Max knelt in front of her. He searched her gaze. “What’s wrong?”
“I was in the car.”
“You remembered your husband.”
She rubbed her eyes. Her fingers shook. “It was only a fragment. It must be because of what you did.”
“I don’t see how. They’re your memories; I can’t put them in your head.”
“You triggered my memories even when I thought you were John. With everything else that’s happened, I haven’t attempted pushing through the block since that morning in the backyard. I should have. If I had, maybe Elizabeth wouldn’t have been hurt.”
He eased her hands from her face. “Delaney, what happened to her wasn’t your fault.”
“We both know it has something to do with me. The answer must be in my head, and I have to get it out. How many more people around me are going to get hurt before I do? I have to remember.”
“If you needed to, you would. The memories seem to come when you’re ready for them.”
“You’re still the key, Max.”
He released her hands and sat back on his heels. “This is sounding familiar.”
She leaned forward, speaking quickly. “We could work together to unlock my memories. We don’t have to leave it to chance. If we consciously combine the power of our minds, who knows what we could accomplish? We’ve only begun to explore what’s possible between us.”
“Nothing’s changed, has it?”
His tone was a dash of ice water. She searched his expression. It was carefully shuttered. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“You get all misty when you talk about what you call our special bond, but when it comes right down to it, you still want to use me.”
“That’s not fair.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “Do I need to repeat the newsflash?”
“Stop acting so cynical. I know that isn’t really you.”
“You don’t want to recognize the real me. You went to a hell of a lot of trouble so you wouldn’t.”
“Max, please.”
“I’ve been up-front about what I want from you. You were at the beginning, too, only I lost sight of that. The first thing you told me when you came back was that you wanted me to help you remember.”
“You refused.”
“Not when you asked for mind sex. I thought I was damn cooperative about getting rid of your inhibitions.”
She swung her legs to the floor and stood. She didn’t speak again until she had put the length of the couch between them. “That was before I understood you were real. We already talked about that.”
“Right.” He pushed himself to his feet. “You’re big on talking. I went along with you on that, too, because it was the only way to get into your pants.”
“This isn’t you, either. You’re a sensitive, kind man. That’s why you gave me the baby swallow. That’s why you opened up about your past. You’ve got a deep well of love inside you, Max, only you’re afraid to let anyone see it. You show how you care in a hundred little ways but you’re afraid to admit it.”
He closed the distance between them in two strides. “Wrong. What I’ve got is a hard-on, and the only thing I want to open is a carton of condoms.”
She stood her ground, even though every muscle was twitching to retreat. She focused on a vein that pulsed in the side of his neck. His heart was beating as fast as hers. “I understand why you try to push me away by talking like this. It’s difficult for you to trust emotions. You’re snarling because you expect to be hurt. I can only hope you’ll eventually believe that I would never betray you. I love you.”
“Just as long as I’m useful.”
“All right, since it’s such a sore point with you, forget about helping me. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’ve got nothing to do with the way my memories return. Maybe it’s a coincidence that it only happens when I’ve been around you.”
“Oh, no you don’t.” He caught her chin. “You’re not backing out now.”
“What do you mean?”
He tipped her face to his. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t try to help you.”
“Then what was all this about?”
“I just want us to be clear where we stand. I’ll give you what you asked for as long as you do the same for me.”
“Which means?”
“An even trade. A
fair
trade. You can use my mind the way you wanted in the first place. In return I get to use your body.”
“But I was willing to give you that without a bargain, Max.”
“No, Deedee, you expected more. I felt the truth last night. I see it in your eyes now. You’re going to keep digging at me because you won’t accept reality. You’re still seeing me as a stand-in for the friend you made up.”
“That’s what this argument is really about. It’s the same one we had here a week ago. You’re worried that we’re already too close. Now that I know who you are, you don’t want to let me in, so you’re scrambling to set up new boundaries. You’re afraid of what will happen if we truly do combine our minds, aren’t you?”
The moment stretched. Her challenge hung in the air between them and was reflected back at her from his thoughts. Emotions she couldn’t name flashed in his gaze until one rose to conquer the rest. Hunger. He ran his thumb over her lower lip. The caress was as gentle as his words had been harsh.
Damn. All it took was one touch to dissolve her pride and her common sense.
Was she doing it again? Was her need to be loved making her blind to this man’s true character? Was she making excuses for Max the same way she’d done for Stanford?
He stepped back and held out his hand. “I don’t want to argue anymore, do you?”
No, she never wanted to argue. She always tried to make peace. Even now, regardless of how coarsely he spoke of it or how determined he was to demean it, she wanted nothing more than to lose herself in the simple bliss of making love with Max.
THE WINDOWS IN THE UPPER STORY WERE TALLER THAN the ones in the ground floor. Max hadn’t switched on a light when he’d guided Delaney up the spiral staircase to the bedroom the night before; the moon had provided illumination enough. With the sunrise, she got a better look at her surroundings. There was no door on the bedroom, just an open archway that led to the landing of the staircase and the huge studio beyond it. The bathroom was angled behind a partition for privacy but it had no door, either. Obviously, Max didn’t like being closed in. The walls that had appeared silver in the dark were revealed to be pristine, unadorned white. The windows themselves provided dramatic rectangles of color, as if the sky was a series of framed paintings.
