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

  Marcus offered him a pointed look. “Just keep in mind, while the building blocks are essential, a big part of it is beyond knowledge or understanding. It’s feeling and instinct. It’s learning to find the balance. Plus working on trusting yourself and her.”

  He tipped his head toward Thomas, sending his husband and submissive a warm glance. “That’s the biggest key of all.”

  Another good thing about Marcus; the guy didn’t beat a dead horse. He knew when enough had been said for the time being. Thomas returned to the porch soon after that, and Rory hung with them for a short while. They talked about more casual things. When Marcus and Thomas shifted to dinner plans, Rory declined the invitation to join, deciding to head for home.

  As they went inside, Thomas gave him the fond mix of you’re a shithead and I’ve got your back older brother look. Marcus held the door for him, then nodded before he stepped in behind Thomas. The look he sent Rory was different, but one Rory might as well go ahead and call what it was.

  Dom to Dom.

  He pushed himself around the side of the house, headed for the access ramp. About the time he reached it, a pickup truck slowed down on the road. It belonged to Ralph Peterson, the farmer who lived near Marcus and Thomas.

  When the truck came to a full stop about fifty feet past the house, Daralyn emerged from the passenger side. She said something to Ralph, raised her hand in farewell.

  As she turned, she had her head down. She made a beeline for her little house, her backpack hugged close to her body. She didn’t look toward the main house, as if that would keep her from being noticed. Rory suspected it was also why she’d had Ralph drop her farther down the road.

  By the time she’d reached her door, Rory heard the front screen door squeak open behind him. Their footsteps told him Thomas and Marcus had moved around the corner to join him.

  “She’s home pretty early,” Thomas said. “Her classes weren’t supposed to finish until nine.”

  “Yeah. Damn it.” More of the anger bled into his voice than he’d intended. Thomas put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t get after her about it. It’s bound to be tough--”

  “You think I’m pissed at her?” Rory shrugged off his hand, glared at his brother. “Damn it, I knew this afternoon. This was too much, too soon. She needed a backup.”

  “Rory, she has to stumble,” Thomas said. “You can’t catch her every time she falls.”

  “I can’t catch her at all, most the time. So it makes it even worse when I don’t catch her when I know I can.”

  “Maybe you should give her the night,” his brother persisted. “Talk to her about it tomorrow, when you feel less worked up about it, too.”

  Rory glanced at Marcus’s face, which had gone expressionless. Letting Rory figure it out. Make the decision.

  “Yeah. Maybe.” As he took the ramp to the ground level, he was pointed toward the road and home, but he didn’t head that way. He thought of the backpack, full of supplies she’d picked out with such excitement and pleasure. Les had gone with her, when his sister was home for her last break.

  Marcus and Thomas had given Daralyn the community college tuition as a Christmas gift, but Daralyn had missed the winter, spring and summer registration periods. When she’d finally signed up for the fall classes, it had been after doubling up on her bi-monthly sessions with her psychiatrist. Even so, this was going to feel like a major setback to her. But it wasn’t.

  He turned away from the road and headed for the guesthouse.

  Thomas started to call after him, but Marcus put a hand on his shoulder. “Let him go, pet.” He sent Thomas a significant look. “It’s begun now. You don’t get between Master and sub when they’re in session.”

  “You think that’s what this is.”

  “It feels that way. Life exists between Lloyd Dobler and Dr. Seuss, after all.”

  Thomas blinked, his dark brown eyes reflecting that endearing puzzlement that happened when Marcus threw a wrench in the workings of his brilliant artistic mind. “Say what?”

  Marcus quirked a brow. “‘I’m looking for a dare to be great situation,’ versus ‘To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.’ But it all goes back to Lloyd. I think he knew they were one and the same. The dare to be great situation was being the person his heroine needed. Becoming the one.”

  Thomas shook his head. “Eighties movies and Dr. Seuss. You never fail to surprise.”

