Page 12 of Coming Undone
“But I’ve been imagining what it would be like to find you again for almost a whole year. I didn’t just decide to show up and see you last week. I’ve analyzed it from every angle. It’ll be okay if we don’t think for a little while.” She dipped a hand beneath his shirt, smoothing her fingers up the side of his chest and running them down his back.
His muscles danced beneath the caress, responding to her touch in a way that made her want to feel more of him.
“But I haven’t had that much time.” He reached beneath her and tugged out the white t-shirts she’d been wearing, untwining them from her hair. When he freed the cotton, he laid the fabric over her sensitive breasts.
“I thought you were on board with this idea?” Worry niggled at the back of her brain. She let go of him to clutch the material to her chest.
“I am.” He rested his elbows on the couch beside her. “You have no idea how much I’m on board. But I don’t want to mess things up.”
“It seemed to me like things were going really well.” Her skin still burned where he’d touched her, her lips swollen from his kiss.
He stroked her hair where it lay tangled on one shoulder.
“But you’re in a better position to judge than me. You came here talking about healing and lost mojo, so I know some things have gone wrong for you. But it’s been a long time since we’ve been together, so I’m not sure what that means.”
The fire inside her cooled in a hurry. She edged back on the sofa, scrambling to sit up straighter, one arm still clinging to that shirt in front of her.
“The whole world knows things have gone wrong for me, Danny. I didn’t think I needed to spell it out.” The abduction and the aftermath were the last things she wanted to talk about now. Hadn’t she just got done thinking her past wasn’t going to rob her of another minute? “If you want the full story, I poured my heart into an account of my experiences in the book. Too bad the media decided I was ‘selling out’ my captivity experience to make a buck and panned it before half of them even read it.”
“I’ve always wondered if you held anything back in the book. If they hurt you – if you were sexually assaulted – I need to know.” His voice hitched when he asked, the small slice of emotion touching her more deeply than anything they’d done together so far.
He tugged a blanket off the back of the couch and covered her with it, gently tucking the edges around her.
“No.” She shook her head. “I was honest in my written account of the experience. The people who held me were too emotionally devastated to abuse me like that. Actually, they weren’t bad people in the first place. They were just… grieving. As helpless as me in a lot of ways. They didn’t even know they’d have to keep Christina and I in their home all that time. The family thought that after they kidnapped us, the rebel forces would come and take us away, but they never did. Later, some military officials told us they guessed the forces were just too thin to come back for us, which I thank God for.”
Finally, the family released them six weeks later, once they’d made plans to relocate their sons to relatives in the south of the country where they would be safe from retaliation.
“Me too.” Danny shook his head. “Sorry to bring that up now, Steph. But thank you for telling me.”
“That’s okay.” She folded her legs under her, retreating from him. “As long as we’re talking about that, is there anything else you’d like to know?”
“Honestly? Yeah. What happened after you came home?” He rose up off the floor to sit beside her on the couch. Close, but not touching. He stared out at the bay, the sun fully set and the sky streaked with red in its wake. “I wrote to you. Called you.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t been expecting that. At all. “If you did, I don’t remember. I changed phone numbers frequently to avoid – everyone. After the book came out, I hired an agency to deal with the letters because there were a lot of irrational accusations about not being supportive of the war or using the war to further a media agenda.” She waved away the memories because they were still painful, half wondering if her former boyfriend Josh had ever seen a communication from Danny. It was his job to go through the letters, after all.
Would it have made him jealous? Or had the agency merely discarded the communication, deeming it too personal? “I still receive hateful letters, in fact. But I’m sorry if I missed a note from you. I was in a dark, miserable place.”
Danny’s chest tightened to think she’d been harassed.
He’d waited a whole year after she’d been released to try contacting her, knowing she’d need time to recover. Besides, he’d been in training for his first assignment and then he’d been on board the USS Brady, working long hours thousands of miles from home. It hadn’t occurred to him the fallout from the book she’d written would bring her so much grief.
“I understand. I just wondered.” Danny had read the book she written but he didn’t think he could talk about her abduction experience now without giving away how much he’d fallen for her five years ago or that he’d kind of gone off the deep end when she’d been held hostage. “That was part of the reason I was surprised to see you today. Not just that it’s been a long time. I figured you didn’t want anything to do with me.”
She wove her fingers through the fringe on the blanket he’d draped over her. “I’m sure the kisses just now told you nothing could be farther from the truth.”
Glancing his way, she gave him that mischievous smile he was crazy about.
“You did seem awfully agreeable.” He dropped a hand on her knee. She was wrapped in the woven fabric like a cocoon, but he could see the outline of her leg. “I just want to be sure I don’t cross a line and send you running again.”
“You should trust me to know what I can handle.” She toyed with the fringe. In the tent of the blanket she’d made, he could see the tops of her breasts through the gap in the weave since she’d let go of the t-shirt.
“It’s me I don’t trust.” He was seriously pushing his boundaries to look right now. He wanted her in his bed and he wanted her all night long. But no matter what she said about being ready for this, she didn’t have a clue what he wanted from her.
Sexual healing was only the beginning. He was going to show Stephanie that she belonged in his life, safe in his arms, forever.
Chapter Five
Reluctantly, Stephanie retreated to the guest bedroom alone.