He smiled. If he stared at her much longer they were going back to bed sooner than he’d thought possible. He looked down at the couch. They hadn’t made love here yet. Or on the kitchen table.
“Bryce, I thought you were going to work.”
“You’re distracting me.”
Ciara walked into the living room and stepped between him and the coffee table. She placed one hand on the couch beside him and with the other reached down to feel his cock through his shorts.
“You’re not really distracted.”
“I’m working on it.”
He held his breath waiting for her reaction to the oxygen, but she didn’t say a word. His breath whooshed out and he hauled her down for a grateful kiss. She groped him without mercy. But he couldn’t get a full hard-on yet.
“You really are tired,” she said with concern in her voice and on her face.
“Only for a little while. Are you disappointed?”
“God, no, Bryce! I’m just as happy to be here with you and look at you. And touch you. I love your hair this way.” She ran her hands through the gel-free strands. They’d managed a shower earlier. “It’s such a warm color.”
Bryce pulled her into his lap. Ciara straddled him and he wrapped his arms around her.
“You have such passion,” he said.
“So do you.”
He shook his head. “I feel half alive. I’ve felt that way most of my life.” He took a deep breath of oxygen and looked into her warm brown eyes. “This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to kill me.” Ciara gasped, and he continued. “I’ve run track since boarding school, so when I went to college I wanted to join the fraternity where the track team members belonged. I thought having a common interest would help me fit in with them.
“They seemed to accept me, although I learned later they were only pretending. They thought because I was … dispassionate … that I was a rich snob, and they decided to teach me a lesson that I didn’t belong. They hazed me during fraternity initiation week. They trapped me in a wooden cage, threw it in a nearby lake, and left me there to die. One of them yelled, ‘See if your money can buy you out of that, rich boy,’ as they walked away laughing.”
Ciara gripped his biceps hard, her face pale as she listened to his account.
“I would have drowned. The cage was too heavy for me to lift from inside it. It pushed me under as it sank. I knew the frat boys weren’t coming back to help me.”
“Obviously you escaped.” Her voice was strained.
Bryce nodded. “Paul Ziko saved me. He’d figured out the frat boys weren’t my friends. He led Roger Barrett and Sean Bergman to me, and the three of them pulled me out of the water. I barely knew Paul — we weren’t even friends — but he saved my life.”
“And you’ve remained friends since then.”
“Yeah. You find out who you can trust when your life is in danger. But I also learned that cruel people prey on those who appear weak or vulnerable. I swore I’d never let anybody see me that way again. I’d be strong, and I’d be a winner. But by not showing my emotions on the outside, now I only feel alive on the inside when I’m winning.”
“Bryce, you have plenty of passion inside you. I don’t think anyone’s challenged you outside of the courtroom. You’ve been surrounded by yes men.”
“You’re certainly not one of those.”
“You
need
challenges. You thrive on them. I’ve been good for you that way.”
“You certainly have.” He wanted to ask her then about Steele. Wanted the truth out in the open so they could move forward. But the thought of shattering their idyll made him shudder. He didn’t want this time to end.
Ciara kissed him gently. “Finish your work. I have plans for you later.”
“I’ve got plans for you too.”
“Me first.”
“I always let you come first.”
“Bryce.”
She climbed off his lap and took those long legs out of sight. His lap missed her.
He pulled out files and his notes. He had to have missed something he could twist to his advantage. This box of facts was all he had to work with. There was no more time to investigate, and no opportunity, not while they were hiding. He’d won nearly every case he’d tried in the past few years. This was a case he
had
to win … for the prosecution.
Guilt ate at Ciara as she glanced back once at Bryce before she headed to the spare bedroom where her Internet connection was located. He’d turned his full attention to the Steele files.
Bryce was so careful not to let other people see him use his oxygen or his inhaler, and now she knew why. He didn’t trust other people easily. He feared showing weakness to anyone who might use it against him, as the college fraternity boys had. That he’d felt comfortable enough now in her presence to do so was a declaration of trust.
