The Vixen and the Vet (22 page)

“They’re beautiful,” he whispered.

“They’re just brown …
ahhhh,” she moaned as he pulled out and pushed forward again. She panted, a sexy moan at the end of each breath. “… eyes.”

“They’re yours,” he said, feeling the gathering inside, feeling his self-control coming to an end, as he thrust into her again, gaining momentum. “Which means they’re mine.”

“Yours,” she murmured against his lips, and he plunged his tongue into her mouth, the rhythm mimicking the rhythm of his hips.

When he drew back, she whimpered.

“Come with me, darlin’,” he urged her. “Come again.”

He felt her tighten up that much more at his command, squeezing him, gasping into his mouth before throwing back her head as her body writhed and trembled in ecstasy. He watched her face with wonder, reaching for the back of her neck and pulling her limp, shuddering body against his as he rocked into her one final time. His feelings of possession and belonging, of wanting and loving, pushed him over the edge of reason, and he cried out, “I love you!” into the damp skin of her neck before collapsing on top of her in a tangle of limbs and requited longing and love.

Savannah ran her fingers over the smooth, hot skin of his back, coming down from her high, loving the weight of Asher’s body covering hers, loving that he was still inside her. For so long she’d felt alone—a
n ambitious girl in a small southern town, a Virginia country girl in New York, a hardheaded Northerner in Virginia. Here, with Asher, she was just Savannah, a girl who loved a boy, a woman who loved a man, a person who was loved completely. And that’s exactly how she felt with him: complete. Finally whole.

“Asher,” she said near his ear, wanting to tell him, wanting him to know that she’d been only half a self before finding him.

He stirred, starting to move away. “Am I crushing you?”

“No.” Her fingers stilled, and she pushed down on his back, wrapping her ankles around his legs. Flexing her internal muscles, she felt him hardening again. “Stay for a minute more.”

He relaxed, dropping his weight back on her. His arms dropped to either side of her head, where his elbows rested by her ears. He reached up to brush the tendrils of hair from her forehead, looking into her eyes.

“Savannah,” he said, quietly, seriously. “What if I needed to be here longer? In Maryland?”

“You mean go home on Monday instead?”

He shook his head slowly, focusing on where his fingers touched her tenderly. “No. We’ll go back to Danvers tomorrow, but what if I had to come back here for more than a weekend? And stay for a while?”

She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it, biting her bottom lip in a gesture he recognized as thoughtful but upset. She was sorting this out in her head. “You mean
move
here?”

He nodded, finally looking into her eyes. “Temporarily.”

“For how long?” she asked, moving her hands to his shoulders and pushing gently.

He kissed her forehead and rolled onto his back beside her. She leaned up on her elbow, her cheek against her palm, searching his eyes.

“About six months.”

Her eyes flashed with worry. “Why? Are you sick?”

“No, baby. Oh, no, nothing like that. No, I …” He leaned up on his elbow, mirroring her. “There are more procedures I should have. You know, I haven’t told you a lot about the explosion and … what came after. Are you ready to hear about that?”

She nodded, leaning forward to kiss him. She sensed that this was a turning point in their relationship; this was Asher finally opening up completely, finally telling her the most visceral, most intimate truths of his tragic accident. And suddenly Savannah felt quietly grateful for the timing—that the article had already been sent in—that this part of Asher would always stay safe with her.

“I was always ready, Asher.”

His eyes told her how much he loved her. But she watched as his face hardened bit by bit until a crease formed between his eyebrows.

“Okay. So I told you about the explosion. Hand gone. Ear gone. Part of my face … gone.” He swallowed and clenched his jaw before continuing. “It all happened in a moment, you know? So fast. Some noise. Some dust. And you’re left … destroyed. A monster that makes children cry. A beast that makes grown men cringe and look away in horror.” She started to protest, but he jerked his head no, before giving her a rueful smile. “Not you, darlin’. But everyone else, yes.” He leaned forward and kissed her lips before continuing. “They, um, they’re talking to you to keep you from going into shock while they run an IV line. And then suddenly you’re in a Black Hawk, a helicopter, maybe twenty-five minutes later. You’re not really aware of what’s going on. You’re kind of trying to piece it together. Anyway, they took us—me and Williams and Lagerty—to KAF, to Kandahar, to the hospital there. It’s a NATO hospital, multinational, good trauma center.”

