Bared by Him (13 page)

“I can’t fuck her; she just got out of the hospital!” He was enraged at the suggestion,
because his body liked it, instantly warmed to it, but he knew it wasn’t happening
soon. Nope. Not for a lot of days. Not for many torturous, tormenting days. He didn’t
even know
when,
damn it.

The thought of not being able to bury all this inside her made him fight with more
vigor in his urge to get rid of it, and when Daniel got in a couple of punches, Cade
almost growled with pleasure. He didn’t even flinch, his body impenetrable as they
started pounding each other hard.

The blows were nothing compared to the painful torment inside him. He bore each hit
unflinchingly, welcomed each and every one, wishing they could ease him and the storm
that raged inside him now. With enough of them, maybe he could rid his mind of the
image of her, in that hospital bed.

He’d lived thirty-five years without her. Thirty-five years.

He
never
could have imagined he would feel that his world would come crashing down on him
if he had to live a single one again—just
one
—without her.

When they finished, Cade hopped into the showers, the water running down his face.
He was afraid of seeing her … afraid of himself, his emotions.

He’d withdrawn himself from Laura. Had it been self-preservation? He didn’t know.
But he’d never felt so violent like he did right now. He was afraid of hurting Ivy
because, whether she liked it or not, she’d hurt the shit out of him.

All the energy he’d worked off boxing seemed to return as he drove back home and entered
his apartment.

Ivy glanced up from the bed when he opened the bedroom door, and her eyes lit in surprise,
then darkened in dread. All kinds of emotions galloped inside him. Her eyes looked
gold. The orbs went dark when she was being taken by him and turned a clear pale when
she was thoughtful.

This moment they were shuttered and concerned as she stared at him, as though not
knowing what he’d do.
“Hi,” she said warily.

His hands clenched at his sides. He still didn’t know what to do with them. What to
do with himself. With her.

He kicked the door shut and entered the room. “How do you feel?” He couldn’t look
at her. He felt too many things, too strongly, all at once.

Her legs were bare for his perusal, long and slim and creamy. He could see her toes,
painted a bright berry pink, and remembered nibbling the soft flat spots on the insides
of her ankles.

Don’t look.

He jerked his gaze from her and frowned at his dog, lying on the bed, at her feet.
“What’s Genghis doing on the bed?”

“Keeping me company.” She petted him, and the simple act of watching her fingers delve
into his dog’s fur made his body scream out in urgent jealousy.

“He could hurt you! Off the damned bed, you fucking mutt. Off!” Genghis immediately
obeyed, then he fisted his hands at his sides and paced.

Ivy sat up and stared at him, completely alien to him in that wig.

Look away, look away.

“Cade, are we going to talk about this?” she whispered.

He raised his hand to halt her words, and his eyes met hers. She seemed tired and
weary and still, so beautiful. She was so freaking beautiful he could barely breathe.

Cade closed his eyes, counted to ten and back. And no. His body still burned from
the inside out. Thinking of himself as a snowman did not help, did not keep him from
wanting, needing, to be inside her. It was a need beyond physical, a need to ground
her to him, to feel her alive and twisting around him, beyond anything he could comprehend.

“I know I should’ve told you…”

He raked his hands through his hair and paced away, only to return, glaring. “Stop
apologizing. I’m glad you didn’t tell me. Otherwise I’d…”

“What? You wouldn’t have set a hand on me?”

His jaw tightened, and he didn’t answer her.

“Cancer is not contagious, Cade.”

He expelled a long breath, hanging on by threads. “Right now I don’t want to hurt
you, Ivy.”

“Why am I even here? I have friends who can invite me over, I think I’d much rather
you drive me over to one of them!” She stood up purposefully from the bed.

“Get back on that bed, Ivy.”

“I don’t need your pity, Cade.”

“Get back on that fucking bed!” he roared.

She glared at him and started walking to the door, and he grabbed her to stop her.
“Get up on that fucking bed or I’m tying you to it!”

“What for? You’re clearly not touching me again!”

He saw that he was holding her elbow too hard, and he released her, his face melting
with pain and regret as he lifted his hands, palms up. “Ivy, I don’t want to hurt
you, baby.”