But his trust was misplaced. She bit her lip. She didn’t want lies between them, not after what they’d shared together. Not after he’d confided the hazing to her. She hadn’t found any record of that when she’d researched him, so he’d kept quiet about it. Until he’d told her. She was as bad as the frat boys with their deceit, waiting to trap him and take him down, to use his secrets and his weaknesses against him. She had to tell him the truth. But she wanted one more day with Bryce. This time with him was precious.
Resolved that she’d tell him the truth tomorrow before they returned to Detroit, Ciara turned on her laptop. She’d make the most of the time they had left.
• • •
Two hours of poring through the facts unearthed little that could help Bryce. Frustration ate at him. He didn’t want Steele to own him. Hell, if Bryce could, he’d break Ciara free of Steele and the two of them could run a lot farther than Lansing.
Bryce pushed the box away. Dammit. He must be more tired than he thought because he couldn’t think of a way he could lose. The house was dim outside his pool of light, and quiet. Had Ciara fallen asleep waiting for him? Well he’d just have to wake her. He was up for making love again. He set the oxygen aside feeling energized once more.
He found her in the spare bedroom at her computer. She looked up guiltily at his step and blanked the screen. Every instinct he had roared to life propelling him forward into the room. Anger heated his skin and sped his pulse. He reached over her shoulder and jabbed the screen back on. He expected to see an e-mail from Steele or something else incriminating.
Instead he found … “Personal lubricants?” He felt shell-shocked.
Ciara’s color was high. “I’m a little dry. I wanted to see what we could use. I didn’t want you to know, to think less of me.”
He caged her in her chair. “Ciara, I don’t think less of you. How could I when it’s my fault? If you can’t make love — ”
“No! Bryce, I want to. There’s something we can do to make it easier, even with a lubricant. It says so in this article.”
“Anything.”
She licked her lips. Her pulse point in her throat was jumping madly. “Bryce, we can make love without a condom. I’m clean, and I’m on the pill, I swear it.”
Not use a condom? He’d never done that. Bryce stepped away from her and sank onto the spare bed, staring into her dark eyes. He rubbed his palms on his shorts. He’d never taken chances, not with his health, and not with bringing a child into the world like that. Ciara was asking him to take a chance on her, to trust her. Hadn’t he just thought the worst when she blanked her computer screen? He didn’t trust her about Steele.
But he trusted her with his body. He’d come to Lansing, to her home, and made love to her. He’d fallen asleep in her arms. She didn’t lie to him with her body. And he’d told her his biggest secret. That took even more trust.
Thinking about making love to her stirred his cock to life once more. He wanted to feel the moist warmth of Ciara’s body on his sensitive flesh, wanted it so much he was aching hard that fast.
Ciara had waited. She seemed to know when he needed to think about things. Now she asked, “Are you clean?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“It says baby oil works, preferably unscented.”
God, the visions that initiated! He licked his dry lips. “Do you have plastic wrap?”
Ciara laughed. “You want to do something kinky?”
“Hell, yes. Where’s the baby oil?”
“In the bathroom.”
“I’ll get it. Bring the plastic wrap. Meet me back here.”
“Not in my bed?”
“If we’re using baby oil, let’s use the spare bed.”
“Right.”
• • •
They met back in the spare bedroom. Bryce was naked, his taut body beautiful in the lamp’s glow. His erection thrust proudly against his abdomen. Ciara’s lower body clenched in anticipation. No matter how many times she saw him naked, she wanted him.
Ciara helped him spread the plastic wrap across the bed. It didn’t want to stay put until they overlapped several sheets. When there was a good-sized rectangle, Bryce squirted baby oil over it.
Gingerly, Ciara climbed onto the plastic, sliding a little on the oil. The plastic crackled as she moved. Bryce climbed onto the bed, and he slid too. An unfamiliar, girlish giggle escaped her lips. They rediscovered one another’s bodies with slippery fingers. And Ciara discovered something else. Bryce could have fun while making love. She didn’t have time to examine the wonder of this unexpected side of him before the need to have him inside of her became critical.
As Bryce fitted himself to her, he paused, “Are you sure?”