  “Long and short, let it play out. Trust your brother. Trust Daralyn.”

  “I do. I just don’t want either one hurt. He’s still got so much anger in him sometimes.” Thomas sighed, looking toward the guest house. “His attitude has improved by leaps and bounds, but Mom worries he’s still vulnerable to emotional bumps in the road that can throw him for a loop physically. I’d say that’s a Mom thing, but I feel it too. He’s so invested in Daralyn already. What if staying here, being with him, isn’t what’s best for her?”

  Marcus shifted, his body brushing Thomas’s in support. “If he truly loves her, and yeah, I think he’s already way past halfway there, he’ll know that, maybe even before she does. If that’s what she needs, he’ll let her go.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Marcus met his gaze. “Because I love you. And if me letting you go had truly been the right thing for you, for your happiness, I would have. Even if it had killed me.”

  Thomas’s eyes went to heat. In less than a blink, he had his hand on Marcus’s biceps in a solid grip. “There’s no world where that would have been the right thing for me,” he said.

  Marcus’s jaw flexed, but he gave Thomas’s nape a hard squeeze. It was the answer he was always glad to hear, down to his soul, but it didn’t make his own statement any less true. Letting Thomas go would have destroyed him. Not physically. He would have kept going, being who he was, but something inside would have died and never lived again.

  If that was the depth of feeling Rory and Daralyn were on their way to sharing, Marcus shared Thomas’s worry.

  He hoped to God Rory wouldn’t have to face that choice. Because Thomas was right. Nothing could knock a person down harder than that, and make you never want to get up again.

  Chapter Three

  Daralyn stared at the legs of her kitchen table. It was a yard sale bargain Elaine had found. She and Daralyn had painted it a pale green, and Daralyn had stenciled the legs so a vine with tiny white flowers was climbing up them.

  Her backpack was at her feet, and she was curled up over herself, her head in her hands. She didn’t have the energy to move, even as she despised herself for that immobility.

  So much had changed, so much hadn’t. Each day brought new challenges, but each challenge was just as hard as the last. Would it ever be easier? Why, after five years, did she still stand in darkness in broad daylight? A weighted darkness no one else could see.

  She was smothered by it. Silently.

  We hear a peep out of you, girl, you stay in that hole another hour.

  Dr. Taylor, her psychiatrist, had coaxed Daralyn to talk about it.

  No one else can see the darkness, so it’s not real. But it’s the most real thing. Because it stands between me and everything else.

  Everything else you want? Dr. Taylor asked.

  Everything else. Just everything else.

  In the meantime, she was losing things her survival instinct told her it was too dangerous to lose. Like awareness of her surroundings.

  “Daralyn.”

  She snapped up straight. She hadn’t heard him open the door, his chair moving over the threshold.

  She didn’t have to look his way to feel his presence. There was a heat around him that could fill a room, surround her. And his eyes…if she looked at his dark brown eyes, she found something there that she wanted to be as real as that darkness, because then maybe she’d have a shelter from it. She felt that way when she was around him.

  “I knocked, but I could tell you didn’t hear me.”

  She would have ended up in the cellar for a couple hours for not paying attention. Maybe had her next meal taken away.

  She kept her face down, because he’d see she’d been crying. But she hadn’t been expecting him here, and didn’t know what to say. Which might explain the utter nonsense that started to come out of her mouth.

  “I’m sure the tuition can be refunded, and you all can use it for something else. And the books and these notebooks, I can use them for other things, maybe study them at home and learn—”

  “Stop,” he said.

  “It’s okay. Really. I’m fine. I just…I’ll be at work tomorrow. It will be okay.”

  He moved toward her, and she surged up and around the table, retreating. What was she thinking? But before her unthinkable act could fluster her, he came to a halt, met her gaze with an even, steady look.

  “Are you running from me, Daralyn?”

  She’d seen him get frustrated about his ability to maneuver easily in close quarters. But the loss of that ability had taught him to rely on other methods. Effective ones.