“Well you’re hurting me now, you fucking asshole!”

Her voice broke, and he immediately reached out to touch her again, but when she caught
back a sob, he jerked his hand away.

“Don’t,”
she pleaded. “Cade, I’m still a woman. I’m still a woman. I need your touch … I need
your touch
so much
.”

He crushed her possessively in his arms and pressed his jaw into her neck, a dark,
desperate feeling spreading through him. “Damn you, you’re not just a woman. You’re
my
woman, Ivy. Mine.”

He felt her wig tickle his neck, and he growled and tossed it aside, then scooped
her up and carried her back to the bed.

Ivy gasped in delayed response and covered her head. “No!”

She reached blindly in the air in the direction of the stupid wig, but it had landed
far away. “No, Cade!” Her eyes flashed and she twisted and flailed angrily as he lay
her down. “What are you doing? Why do you insist on baring me like this?”

He caught her wrists and pinned them down. “Stop hiding shit from me. Stop hiding
yourself from me. Can’t you see how much I fucking want you? Be real to me, Ivy! I’ve
held nothing back from you—nothing.”

“I
am
real to you! I’m realer to you than to anyone!”

“Then stop treating me like I’m only here to fuck you!”

She started crying, and Cade cursed and buried his face in his hands, scraping them
over his own burning eyes. He heard her fumbling with the buttons of her shirt, and
he whipped his head up and halted her hands.

“Stop. Stop. You don’t need to do this now. It’s just that you’re so damned beautiful
to me and I feel totally
played
here. You’re—”

Prying free of his hold, she parted her ripped shirt open, still quietly crying, and
Cade saw her.

His heart shattered, and then it felt like it got pieced together wrong, because it
couldn’t even beat right. If he weren’t already crazy as hell in love with her, she
would’ve stolen his heart right this second, when she bared herself to him even when
he could see how much it was hurting.

It hurt to see her, too.

His eyes blurred at the sight of her nipples. Sore. Bright pink. Two small dressings
covering her incisions, just below the curves, of both the breasts she’d been removing.

“Ivy.” He stroked the top swells gently, then her throat, feeling the sobs that racked
her under his fingers. “You’re so fucking perfect. I love your breasts. I love your
smooth little head.” He cupped her scalp and felt how smooth and round it was, stared
into her eyes with his blurred vision. “I love the way you make me feel. The man you
make me. All of you.” His voice broke and he gathered her against him, and he tipped
her face back and kissed her lips. “I love the way you fight. Your spirit. How you
help people when you need it more. How you saved me. Ivy. Me.”

She cried harder, her hands on his shirt as her tears soaked it. He trembled at the
feel of her, warm and rare like a comet in his arms, and at the sensual brush of her
lips against his, seeking more, his lips locked over hers as though gravity were pulling
them down. “I love you. Ivy. You. God help me, I do.”

“Me, too. I love you so much,” she said softly to him in a heartbreaking, tear-laced
voice.

He groaned and he tried not to push his tongue too hard, tried to be gentle, as slow
as he could, as gentle as he could, but his entire frame shuddered with restrained
force, and when he felt the damp, desperate stroke of her tongue against the seam
of his lips, he thought she’d killed him.

She clung weakly to him, and he was undone for her. Undone with her words, her kiss.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Cade. You … blew me over. Even the first night we were
together, I stopped praying to get better and just prayed to have a little more time
with you.”

“Who should I thank, baby? Tell me, who should I thank for bringing you into my life?
God, baby? Your generous heart, looking for help from an asshole like me? Tell me.”

He kissed her, hungrily, desperately, while one last tear slipped down her cheek,
and when he drew her onto his lap so he could hold her tight, she gripped his shirt
in her little fists and nuzzled his neck, squirming urgently on top of him. Then,
he felt her. Hot where he was hot. Wet where he was wet. His need catapulted to such
alarming levels, his fingers trembled as he slipped them through the gaping hole of
her torn top, carefully touching her skin.

She whimpered as he stroked around her belly button.

His heartbeat picked up to an unbearable speed as she suddenly eased off her tattered
shirt, then she rolled off him and slid off her little skirt.