She knew what he was asking. She wanted this. “Yes.”
Slowly he slid inside. She felt his warm bare flesh fill her aching need in a delicious glide. The deeper he pushed, the worse the ache became.
He groaned. “Ah, God, it feels good.”
Ciara groaned too. She’d never felt anything so good or so intimate.
They made love with an intensity that belied all the times that had gone before. When they lay panting and trembling afterward, she felt absolutely shaken. She didn’t ever want to make love with any man but Bryce ever again. God, what had she done?
Bryce didn’t want her for a lifetime commitment. He didn’t feel the significance of what they’d done. She hadn’t realized what she’d wanted when she’d asked him to have unprotected sex. Now she did and it rocked her.
Ciara clasped Bryce to her trying not to let him know how desperate she felt.
“Hang on, Ciara. Gimme a minute to recover. Then we’re doing that again.”
Hope rose in her heart. She had the rest of the weekend with him. There was still time.
• • •
Bryce watched Ciara pace the basketball court sidelines yelling instructions and encouragement to the teenaged girls on the church team she coached. She glowed with vitality and happiness.
He’d like to think he’d put that look on her face, him and his lovemaking. But this was Ciara in her element. She
thrived
— it was the only word to describe it. And because of this weekend with her, he was thriving too. He’d never felt so relaxed and yet so alive. And happy.
Ciara called the girls to her and they huddled together while the other church team did the same with their coach. Young faces turned to Ciara like flowers to the sun. Was that the effect she had on him too?
The girls were losing, but not by a large margin. He watched them play with their hearts in it, as Ciara did. The other team was better and Ciara’s girls were outclassed, but that didn’t stop them.
Bryce was one of a handful of spectators, so it was even a greater achievement that the girls played all out with no one to cheer them on.
It was no surprise when they lost, although they bounced on their heels around Ciara like eager puppies. The young black woman, Sonya Harding, who also coached, beamed at the girls. She was hugely pregnant and unable to do more than waddle slowly on the court. The cacophony of high-pitched voices carried them out of the church’s gymnasium into the hot summer day.
The girls drifted away one by one, some walked home, and some were picked up in cars, and a few went home with one of the spectators. Then it was just Sonya and the two of them.
“Ciara, I’m so glad you came.” Sonya clasped Ciara’s hands. “And not just so I could sit down during the game.”
“Not much longer,” Ciara said.
“No, thank the Lord. And thank goodness we’ve only got one game left. This heat is murder.”
“I can’t promise I’ll make the next one, but I’ll try.”
“Bless you. You two have a safe drive back.” Sonya gave them a knowing look. “It was nice to meet you, Bryce.”
“Same here, Sonya.”
As they drove back to Ciara’s condo, Bryce mentioned as casually as he could, “I never thought about coaching young people before. I’ve been a runner for years, so I could probably coach track.” He waited to hear what Ciara said.
She glanced at him. “I find it very rewarding, especially working with underprivileged kids. You probably would too. All some of them need is encouragement.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought when I was watching your team play. There must be young runners who need guidance. I’m a winner. I’m sure I could teach others to win.”
“I’m sure you could.” Ciara studied the road for a long moment. “I could help you improve your basketball skills. One on one is a good way to stay in shape. Almost as good as running.”
Bryce observed her while she watched the road. It was between them, the unspoken knowledge that he probably would never run again. But his heart didn’t speed up in fear and panic as it had in the hospital, because she was offering him energetic alternatives that would help him return to being healthy and strong.
She’d shown him this weekend that he’d lost nothing of his male potency. Now she’d shown him she didn’t think of him as a victim. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
“Thank you. I’d like that.”
When they returned to her condo they made love slowly and with poignancy. This was their last night together. Who knew what tomorrow might bring? Bryce didn’t want this time with Ciara to end — the sharing and the knowing he wasn’t alone. He needed this.
Even if it wasn’t real.
“Let’s go out to dinner,” Ciara suggested afterwards.
“I like having you to myself.” He didn’t want the outside world to intrude again.