The Edge of Heaven (39 page)

"This is how I want you," he said, rocking ever so slightly against her, and then harder and harder, until he was so deep inside of her she didn't think there could be so much as a molecule between them.

She wrapped her arms more tightly around him, her legs, closed her eyes and let her head drop to his shoulder. Tears were coming, and this wasn't the time, but
... He wants me.

All she'd ever wanted was for him to want her and to love her, and she'd never believed that would happen.

He wasn't treating her like a silly, desperate girl. Not that she hadn't appreciated every bit of tenderness and patience he'd shown her that first night. But this... This was raw and intense and so powerful. It was desire, pure and simple, fast and hot, shattering every bit of reserve and control she had.

"Oh, Rye."

He thrust against her, her whole body shifting with each rush of his. She could feel him pulsing and swelling inside of her, could feel the grip her body had on him, could feel it all building and building until they simply exploded.

She shuddered against him, and he held her there, pinned against the wall, leaning into her and nearly crushing her.

Not that she cared.

He wanted her.

Truly, desperately wanted her.

The way a man wants a woman.

Against the wall, barely inside his front door.

Oh, my,
Emma thought.

How terribly grown up.

He eased back, giving her a lazy, satisfied grin and a slow, sweet kiss. "Did I mention that I missed you?"

"I missed you, too," she said. Not just in the last two months. There were more than two years that she'd spent desperately missing him.

He eased back, lowering her feet to the ground. She started trying to put her clothes into some order, but her panties were on the floor about five feet away. No way to get to them. She was going to button her blouse when Rye's hands stilled hers.

"I'm just going to take that right back off of you."

"But we just... I mean..." Of course, if he wanted to do this again, it wasn't like she was going to object. She was just surprised.

"Emma, that was just to take the edge off," he said, grinning at her.

"Oh."

* * *

He took her to bed, and it was sweet and slow, a lesson in the rewards of patience. It was only as she was lying in his arms afterward that she thought of something. He hadn't used a condom. Not that she was at risk for getting pregnant, but she'd been raised in the safe-sex generation. It struck her as odd that he didn't use one.

"Rye?"

"Hmm?" he said lazily.

"I was thinking about what you said downstairs... What I said... About the revolving door?" She really wanted to know about that.

"Emma, there's no traffic going in and out of here." She could hear a lazy brand of humor in his voice. "I don't need a revolving door."

She frowned, not understanding. Not really wanting to talk about anyone else who'd been with him, but... "That night of my birthday? And tonight? You didn't use a condom."

He slid down beside her until they were face-to-face, side-by-side. "No, I didn't. We don't need one, do we? You're not going to get pregnant, and you've never done this before, so you don't have anything, and neither do I. I made sure of that, Emma. I'd never take a chance like that with you."

"I know, but—"

"Emma, I haven't been with anyone in more than two years. Except you."

She didn't quite believe the words. They were floating around in her head, but she couldn't arrange them in any order that made sense. "But... all those women?"

"I told you I was capable of saying no. I turned 'em all down."

She could barely breathe, barely get out the word. "Why?"

He kissed her, lingering softly, smiling. "Why do you think?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do," he whispered. "They weren't you, Emma."

"But I saw you with them—"

"I'll admit, I tried to make some things work. Probably just like you did. I really tried, and I just couldn't do it."

"I saw you laughing with them, and flirting with them, and I saw their hands all over you." She'd suffered unbelievably seeing him with all of them.

"That's all it was," he said. "Killing time. Trying to get on with my life. I sure didn't ever expect to end up here."

But he liked it here, didn't he? Sometimes life took people places they never expected to go. Like here. She would never be sorry for that.

"Sam asked you to stay away from me, didn't he?"

"I don't know if asked is the right word." He grinned. "He's your father. He had a right. Hell, he had an obligation to do what he thought was best for you. But I didn't stay away because he told me to. I stayed away because you were just turning nineteen and starting college—"

"And you didn't trust me to know my own mind? To know what I wanted, what I felt?"

He took a breath, looking truly worried now, truly sorry. "I felt like I had an obligation to give you that time."

"I've been miserable all this time." Miserable wanting him and thinking he just didn't care.

"I know that now. I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt you, but I had to do what I thought was right."

"You could have told me. You could have said, 'Just grow up a little bit, and then we'll see.' "

"And what would you have done? Waited for me? That's not living, Emma. That's not taking time to be sure about what you want, what you need."

"So you're saying you did this for me?"

"I'm saying it seemed like an impossible situation, and I did the best I could. I'm sorry if that hurt you. I'm sorry if it makes you angry. I don't know what else I could have done. I wish you'd been happier, and sometimes I wish we hadn't met until later, when you were older, or that there weren't so many years between us in the first place. Hell, I wish I'd never stolen that car or killed anyone or gone to prison. But I can't change any of those things, just like I can't change this. I did the best I could for both of us."

* * *

She drifted off to sleep in his arms, thinking about what he'd said, thinking about where they went from here. When she woke up two hours later, rolled over, and reached for him, he wasn't there.

Emma sat up, listening and hearing nothing. The bathroom door was open, a faint light spilling out. He wasn't in there.

She wrapped herself up in a sheet and went downstairs, finding him in the living room. It was surprisingly chilly for April, and he'd built a fire, was sitting on the floor in front of it, his back against the sofa. His chest was bare, and he had an afghan wrapped around the lower half of his body.

