ELEVEN
THE arrival of the coffee and croissants a moment or two after Zeke had demanded she talk to him delayed the inevitable by a few minutes. Melody didn’t want to eat or drink, but she did both to gain a few precious get-your-facts-straight moments. The coffee was too strong, and the croissant she forced down didn’t sit well with Mabel’s bacon sandwich, and when she had finished Zeke’s eyes were still waiting for her to begin.
Her heart was thumping in her chest, staccato-beating in her ears, because she knew she had to get this right. She had to make him understand why everything she had done since the accident was wrong. All her past had come together when she’d woken up in that hospital bed, and from that moment she had been in a vacuum of fear and confusion, sucked into a dark and terrifying merry-go-round of hopelessness.
She cleared her throat. ‘I haven’t been thinking clearly over the last weeks.’ To give him his due, he didn’t raise his eyebrows in the quirky, sarky way he did sometimes. Neither did he make any of the hundred and one responses he could have made in the circumstances. He simply sat looking at her. She didn’t know if that made it easier or harder.
‘I’ve realised this—my freaking out in the hospital and asking you for a divorce and everything—is because…’ She paused and swallowed hard. ‘I was frightened you wouldn’t want me any more now I’m— I’m disfigured.’ She rushed on quickly before he could speak. ‘Not that you have ever done or said anything to make me think that way. I know it’s me. Mabel—the lady I met today—said I was letting fear rule me, and she’s right. It’s just that I know you appreciate grace and beauty more than most. Partly due to your—your beginnings and everything, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But—but I’ll never dance again. I’m…different now.’
‘Sweetheart, your legs were messed up. I know that’s one hell of a big deal for you, because dancing is your life, but I can help you through it. This doesn’t have to be the end of using the fantastic gift you’ve been given, just rechannelling it. I’ve got a couple of ideas about that, but they can wait. The main thing I have to convince you of right now is that your grace and beauty has never depended on your dancing. You are grace and beauty. Those qualities are in every word you speak, the way you are, every look and movement you make. The lorry couldn’t take them away from you, don’t you see? You’re my sweet, generous, incomparable baby—my darling, my love.’
She was falling apart, her eyes blinded by her tears, and when he took her in his arms again she fell against him, needing his strength and security as never before as she sobbed against his broad chest.
‘What?’ He bent his head to her, her incoherent words punctuated by convulsive shudders. ‘What did you say?’
‘I—I—’ Melody made a huge effort and sat up, taking the handkerchief he gave her. ‘I don’t see how you can think of me in that way. It’s like you’re talking about someone else.’
‘Then you’ll just have to take it on trust until I can convince you,’ he said softly. ‘And if it takes a lifetime I’ll do it. You’re mine, Dee, every bit as much as I am yours. You are the only person I could have possibly ended up with, and if we hadn’t met—if we’d missed each other somehow—I’d have gone on as I was. Happy in a way, fairly okay with myself, but with a huge reservoir inside me which would have remained untapped. I’ve heard it said that there are several people in the world that someone can love if they meet them, but it’s not that way with me. You saved me. That’s the only way I can put it.’
He had never told her this before—not in so many words—and yet now when she thought about it she realised his whole way with her had demonstrated it from the beginning. She smiled tremulously and blew her nose, shaking back her hair from her damp face, and then lifted one trembling hand to his face. ‘I love you,’ she said very quietly. ‘I always have and I always will. There will never be anyone but you for me.’
He smiled a singularly sweet smile as his hand covered hers. ‘Then there’s nothing we can’t overcome.’
She nodded, relaxing into his embrace as he reached for her but knowing deep inside that she was still frightened by what lay ahead. She hated that she felt that way, but she couldn’t help it.
He tilted her face to meet his, covering her lips in a fierce kiss of such hunger that she immediately responded to the deep, unspoken need. His mouth was still hard on hers as he stood and picked her up in his arms, carrying her into his bedroom as he crushed her against him. Lying her on the bed, he bent and stretched out beside her, but he didn’t immediately begin to undress her or himself, wrapping his arms round her in a gesture intended to comfort as he kissed her again.