He watched her bare every inch of herself to him, and he would never forget the way
she looked as she lay on her back in his bed. Completely naked, except for the small
dressings on the bottoms of her breasts, her lashes golden, her eyes shining for him,
she was the most gut-wrenchingly beautiful thing he had ever seen—in all of his thirty-five
years.

He felt earthquakes in his stomach as he cupped her head, stroking his hands along
her scalp and pulling her in for a slow, drugging kiss. “From now on, that’s the way
I want you when you get in my bed. I want my skin to feel every inch of yours, Ivy,
every inch,” he murmured.

“I’m twisted in knots, Cade,” she said, breathing into his mouth, grasping the front
of his shirt. “I need to be with you. I need to.”

His blood bubbling at her words, he uncurled the fingers of one of her hands and then
forced it flat above his heart, where it beat like crazy. “I ache, too.”

His cock throbbed in his jeans, desperate to join their bodies again.

“My chest hurts, too.” She nodded as she took his hand, then slowly guided it down
her flat abdomen, and lower, to the glistening folds at the apex of her legs. “And
here. I ache, too.”

She pressed his hand there, where her liquid heat seeped into his palm like a live
volcano ready to erupt. Cade couldn’t help it, his need was too strong, so he cupped
her in his hand for a whole minute, aching to rub and stroke her to orgasm, his every
nerve and fiber screaming for him to settle down between her legs and bury himself
inside of her. “Ivy…”

“We’ll be careful, Cade.”

He met her imploring honeyed gaze while he battled for control. The heel of his palm
perfectly cupped her swelling slit and he felt the tiny frissons of need overtaking
her little body.

His insides coiled with restraint.

God, he wanted her …

But the bottom swells of her breasts were covered with bandages, the incisions leaving
faint pink blood marks on the white gauze. Her nipples still looked so sore, so puckered.
Raw, almost, from the procedure. His tongue felt heavy with the need to lave them.

“Ivy … we can’t make love now.”

She cupped his jaw and rose upward to brush her lips across his, her breath sweet
and warm on his face. “Cade West doesn’t make love, remember?”

He couldn’t help reaching behind her to fist her hair, intending to hold her for a
kiss, and when he realized she had nothing to grab, he cupped the round curve of her
scalp instead and devoured her for a full minute, gasping when he tore away. “Cade
West makes love only to Ivy.”

They shared a look that spoke volumes, said everything they needed to know and more,
and Cade stopped talking. His throat closed, his feelings too close to the surface,
his passion running too deep as he held her, as Ivy clasped him back like she needed
him to keep going, to fuel her fight, her energy reserves.

“Please,” she gasped, nuzzling his neck and grasping at his shoulders. “Please, please,
fill me up with you. We’ll be careful.”

Her voice broke, and her face crumpled when she looked up at him. He could see all
of her fears in those eyes. Fears that it would happen to her, the same thing that
had happened with Laura. “You’re not going to be able to do this are you?” she asked.

He couldn’t breathe, his constricted chest felt shackled down. “Ivy.”

“Please don’t pity me.”

Gritting his teeth, he took her hand and set it unerringly over his throbbing cock,
a giant motherfucker that was bursting in his pants, bursting with semen for her.
He wanted to brand her, to spill himself on every inch of this woman, and shout at
both God and the devil that if they wanted to take her, they would need to go through
him first.

He felt the way his eyes blazed into her, piercing her until his words penetrated
her stubbornness. “Is that pity to you? Do you call that pity?” He grabbed her face
harder than he’d planned and kissed her, a kiss without holding back, that let her
know in every way possible that as soon as he could, he was going to fuck the living
daylights out of her. “I want you, Ivy. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything
in my life—I take you in my sleep. I take you any way I can get you, any fucking time
I can.
When have I not?
”

He didn’t understand why the need to take Ivy was even greater since he found out
she was sick. Perhaps the way he’d felt for Laura had been different. They were young,
their love more innocent. They hadn’t hurt yet. When they’d “loved” each other they
had everything going for them. Cade’s family did well, so did hers. They were an adored
couple. She was a good girl, and a woman he would be proud to have raise his children.