  She stammered to silence and gripped the hem of her shirt in nervous hands, but otherwise she stopped moving. With a satisfied nod, he came to her, stopped so she was standing by the side of his chair.

  “What happened?” He took her hand, tugged so he moved her back to her seat in the kitchen. “Sit down and tell me.”

  I couldn’t do what’s so easy for everyone else. Again. No matter how much faith you all have in me, no matter how much I try, I can’t seem to make it into the light. The cold and dark are always waiting.

  “Hey.” He’d touched her face, had kept her hand clasped in his other one. “Don’t get so frustrated. You’re fine. Remember? You just told me so.”

/>   He was teasing her gently, his lips curving above the well-groomed short beard that covered his jaw. She couldn’t smile, so she stared at their linked fingers. She loved his hands. Strong, chapped from the work he did around the farm and at the store. He was wearing a T-shirt, so she could see the fine lengths of his forearms, the biceps that flexed when he pushed his chair. She could get ridiculously mesmerized watching that.

  She wanted to tell him what had happened, she realized. He was good at that, too, helping her unlock the things in herself that kept her from saying what was happening in her head.

  “I thought I could do it,” she said. “For a few minutes, it was exciting. Then there was the noise, and someone was shouting across the courtyard. So many things, from so many different directions. I went to my first class and all the chairs were taken except one in the back, and there were so many people between me and it. The teacher started talking, and…I don’t know. It felt like too much. I couldn’t breathe. So I left, and everyone was staring at me…”

  Her words faded away. His fingers were stroking hers, lying along her wrist, playing with the chain. Sensation ran up her arm, through her upper body.

  She twitched. “I…do you mind if I get up and cook some eggs?”

  She needed to move, and fortunately he nodded, moving back to give her room to get past him. She felt his attention as she pulled out the container of eggs she’d gathered from Thomas and Marcus’s laying hens.

  “What did you do after that?” he asked.

  “I sat in the courtyard.” She slid her skillet to the right burner of the small stove. “I figured I’d wait there until the van came back for us at nine-fifteen. But then I saw Mr. Peterson. He’s taking a class about soil enrichment for his watermelons, and it finished at six-thirty. I asked him if he was heading home and he was, so he gave me a ride. He didn’t talk, just played music on his radio. I closed my eyes and he hummed along. It was nice.”

  Mr. Peterson was better than most about that. He was a quiet person, too. While many people knew she wasn’t a talker, it didn’t stop them from purposefully trying to draw her out sometimes, making her anxiety rise.

  She gripped the rubber sleeve on the skillet handle and stared miserably into the dark bottom, at the slick coating of oil she’d put in it. “I failed.”

  A glance his way showed those brown eyes with a reproving look to them. “How did you fail? You got in the van, went into the classroom. Maybe you just need someone to go with you the first few times.”

  “I have to do it by myself.”

  “Why?”

  She tightened her hold on the handle. The oil was starting to warm, blending with the seasoning cooked into the cast iron. It was a reassuring smell. "Because…because everyone else can."

  "And you want to be able to do it, too. That’s a good reason.” He considered. “But what if the first time I ever went to physical therapy, I’d said fuck off, I've got this. I'm going to pull myself up on my weak-ass arms, with a body that works much differently, and do these workouts without a spotter."

  “You would have gotten hurt.” She set her jaw. “But it’s not like that. It's been five years…"

  "After spending the first fifteen years of your life without any real help or support,” he countered firmly. “You haven’t been sitting on your ass. You’ve learned to read and write, started working in the store, doing a million things you didn’t know how to do. None of it has come easy. We’ve seen you struggle. But you keep pushing yourself to do more.”

  Because it was like a slap in the face, how she tried and yet fell short, at things so easy for everyone else. Dr. Taylor could tell her all sorts of reasons why, connected to her childhood, her uncle and father. She talked about a gap that needed to be crossed, but it wasn’t a gap. It was an impenetrable wall that needed to be knocked down with equipment Daralyn didn’t have.