Her eyes filled with tears, which she tried to keep in check, breathing deeply to maintain control. Her heart was breaking for him as his story unfolded, but she didn’t want him to think he was upsetting her. She wanted him to keep talking, but his voice had tapered off, and he appeared to be lost in thought. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his cheek. When she drew back, he looked at her—stunned and stricken—and she worried for a moment that he wasn’t
with
her.

“Asher? Asher?”

He blinked twice, taking a deep breath before launching back into his story. “Anyway, I found out later that it took three hours for them to take my hand off. Amputations are usually faster. It took longer because they wanted to save my elbow and the wound was filthy, covered in dirt and sand and gravel. I’m grateful they saved it.”

He blinked again quickly, breathing heavily through his nose as if to keep from crying.

“Asher,” said Savannah, trying to keep from crying herself, “I’m going to turn around and press up against you. I want you to hold on to me and just keep talking, okay? Just tell me everything you want to, okay?”

Without waiting for him to respond, she shifted in the bed and slid back until she pressed up against the hard, warm skin of his chest. His arm came around her firmly, pulling her against him, and he flattened his palm against her chest, under her breasts.

“Go ahead, Asher.”

“They, uh, they cleaned up my face, but my head was wrapped up. My ear was gone. Part of my cheekbone, part of my upper jawbone, … also gone. I didn’t lose my eyeball
or my sight. That was just luck. They put me into a medically induced coma for the pain, but I never flatlined, even on the way to San Antonio.”

Savannah covered his hand
with hers, squeezing lightly.

“I, uh, spent the next year at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, rehabbing. Mostly my arm. Learning how to make do with one. My lungs had sustained damage too, and I worked them back up. My leg needed work. I had over twenty surgeries on my face, too, just to get it to here. They rebuilt the cheek and jaw as best they could.”

Savannah winced, whimpering lightly as tears streamed down her face, wetting the pillow beneath her head.

“You okay, baby?” he asked.

She squeezed his hand again and nodded.

“You get to a point where you have to decide whether or not you want to live,” he said. “You only have one hand, and your whole body’s a world of pain. And you look in the mirror and you know—” His voice hitched and halted, and he cleared his throat. “You know you’re going to be alone … and that no one is ever going to … no one …”

His breathing was fraught and heavy through his nose again, and Savannah suspected he was crying as hard as she was, so she turned in his arms again, and without looking at his face, she gathered him against her body. Her legs tangled with his, her breasts pressed against his chest, and she rested her lips to the pulse in his throat. His arm tightened around her back, and his shoulders shuddered with quiet sobs.

And then she knew, she realized in startling, terrifying detail, that Asher Lee had had no one to come home to. After years away from Danvers, there was no one left to welcome him home. No loving parents. No friends. No one but an old friend of his grandmother’s, who agreed to come and keep house for him. He’d been utterly alone. He’d had no one left to live for, and yet he’d decided to live.

She kept her arms around his neck as he wept into her shoulder. Her own tears kept up a steady stream as she finally understood the depths of his despair, of his crushing loneliness. It broke her heart. It dented her soul.

How in God’s name had he stayed alive? With no one and nothing to return to? Unless maybe he’d known, somewhere deep and secret inside, that someday she’d come looking for him.

“Asher,” she said, eyes closed, nuzzling his neck lovingly.

“Yeah,” he finally managed, clearing his throat and taking a deep breath.

“You stayed alive, Asher. I think maybe you stayed alive for
me
.”

The impact of her words made him quake in her arms, and he exhaled like the wind had been knocked out of him.

“Breathe,” she ordered, for the second time.

***

Asher took a deep, cleansing breath, bewildered by the wave of feelings that crashed over him as she said the words:
I think maybe you stayed alive for
me
.
Could she possibly understand the barrenness of his life when he returned from the service? There was no one waiting. There would
never
be anyone waiting. Until this beautiful girl came knocking at his door with brownies, wearing her sister’s sundress. Only then had his dormant heart started to beat again.

