Worth The Wait: A Nature Of Desire Series Novel (53 page)

* * *

F
our days later
, they let him come home. Julie had been as glad as Des was to be back in his bed. And, as much as she’d enjoyed his reaction to her surgical gown gift, she was happy to have him back in his jeans and T-shirts. Though it might be a while before he did handstands on a roof again, she was okay with that.

Des’s post-surgical instructions forbade him from lifting anything heavier than a cinder block for several weeks, or exerting himself too strenuously, so he coordinated his roofing jobs by phone and very brief visits out to job sites. He had good people working for him, so his income didn’t suffer.

While he hadn’t lied to her when he told her he had few expenses, Julie had learned his medical insurance, available to him only because he paid a high premium and maintained a sizeable deductible, didn’t cover everything, like the expensive pump supplies. He’d learned to keep all his other bills low to meet those costs.

Yet like her, there wasn’t much he needed in life except the pleasure of day-to-day living. He was at least able to minimize the doctor visits he disliked so much, because with Betty nearby, the nurse handled a lot of the follow up monitoring that would have been done in an office, including staying alert for any warning symptoms of rejection.

Julie had one-heart stopping night when she rolled over and discovered he had a fever. In a blink, she’d concocted all sorts of emergency scenarios involving organ rejection or life-threatening infection, but it turned out to be fine. Over his protests, she’d woken Betty to check on him. After a brief interrogation, the nurse learned he’d let some of his Type I kids come visit him and meet her horses the day before, and Justice had a cold.

Betty designated Des the stupidest man alive—which she said was a very notable distinction, since anything with a penis was incurably stupid—and determined he’d simply caught the boy’s bug. He’d been relegated to bed and chicken soup for the next three days under the pain of her wrath.

For the time being, Des was supposed to minimize contact with immune system risk factors, like groups of children. Julie knew that, but she’d been at the theater when he’d decided to invite the kids over, so she hadn’t been able to run interference. Not that it would have helped much, since Des was getting more recalcitrant with every passing day. Whereas he’d take a certain amount of mothering from Betty, he tolerated zero levels of it from Julie.

However, though Betty was scathing in her discussion with him, she’d called Julie later to give her some even-handed advice. “He’s going stir crazy. Once the cold passes, if he’d be a help to you at the theater and no one there is an adolescent petri dish, see if he’d like to go to work with you.”

Julie hadn’t attempted to snow him as to her reasons. She simply asked him if he’d like to come with her to the theater to get out of the house. With a searching look, he accepted.

It turned out to be the best solution for all of them. Not surprising to her, he was a big help, and it came at an opportune time. Lila’s play had opened and run with better than decent ticket sales for all showings. Harris and Madison had picked up the extra slack and made it happen while Julie’s care and attention were focused on Des.

Audience reception was so strong to
Done Right
, they decided to ride its momentum. The next production they’d planned had hit a scheduling hitch, so they bumped it further down the schedule and decided to do a follow up play Lila had already written, set in the same world.

Julie was pleasantly surprised to find Des was willing to do anything needed to help, even mundane clerical tasks. One day he sat with her at a table in the front row, assembling promo packets for her student volunteers to pass out at the area colleges, local community organizations and anywhere else potential audience members would be. As she’d sat across from him, working on her computer and emailing press releases to the local news outlets, she’d secretly watched and savored his efficient way of working while he bantered with the tech repairing a couple of lights along the stage edge.

Lila was directing this play as she had the first, with heavy support and guidance from Harris and Julie. During rehearsals, Des provided good input to her on how the Dom/sub dynamics would come across to an audience. He also supervised volunteers on scene building—after Julie made it clear she would eviscerate anyone who let him do anything he shouldn’t.

He didn’t appreciate such overprotectiveness and was quick to inform her of it, not always in kind terms. She understood there was a line he didn’t care for their relationship to cross, but she also couldn’t help caring about him and being protective. Fortunately, through their arguments, they learned to understand one another somewhat better.

“You’re not going to get to be bossy much longer,” he warned her in a lighter moment. “You’ll be back at my mercy and then I’ll make you sorry.”

“Yes, I’m a terrible girlfriend for looking out for you,” she retorted. Yet she longed for that time as much as he did.

However, his recuperation period brought a bolstering reassurance about the substance of their relationship. While she’d never thought it was based only in sex and BDSM, before his surgery those things had been new and exciting enough to overshadow learning other things about one another.

He didn’t care much for TV, but they both loved good films. He liked
Fast and Furious
type action films, while she was a classic film buff. They found common likes in older movies such as
Forrest Gump
and
Regarding Henry
. They also enjoyed choosing the worst of the B flicks—double ZZ basement finds, as Des called them—to dissect over popcorn.

They returned to Daniel Stowe gardens and wandered the trails, enjoying the flowers, sitting by the water and talking about everything. They never ran out of topics, though she equally liked their comfortable silences. One night when Betty deemed he was doing well enough to be out in a crowded environment—and he was chafing too much at the prolonged restrictions to keep him at home—they joined Logan, Madison, Troy and Shale at a karaoke bar and each tried out the mic, with hilarious results.