The kiss deepened, becoming one of such explosive warmth that sexual feeling flowed through her as hot and smooth as melted honey, and she sighed in pleasure, curving into him as though she would fuse their bodies together. He pulled his mouth away for a millisecond to fill his lungs, and then the sensual onslaught began anew as he tangled one large hand in her hair, continuing the magic of his kisses as his lips travelled over her cheeks, her closed eyelids, the arch of her fine brows before returning to reclaim her mouth once more.
He kissed her for a long time as his hands roamed over her body on top of her clothes, cupping her breasts and shaping the plump mounds with his palms as his thumbs teased her nipples into hard peaks. Winter sunlight spilled onto the bed from the large window, splintered yellow against her closed eyelids which enclosed her in a world of pure sensation.
She was aware of him divesting himself of his clothes, although his mouth barely left hers, and then he expertly removed her top and her lacy bra. His mouth moved from hers, lingering for a moment over her collarbone as his lips stroked the silky skin, and then he reached the soft fullness of her aching breasts.
Melody moaned throatily as his mouth fastened on one erect nipple and he gave it loving attention before moving onto its twin. ‘Exquisite,’ he murmured softly. ‘Such wonderfully large rosy nipples. You taste of molasses and roses, do you know that? Sweet and scented and deliciously ripe. I want to devour you. I can’t get enough of you.’
He continued to please her with lips and tongue until she dug her fingers into his muscled shoulders, murmuring something incoherent even to herself. It seemed impossible so much feeling, such emotion, could be contained in her body without her splintering into a million pieces.
‘I want to kiss every inch of you,’ he whispered, his mouth returning to her lips for a moment. From being fluid she stiffened as she felt him peeling off her leggings and lace panties, but almost immediately he was lying against her again, holding her close so her breasts came into tender contact with his chest. The friction of his body hair against her engorged breasts was tantalising, but reality had caused her to become tense in his arms and she didn’t know how to pretend. She didn’t actively resist him, but the thudding of her heart now had nothing to do with sexual desire and all to do with panic.
He kissed her once more before he said, very softly, ‘Dee? Look at me. Open your eyes. Look at me, sweetheart.’
She couldn’t. Ridiculous, but she couldn’t. She was too terrified of what she might read in his face. Kindness and pity would be worse than distaste.
‘Please, sweetheart.’ He stroked a strand of silky hair from her brow. ‘Look at me.’
Slowly she forced her eyes open. He was smiling. Funny, in all her nightmares she hadn’t considered that, but she might have known Zeke would surprise her.
‘The worst is over,’ he said, sheer love shining from his eyes. ‘You’ve faced your fear and now we move on. You won’t believe you’re more beautiful and desirable to me than ever for a while. I understand that. But your scars aren’t ugly to me, darling. They remind me I’m the luckiest man in the world, because I came close to losing you and I was spared the unthinkable. I couldn’t have gone on without you. I know that.’
Her eyes traced the contours of his face, taking in the velvet black eyes, the sloping lines that created his firm mouth, the straight solid shape of his nose. She searched each feature, looking for the barest hint of disgust but there was none. He was just her Zeke, her babe. She had always called him that, babe, although she didn’t know why. She had certainly never felt inclined to do the same with anyone else.
Her hands had been knotted against his chest, but now they slowly uncurled as he kissed her again, his tongue rippling along her teeth until she opened to him. He wrapped the long swathe of her strawberry-blond hair around his fingers, tilting her head back slightly as he ravaged her mouth. Each movement he made exploded more desire in her veins, radiating throughout her body with a drowsy warmth that was voluptuous and sensual. She had missed him. She had missed him so much, the longing for his presence and body so intense she’d had to shut it out of her consciousness or go mad with the need. But now there was no need to fight the passion and love and desire. She could give in to those deepest inner needs.
She closed her eyes, curving into his hard male frame and sighing with sheer ecstasy as she drifted off into a place of bliss.