  She’d said that Daralyn would have it, in time. But it got so tiring to fail so often.

  “Daralyn.” He’d drawn close, and reached past her, cutting the heat down and moving the skillet off the burner. She started at the realization she’d been about to burn the oil, but he touched her arm. “Look at me.”

  Tears were dripping down her nose. He pulled a paper towel off the roll and blotted them, cupping her face. “You’re killing me, honey,” he murmured. “You’re so much stronger than you realize. But I get it.”

  He gave her a wry look. “So I’m at Red’s gym, not having one of my better days, and I’m dragging myself along the parallel bars. While I do that, some guy dead lifting three hundred pounds moves from that station, grabs water, tosses the cup away and moves to another piece of equipment. It’s so easy for him. I get why it’s not easy for me. But still, it tears me down sometimes.

  “Then Red says to me, ‘Hauling your ass up onto these bars takes perseverance. Because it’s not to sculpt yourself a cute ass or reach a fitness goal. It’s to keep a body healthy that’s permanently lost half its mobility. And that’s more than perseverance. It’s also courage. Courage ain’t pretty or easy, and it’s not like in the movies. It’s like the song says. It’s a cold and broken hallelujah.’”

  “In the song, it’s love that’s a cold and broken hallelujah,” she said. “Not courage.”

  He tugged her hair. “Same difference. Remember when you tried to do that weekend orientation field trip thing the college hosted?”

  She’d come home early and fast on that as well, but Elaine and Les had been quick to reassure her that it was just too soon to be away for a whole weekend.

  “A bunch of people in a new environment, new stuff to learn…” He shrugged. “It's totally okay to have a spotter for a while."

  He was acting like everything was okay. It wasn’t such a big deal. She knew it was. Yet she found the energy to respond, to feel less weighted down by what had happened, enough to engage in the conversation, wipe away the tears herself.

  She frowned. "A spotter?"

  "Someone to go with you to the campus. Sit with you in the class, or maybe just hang around nearby, like in the courtyard. Someone you can touch base with if things get to be too much." A half smile touched his mouth. “Like having a therapy dog. Minus the tail and floppy ears.”

  She laid her hand on the chain he’d put around her wrist. "Like this. A touchstone."

  It had startled her when he’d done that. But it had helped, the pressure of those links. Yet that, too, reminded her she’d failed. Even when he’d given her a tool to help.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, telling him that.

  His expression became slightly harder, but not in a mean way. She knew what mean looked like. “There’s nothing to apologize for. You think football players win their first game just because they have all the right equipment? No. It takes skill and practice. The equipment just helps them keep getting back on the field. Now, how about a spotter? Nothing wrong with having that. A few weeks down the road, you'll tell me to stay home, that you've got this."

  Surprise rippled through her. "You’d be my spotter? What about the store?"

  "Your classes are three nights a week,” he said. “Amanda can help cover the store mid-afternoon until the six o’clock closing, and Mom will pitch in when she can’t. All we need is someone to watch the register and answer basic questions. I’ll have my cell and they can text if something comes up they don’t know. "

  She frowned. “Johnny knows the farm end of things better. Maybe he should cover instead of Amanda.”

  “Yeah. But Amanda needs the money for that pharmacy tech certification she’s doing.”

  "I know that," she said quickly. Too quickly. "I was just thinking…Johnny also needs some extra money."

  "So he does.” Johnny Hill, one of the many Hills in their county, including the family who had once owned Thomas and Marcus’s house, regularly helped out at the store. “But he isn't as pretty,” Rory noted. “People might not buy as much, or be as forgiving if he doesn’t know stuff off the top of his head like we do."

  Her eyes narrowed. She’d picked up the skillet to move it back on the burner, and set it back down on the stove with more force than intended. She jumped at the noise. Darting a glance his way, she saw his eyes were twinkling.