Though Des tired out before midnight, he tipped his chair against the wall behind him and enjoyed watching the others. She leaned against him, hand lightly on his thigh, and feeling glad to be there with him.

They talked about deeper things, too. Elaine, his mother, her relationship with Thomas and Marcus. When her friends had headed back to their North Carolina house after the surgery, Thomas had told her they’d be there for at least a month. She knew there were plenty of good doctors to handle his follow up in New York, so she suspected they were staying close in case anything came up with Des. She appreciated it, even as she hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

The one thing she and Des didn’t talk about much, though Julie knew it was on both of their minds, was the future. A healthy kidney like Thomas’s might last Des eleven years, but she worried about when it would give out. At that point, he might be on dialysis permanently. But that was the future, and he wouldn’t let her talk about it, not now. As his strength returned, he had other priorities in mind. One night, he let her know it in unmistakable terms.

* * *

“
I
t’s a full moon tonight
,” he mused, looking at the play of its light coming through the window, creating a silvery-white beam on the bedspread. Julie lay in his arms, a luxury during his healing that was becoming blissfully routine again. Her fingertips slid over his bare chest and he turned his head to nuzzle her temple. There was a different quality to the caress, more firm, questing, and she drew in a breath as he moved down to her cheek, nudging her jaw so she lifted her chin and he kissed her throat. Her arms wound over his shoulders, fingers sliding through his hair.

“Des…”

“Love the way you say my name like that,” he murmured. "Look at me.”

She lifted her head to meet his gaze as his fingers took over from his mouth, stroking her throat, tracing her collar bone, his palm moving over her heart and holding there, a pressure that made her aware of her heartbeat and the sudden concentration in his brown eyes.

“For just a second there, you let it all go. Your body took over, your soul, that submissive side that surrenders to me. It’s time to let the rest go, love.”

Her brow furrowed and he shook his head. “Do you have to talk about how you breathe? No,” he answered the obvious question. “Because you just do it. I told you from the beginning, I’ve carried this with me my whole life. I live the best way I can to ride the train as long as possible. I don’t want to miss a bit of the scenery because I’m too focused on where the train will end up. I need you to do that, Julie, now more than ever. Your worry is killing me.”

She was wearing a silky baby doll that he’d talked her into buying and wearing to bed, with the droll observation,
“Just because I can’t use my cock right now doesn’t mean I don’t like to keep it entertained.”
He slid the thin strap off her shoulder so he could finish his caress of her collar bone to the point of her shoulder unimpeded. He brushed his knuckles over her breast, teasing the ripe curve. His heated eyes remained on hers.

“When I see you worrying, I worry about you, and all this scenery gets ruined for both of us. If this is going to work, you have to enjoy the train ride with me and not get bogged down. Sounds selfish of me to demand that, I know, but if you can do that, I promise that attitude will take us both to a better state of mind. A synergistic reaction like some other things we enjoy. Hmm?”

She smiled tentatively, through a swirl of reaction from his touch. It made sense, didn’t it? After all, yes, she could lose him, but he could lose his life. If he could figure out how to handle that reality without being obsessed with it, so could she.

“I’m just new to it,” she said. “I can do it. I just need practice.”

“I can help with that.” His mouth curved, and he placed her in the full block of moonlight. “Lift up.”

When she complied, he put a pillow under her back, making a tempting bridge of her body. Her heartrate kicked up. Being around him on a normal day was like being around an aphrodisiac. Since he’d started to regain his strength, they’d made a concerted effort to ignore their smoldering chemistry, but his expression said he planned to turn up the heat.

“Take off the gown and the panties. I want to see my sub.”

She complied. She didn’t want to fall back into worry so readily, but he wasn’t yet cleared to have sex. Was he planning on pushing that envelope? Would she be able to deny him?

“Ssshh. Your thoughts are making a racket,” he chided her. “I want to watch you, love. And we’re going to do it my way.”

He left the bed, a visual gift in his loose pajama bottoms and nothing else. He’d lost some muscle tone and weight, but not much, his lean torso as wiry and interesting to her as it had ever been. The surgical scar still gave her heart a little jump. Reaching out, she grazed her fingertips over his flank as he bent over his dresser.

He turned, holding a handful of rope. “Lace those wandering hands behind your head. I’m turning you into my own personal pin-up.”

He tied her wrists and fingers above her head. Running the ropes over her butterfly spread elbows and upper arms, he did an elaborate breast harness that constricted and lifted the curves, putting them on lush display for his avid gaze. Next he brought the ropes beneath her, through her thighs. He spread her knees, bent and tied them in the same butterfly shape, giving her a true hourglass look. He did an elaborate rope harness over her pelvis with more slender rope.

When he was done, he hooked his fingers in the slim rope, stroking the small knots over her clit and labia, watching the way she squirmed, lifted, undulated. He’d left her enough movement to be a man’s wet dream, struggling and quivering, her limbs, breasts and hips bathed in moonlight. Her throat arched and her wet lips parted.

“Des,” she pleaded as he put his fingers inside her. His jaw was tight, his gaze relentless, that shift that let her into the darkest room of his soul. It was a dungeon where he wanted to possess her completely, take her to this.