Aside from the king-sized bed that dominated the space, the only other pieces of furniture in the room were a small table with a lamp and a white enameled wardrobe. The maple plank floor was bare of carpets. The effect wasn’t bleak, though. It was clean and spacious and as peaceful as a blank canvas.
The simplicity made sense. For a man with a mind as powerful as Max’s, he would need to have surroundings like these to enable him to sleep.
Not that they’d done much of that. It had been nearing dawn by the time they’d been too physically spent to stay awake.
She shifted to her side. Though Max’s sheets were luxuriously smooth cotton, the friction from her movement was enough to send a lazy curl of pleasure across her skin. She propped her head on her hand.
Max lay sprawled on his stomach, his cheek flattened to the mattress. One arm dangled over the side of the bed while the other was bent toward his chin. His lips were parted and his jaw was lax with sleep. His eyelids were motionless—he’d told her he seldom dreamed. She knew he wasn’t dreaming now, either, because no whisper of his thoughts touched hers.
He had frequently complained about being woken up by her nightmares. She could see why. He slept like the dead. Still, she had every right to disturb him now, because they’d made a bargain, and he had yet to fulfill his half.
Yet she didn’t want to invite Stanford into this bed. Call it selfish or cowardly or just plain greedy, she didn’t want the past to intrude on the pleasure of the moment. Max had always maintained that burying the past was the only way to be free of it. That must work to some extent. No nightmare troubled his sleep.
Unable to resist touching him, she stroked his hair from his forehead.
His eyebrows drew together in a brief frown, then smoothed out once more.
If she woke him with a kiss, she wouldn’t have to put up with his keep-off growls and his cynicism. Their bodies had no trouble communicating, even without the benefit of joining their minds. She was happy there were no blinds to block the light from his windows. She loved being able to look her fill without their words getting in the way.
Considering the number of occasions they’d been intimate, both in their minds and in the flesh, it was odd that this was the first time she was seeing him naked in full daylight. His physique was truly magnificent. His arms were leanly muscled. The yellowing bruises on his shoulder didn’t detract from his appeal; they made her more aware of his strength. Her gaze skimmed over his back to the tan line at his waist. The edge of the sheet lay low on his buttocks, revealing tiny scratches on the pale skin.
She pushed herself up to regard the marks more closely. The scratches were regularly spaced crescents that could only have been made by her nails.
Her lips twitched with a rush of purely female satisfaction. She had marked him. Never before in her life had she been that carried away by passion. Then again, as she’d already told Max, no lover could compare to him. She regarded his back. No red marred the skin there. Instead, it was crossed by lines of white.
White. Her smile vanished. She focused more closely.
They weren’t scratches; they were scars.
Her own back contracted with agony. It lasted less than a heartbeat. It left her shaking.
“Oh, Max,” she whispered. She lifted her hand, letting her palm hover above his skin as if she could draw out his pain, but the physical pain would be long gone.
She knew about scars, and these weren’t recent. It took years for scar tissue to whiten completely, decades for it to smooth out to the extent these scars had. Some were mere threads of white a few inches long. Others were narrow ribbons where wounds had pulled apart before they had healed. Aside from a short, raised ridge beneath his shoulder blade, they lay flat, almost completely incorporated into the plane of his skin. These must be from wounds he’d received in his childhood.
Why hadn’t she noticed them before?
Because it had been dark when he’d been naked. Because he’d kept his shirt on when there had been light. And mostly because she’d been too caught up in her own pleasure, too focused on her own hang-ups and neuroses and needs, to take a really good look at the man she claimed she knew.
But she should have guessed. An abuser as vicious as Virgil Budge wouldn’t have limited himself to one victim.
She leaned over to kiss the raised scar on his shoulder blade. A parallel scar lay below it. A few of the other lines were in pairs, too, as if they’d been inflicted by . . . She closed her eyes as her mind filled in the rest. He’d said his mother had been strangled with a belt.
Oh, Max.
He stirred beneath her at the same time his thoughts responded to hers. He rolled over, looped his arm around her back, and pulled her sleepily to his chest.
She crawled on top of him, spreading her arms and legs as if she could shield him with her body. His mother had lied at his trial, but her betrayal had begun far earlier than that. She hadn’t protected her child from a monster. Delaney pictured the boy he used to be, his eager smile, his patience and kindness and generosity . . . and his too-big clothes that had covered the brutality he kept secret even now.
Her lungs heaved.
Max!
“You’re way ahead of me,” he murmured. He grasped her hips and moved her in a slow circle, angling himself to meet her. “Give me a minute to catch up.”
“I saw what he did.”
“Hell, you’re not remembering stuff now, are you?”
“I’m not talking about Stanford. I meant your stepfather.” She kissed his neck. “He’s the one who gave you those scars, isn’t he?”
He went still.
“You must have known I would see them. Why didn’t you tell me all of it?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter? I’d say it’s a major factor when you’re talking about your life.”
“That part of it is over.”
“I’m sorry, Max. I’m so sorry. You were right. I’ve been too obsessed with remembering my own past when I should have been thinking of yours.”
“This is why I didn’t tell you. I don’t want to remember mine. And I don’t want your pity.”
“I don’t pity you. I admire you.”
“There’s nothing admirable about being a drunk’s whipping boy. It didn’t require any special talent.”
“You don’t realize how exceptional you are. The more I learn about you, the more I understand why I love you so much.”