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Mac rose from his hammock chair, his smile easy but his eyes showing his concern, and she knew she wasn't masking her feelings well enough. He touched her face, curling a loose auburn strand back behind her ear, brushed his lips across hers. She fought back the urge to devour that firm mouth, to press her nose against him and just inhale all of him into her.
"Good day?" he asked, pulling off his wire-framed reading glasses, a very sexy accessory she hadn't even known he used until she had moved in here six months ago to oversee every halting and occasionally harrowing step of his return to health.
During that period, Violet learned that time could be slowed down and valued, one tick of the minute hand after another. Insurance and the same family trust fund that had paid for her Stealth paid for a home nurse when he was allowed to leave the hospital, but she took over the evening shifts, effectively moving into his home.
Boscoe staked out a spot on the sofa and became Mackenzie's watchdog when she wasn't around. She planted mums by his door in the fall, set a poinsettia on the kitchen table at Christmas and held Mac's head in her lap when he fell asleep on the sofa at nine-thirty on New Year's Eve night.
There were many times that the powerful man she loved had been filled with rage at the weakness that barely got him to the bathroom on his own. When it got to be too much, he took out that anger on her, the nearest target. In return, her fear would goad her to tear his ass apart verbally when he did too much and wore himself out.
But then one day the tide turned, and she saw him start to grow stronger. He began to do desk work for his job, investigative work, and returned to working out with weights to build up a body that had gone lean and gaunt from the months of recovery. She would come home and find him sweating and tired, but with a triumphant gleam in his eyes that told her he was getting better.
They made love several times then, carefully, gently. But she was afraid to do more, demand more. Over the nine months it took him to recuperate, D/s was an area they did not touch. He had reclaimed the bracelet, asked for it the moment they would let him wear jewelry in the hospital again, but she had not moved to reclaim the rights that went with it.
She couldn't initiate it. She didn't know why, because she knew the longing was still there in her, but she had no emotional strength to face what it was that was keeping her from going there with him. When they made love, she sensed a hesitance in him, as if he was waiting for something from her, but she turned away from it, squelched it with the passion of vanilla lovemaking, and stopped the topic from coming up.
"Good enough," she responded, taking a seat across the side table from him, close enough that they could link hands as they always did, establishing a loose connection. He poured her a glass of wine, and then he surprised her by bending over, untying the canvas sneakers she'd changed into before she came home, and took them off her feet, his hands gently taking her feet up to his lap to massage them.
"Mmmm." She made the casual noise of pleasure, but her gaze was riveted on the way those long-fingered hands moved over her arches, caressed her toes. The way his T-shirt stretched over his shoulders as he bent to remove her shoes. "We stopped a car carrying a kilo of coke this afternoon, but they're trying to get off on a technicality. You heard about that?"
"On the radio." He nodded at the police issue he kept just inside the door of the house. "Caught the tail end of it when I got home. George was an idiot, searching the car the way he did."
"So do you think we have a chance of making the bust stick?"
As he gave her his opinion, she put her lips to the glass, let her eyes fall shut. That deep, melodic voice, the joy of being able to listen to every syllable, set off an odd trembling deep in her stomach, a need so strong it spread through her limbs.
She didn't know when the words disappeared. His voice just became the music her soul yearned to embrace, to compose the right notes to make their songs come together again, as easily and beautifully as they had before.
His hands touched her face, and her eyes jerked open. She stared at him, leaning over her, and he lifted his hand, showing her the tears from her eyes wetting his fingers. He studied her, and she saw something in his expression, something that made the ache spread.
"I'll go check on--"
"No, you won't. Come here, sugar," he murmured.
Before she could object, he had his arms around her and he pulled her over onto his lap, cradling her. She knew he had built up his strength again, but it was surprising to feel how much, because she hadn't availed herself of it. For so long, she had been focused on the areas of his health that needed bolstering. Her body tightened in need and want in a way she had not permitted it to do for some time.
"Let it go, Violet," he said softly against her hair. "I swear to God, if you don't, I'm going to slap you around."
She shoved against him, trying to get away, and he simply yanked her back. She struck at him, and he blocked her, captured her arms proving without a doubt he'd regained his physical supremacy over her. She punched and pummeled, shouted at him, and he hung on grimly, until words became curses and curses became tears.
At last, when Mac thought he was going to have to shake it out of her, great racking sobs tore out of her chest. She collapsed against him, too exhausted to fight anymore. Thank God.
It was the hardest she'd ever cried in her life, Mac was sure. What was more, he knew the cause of every single tear that dampened his shirt front.
For nine months, he had watched her suppress every tear, every complaint, e
very worry for him behind an inhuman level of energy focused on making him better. Now, at last, she cried for each awful moment since that terrible night in the dungeon. For every time she'd been vicious to him to make him take his medications. Every countless instance she'd bullied, coaxed or teased him into resting so he wouldn't kill himself with the frustration of inactivity. All the times he'd felt her lie awake for hours next to him, barely breathing herself as she'd kept a hand on his chest. Her terror that he would leave her in the night had been a palpable thing. Too weak to hold her or comfort her, at times he'd wished he could die, just so he wouldn't cause her such pain.
But she wouldn't let him, and he learned that a person could love too much. She had shut down her own emotional and physical needs so effectively that she didn't know how to get them started up again. Him going back to active duty had been the catalyst for her deteriorating temperament, the reason as obvious to him as it was incomprehensible to her. Well, he was better now, and he wasn't having any more of this bullshit.
She had soaked his T-shirt. When she ran out, ran down to hiccupping sobs, he removed the garment so her cheek wouldn't be against the wet. He used a dry portion of the cloth to wipe her running nose, dab at her eyes. She watched him as he did it, her beloved face confused and young. Pushing her head back beneath his chin, he coaxed her into nestling her cheek against his bare skin.
They quietly watched the sun go down. He didn't say anything, simply stroked her back, her neck, her hair. Her hand crept over the scar on his belly, her other palm around his back, on the marks of the lash that would always be there.
He lifted his head, brought his hand to her jaw and made her look into his eyes. "It's over, Violet," he said, and his voice was rough. "Don't let it take any part of what we were from us." He caught her hand from his stomach and bit her fingers, not gently. "I'm yours. I never stopped being yours." He kissed her lips, hard, willed her to nip at him as she had done once. When she would have turned her head away, shielding her reaction, he caught her chin in a hard grip, yanked her face back to his. Saw a flash of temper.
"I didn't die, because you ordered me not to. You don't get more 'yours' than that. I wear your collar." He raised his arm, showed the bracelet to her. "Because I want you more than I've ever wanted any fucking thing on earth. So don't deny me any part of yourself, and goddamn it, accept me again. Let me please you, Mistress. Tell me what you want."
Her throat worked, but he didn't see tears. He saw a glimmer of something, something he had hoped to see for nine of the longest months of his life.