She stood there waiting, not sure what to do. He took her hand and tugged her down to him. She sat facing him, letting him draw her head to his chest.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and wondered where they went from here. He wanted her, with a kind of desperate hunger that thrilled her, and he didn't want anyone else. But he'd just turned thirty-six to her twenty-one, and he was still Sam's brother. Some people would likely be shocked by that, regardless of the reality of the situation. Sam might still pitch a fit.

"Couldn't sleep?" he asked, his hand running lazily through her hair.

"You weren't there." She could get used to having him there, every time she reached for him deep in the night. She could get used to snuggling against his big, warm body and having him wrap his arms around her and waking up beside him every morning.

"I was just trying to figure out what I'm going to do with you," he said.

"What do you want to do?" she asked, stroking a hand down his chest, because if this was all she could have of him for now, she'd take it.

They could have a gloriously carnal affair, sneaking around in secret for as long as it lasted. It would give them a chance for the bond between them to grow, a chance to let him get used to the idea of them being together and maybe to let go of some of the guilt, of the sense that this was somehow wrong. Once it was out in the open, he'd have to make some decisions. She knew what she wanted, not just his body, but his heart, as well.

"What would you do, if you could do anything?" she asked.

"Wave a magic wand and make you about twenty-five. Of course, then I'd be forty, and you probably wouldn't want me anymore."

"Planning on falling apart when you hit forty, are you?" He'd be fabulous then. He'd always be that in her eyes. "Do you really think anything's going to change in a few years?"

If anything, the age gap would matter less and less.

"You have some things to do, Emma. Another year of college."

"No, I'm done in May," she said.

"What?"

"I haven't had anything else to do. I've been working as hard as you. The summers. The extra class load. It pays off. I'm graduating in May."

"As in... next month? That May?"

"Yes. I thought about getting my master's degree, but I just don't think I can go right into that. I talked to a couple of people I trust, and they all said it was a good idea to get in a year or two of work experience first."

"Counseling, right?"

"Yes. There's a shelter about twenty minutes from here, on the outskirts of Cincinnati. For battered women and children. They were actually excited by the idea of having someone with firsthand experience. If it works out, I'll be working with the kids, mostly. And there's a counseling center on campus that's interested in having me part time. Lots of college girls get beat up by their boyfriends, you know."

He nodded. "I think I heard something about that."

"I've been volunteering there for about a year. It's been good for me. I tell them my story, and they listen to me, because I've been through it. And I like being able to help them."

"So, you're all set."

"Except for figuring out what I'm going to do with you," she said.

But she knew what she wanted. She reached up and kissed his jaw. It was rough and shadowed with stubble, and she loved just being able to touch him when she wanted. She loved being this close to him.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him more fully, rising up on her knees and pressing her body to his. The sheet was caught between them in front, but came untangled in the back, leaving that half of her bare, which seemed to interest him.

He stroked her back, up and down. "You have the most incredible skin, and the way you smell... It's vanilla, isn't it?"

"Yes." A lotion she'd been using for years.

"I remember. From the second time I ever saw you. You walked into the kitchen straight from the bath. I smelled vanilla and wanted to nibble on you."

"You did?"

"Yes, right from the start."

"You did a pretty good job of hiding it," she complained.

"I didn't think I did."

"You kept me guessing."

And suffering. Oh, she'd suffered for him. But now she was in his arms. She kissed him, a soft, lingering, heated kiss, and ran her hands down his arms, down his sides, thinking to...

"What's this?" she asked. Her hand was on his right side, just above his hipbone. There was a raised ridge of skin she vaguely remembered finding earlier, when she'd been too interested in other things to ask.

He went still, staring into her eyes. "Old wounds."

She eased away to sit beside him, holding the sheet to her and looked. There was a ragged scar along his side just below his waistline, obviously old, but long, and she would have bet the cut had been deep.

She traced it with her fingertips. He was hardly breathing. "A knife?"

He nodded gravely.

"The guy who... the one you..."

"The one I killed." He said the words for her. "Did you forget, Emma? Forget who you were with? What I've done?"

"I know what you've done." She took his chin in her hand, making him look at her, when she knew he didn't want to. "I've always known. Do you?"

"Of course I do. There's not a day that goes by..."

"I'm not sure you do know. Joe told us the guy who jumped you had a knife. It looks like he used it on you. This is from him, isn't it?"

Rye nodded.

"It must have been bad." She turned her attention back to the scar, because it was easier to see this than the look on his face.

"Especially when they came into the treatment room in the infirmary and told me he was dead."

Emma shuddered at the thought of that awful day, mostly of what might have been. "And what do you think would have happened if you hadn't fought so hard that day? Do you ever think about that?"

"Morgan would still be alive. I wouldn't have spent years behind bars."

"Or you would have been dead," she said matter-of-factly.

Rye's gaze locked on to hers.

"Surely you've thought about that," she said, but she could see that he hadn't. "Rye, it's one of the first things they told us in the self-defense classes I took after that mess with Mark. If you're going to fight back, you've got to be willing to hurt the other person. You can't be squeamish about it, because if you go at it halfway, you're just going to make them madder. They're just going to hurt you even more. You have to hurt them enough to give yourself the time you need to get away."