights, if he went by there on his bike ride, which he usually did, he’d see her on the patio. She’d be curled in a chair, reading, her head bent in concentration, her hair falling softly along her face. She still moved her lips when she read, because the words didn’t come easy or fast.

  She always lifted her head when he came by, and would wave. He didn’t usually interrupt her, but he liked to confirm that she was all right.

  It wasn’t about her physical safety. Crime wasn’t a big issue in their town. A little vandalism and petty theft were the extent of it. Or Mrs. Marten reporting her goat Molly missing again, although she was always found in someone’s garden.

  The only serious crime that occurred in their county was the kind that could happen anywhere, to anyone. Out in the country or in a big city, to the rich or to the poor.

  Al Moorfield had lived in their town most of his life. When Al died, his son, Oscar, and his maternal half-brother Burton, had moved in. They’d come from Nashville. Oscar had explained that he was a widower with one child, a six-year-old daughter, and they’d wanted to move out of the city. He lived on a military pension and was a disabled veteran with a prosthetic leg.