She was right. He didn’t know it at the time, of course, but she was right. He had stayed alive for her.

“I did. I stayed alive for you. For the dream of you.”

“And now I’m here.”

“And I’m never letting you go,” he said fiercely, his hand moving possessively to her hip, where it lay heavy and insistent.

“Are we going to have this conversation right now?” she asked, letting go of his neck to swipe at the leftover wetness on her cheeks.

He took a ragged breath and sighed. It had tired him emotionally to tell his story. He told it so infrequently, it was exhausting to relive it. But he needed to talk to her about the future. He couldn’t bear not to anymore.

“I think so,” he said, reaching up to trace the side of her face with his fingers.

“Asher, I … I hate this, but … if they offer me the job in Phoenix, I’m taking it.” She said it quickly, like she’d lose her nerve if she didn’t. “It’s my only chance. I have to get back on my feet. I can’t end my career as a failure who got sacked by the
Sentinel
because of that bastard Patrick Monroe. I can’t let him win. I can’t let him be the end. I have to see what the next chapter looks like. I’m sorry, Asher. I’m so sorry. I’ve fallen in love with you, you know that. But I’d never forgive myself if I turned my back on … on …” She couldn’t speak anymore. Tears poured down her face all over again. “I’m n-not a crier.”

“I know you’re not.” He
wiped away her fresh tears with his thumb, loving every cell in her body, every beat of her heart beside him. She was strong and driven and brave, and if she wasn’t all those things, she never would have come looking for him, and he never would have had the opportunity to know her, to love her. “Shhh, baby. Shhh. I’d never ask you to give up on your dreams. Never.”

She threw her arms back around his neck and pressed her lips to his with joy and relief. He swiped his tongue across her lips, and they opened to
him. When he drew back from her, panting and aroused, she wiggled her hips against him.

As much as he wanted to lose himself in her, he needed to be as clear with her as she’d been with him.
Say it, Asher. Say it.

“But I can’t go with you,” he said into her ear. “When I came home, people didn’t recognize me. People still cringe when they look at me. I can’t be with you and look like this.”

“Yes, you can. You can come to Phoenix and live there exactly like you do in Danvers. I don’t care, Asher. I only—”

“No, baby. No. I can’t do that to you.” He licked his lips, holding her watery eyes. “I can’t ask you to hide away from the world with me. It wouldn’t work. I’d eventually get jealous of where you went and who you knew—this whole part of your life that couldn’t include me. And you’d tire of always being at home with me. We’d kill this.”

She sniffled, leaning forward to press her lips to his, and he could taste the saltiness of her tears on his tongue.

“
Please
come with me,” she begged him softly, and it killed him because he’d do anything for her. And for one wild moment, he thought, 
I’ll do it. I’ll sell my house in Danvers, and I’ll buy a house in Phoenix. Screw the operations. I’ll just live as I’ve always lived, with my books and a garden in the backyard. And at the end of every day Savannah will come home to me, and I’ll be waiting. And at the end of the day, she’ll tell me all about the world, and she’ll go to parties and meet people and bring the world to me, and … and …

Huh.
Bring the world to me.
Since when did the world matter so much to Asher Lee? It stopped his train of thought in its tracks and made his thumping heart slow down as he sorted through what he’d just been thinking. The world mattered. Damn it, it did. He missed it. He wanted to be a part of it again. This wasn’t just about Savannah. This was about him too.

“I have to do this,” he whispered. “Not just for you. For me too.”

She leaned back to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“I’m sick of living alone. I’m sick of hiding. I want to go to restaurants. I want to go to the library. I don’t want people staring at me. I think … I mean, I thought I was done with the world,
but I’m not. And I didn’t know that until I met you. I want to live in the world again because of you.”

He remembered the words he’d said to Miss Potts the first day Savannah came to call.
I’m not fit to rejoin the human race.
But now he was. And Savannah had made him want a second chance at living. He searched her face, looking at the slope of her cheeks, the way her lashes fanned them every time she blinked, and thought how terribly he would miss not seeing them every day.