Bold and Brave-Hearted Page 11

  Her eyebrows shot up. “The doctor’s a she, so I doubt there will be any girlie magazines to peruse.”

  “Darn, and I’d been counting on that the whole way here.” He waggled his eyebrows and gave her a lecherous grin across the top of the car.

  Despite her fears, she laughed as she rounded the car and extended her arm for Jay to take, escorting him toward the entrance to the medical building. He was absolutely amazing the way he could defuse her anxiety with a smart-alecky remark or a quip that seemed to come out of nowhere. Kim had the feeling Jay had missed his calling as a stand-up comic but suspected he was much too serious about himself to have chosen that profession.

  WAITING had never been Jay’s strong suit. Listening to the quiet conversation in a doctor’s office, the hushed tones of the woman behind the counter and inhaling the faint scent of antiseptic soap combined with furniture polish was something he could learn to hate.

  He fidgeted in his chair. Hell, he couldn’t even pace the room to reduce his pent-up energy for fear he’d bash into the furniture or fall over a waiting patient. He’d give anything to be able to go for a long run along the beach, assuming he didn’t get lost in the process or break his neck.

  His expensive watch had enough doodads to run a college track meet, none of which he could read, so he didn’t even know how long he’d been waiting, and he was damned tempted to rip off the cover, feel the face and find out what time it was. It felt like an eternity had passed.

  The door to the back room opened with a creak and the air seemed to warm with Kim’s presence like the arrival of the sun after a spring rain. He stood.

  “I’m ready to go.” Her smoky voice was low and taut, joyless.

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “I…I’ll tell you later.”

  Her hand trembled as she took his arm and he knew the news wasn’t good. She clung to him as they walked down the hallway as if her legs weren’t quite able to hold her up. Whatever the doctor had told her had sucked the spirit right out of her. Jay wanted to go back and yell at the woman, force her to find a way to repair the damage the falling light fixture had done to Kim’s face, to her life. Unreasonably, he felt guilty he hadn’t been there to protect her again, to cover her slender body with his own. To stop her pain.

  “Are you okay to drive?” he asked when they reached the car.

  “I’m fine.”

  “We could get a cup of coffee, talk a little.”

  “No. I just want to…to go home.”

  His place or her own? he wondered.

  He buckled up and heard her blow her nose. She was crying, and he didn’t know what to do. Under normal circumstances he’d take her in his arms, console her as best he could. But there was nothing normal about being blind, about being dependent on her to do the driving. About not being able to protect her from whatever the doctor had said. Or whatever blows fate intended to hit her with next.

  Damn, he felt so useless!

  She drove silently, not uttering a word, the only sound the tires on the wet pavement and the slow swish of the windshield wipers. He reached across the car, held out his hand and she took it, her delicate fingers squeezing him tightly. He held onto her the rest of the way to Paseo del Real until she pulled up to the curb in front of his house.

  “I’ll give you your drops and then I…I need to be alone for a while.”

  Jay didn’t think that was the answer to her problems.

  Once inside, he captured her hand again. “The eye drops can wait. Tell me what the doctor said.”

  “That this, my face, is as good as it gets. Any more surgery would only create more scars.” She drew a shaky breath that sounded a lot like a sob. “I’ll always be ugly.”

  “Oh, blue eyes, that’s not true.” Although she resisted, he tugged her closer, and framed her face between his hands. “Everything about you that matters is beautiful.”

  “Easy for you to say. You can’t see—”

  “You’re the one who’s blind to the truth. Let me show you how truly beautiful you are, Kimberly.” He lowered his head, found her waiting lips, kissed her gently, lovingly.

  Kim didn’t resist. She didn’t have the strength to argue, to warn Jay off, to tell him if he could see the truth he’d never want to kiss her this way. Because, for this moment in time, she needed this man, the feeling that she was beautiful in his eyes. She needed his healing tenderness.

  She shuddered as he deepened the kiss, using his tongue to toy with hers as his thumbs stroked her temples. Her body responded, warmth spreading through her, heating her skin and making her pliant in his arms.

  If he’d pressured her or moved too quickly, she might have had the wisdom to step away, not to cross that final barrier that would change their relationship forever. But the coaxing kisses he pressed to her face, the way his lips skimmed her jaw and lingered at the tender spot beneath her ear lured her into wanting more.

  “Let me love you, blue eyes,” he whispered.

  Beneath her palm she felt his heart beating as insistently as a caller knocking on the front door, and her heart matched his rhythm, pounding against her ribs and pulsing in her throat where he kissed her.

  A floating sensation overtook her, as though she were someone else—someone beautiful—and she loosened the top button on his shirt and then another. She slipped her hand inside, palming his muscular chest, his heat radiating through his cotton T-shirt like a furnace turned up high on a frosty winter night. Idly, she again imagined a woman would never be cold sleeping with Jay.

  He groaned when her fingers released the top snap of his jeans.

  “Oh, baby, I’ve wanted this for so long. Wanted you.”

  He lifted the hem of her sweater, pulled it off over her head. Unerringly, he found her breast and suckled her, the sheer fabric of her bra instantly damp, her nipple puckered and aching. With each gentle tug of his lips, her womb responded with a deep clenching.

  Suddenly her knees were too weak to hold her upright.

  “Jay. The bedroom. Please.”

  “Yours or mine?”

  “Yours. The bed’s bigger.”

  To her surprise, he scooped her up in his arms as though she weighed nothing at all. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder, giving herself over to his strength while she inhaled his rich, masculine scent.

  When he set her on her feet beside his bed, it seemed completely natural to slip out of her clothes and watch him do the same. A man moved differently than a woman, even in the simple act of shrugging out of his shirt. Muscles rippled. Skin, taut over sinew, flexed and shifted in a uniquely masculine way.

  Because he couldn’t see her admiring him, she could give full rein to her examination of his physique, noting the way dark, springy hair swirled across his chest and arrowed lower to form a nest for his arousal. He was a big man, and she was unable to resist cupping him, sheathing him with her hand.

  He sucked in a quick breath. “Easy, blue eyes. You do that too much, and this will be over before we get started.”

  “Then we’d just have to do it again, wouldn’t we?” she teased.

  With a low, hungry growl, he pulled her closer and she could feel him, amazingly, growing even harder as he pressed against her belly. When had she last felt this feminine? This desirable? Perhaps the answer was never.

  With a quick flick of his wrist, he tossed back the jumble of blankets, and brought her down with him across the bed. Intuitively he stroked her in all the ways she liked to be touched, arousing her with hands so expert it was as though they’d always been lovers. Along the sensitive curve of her breast, his palms felt slightly rough. Masculine. And on the tender flesh of her inner thigh, his silken caress abraded her in the most erotic way imaginable.

  When he slipped his fingers into her moist heat, she cried out, nearly coming apart in his hands.

  “Don’t get too far ahead of me, blue eyes, we’ve only just begun.”

  “Jay…”
>
  “I know.” He covered her mouth with another kiss, determined to continue his braille exploration of every curve and valley of her exquisite body until he knew each inch of her intimately. He cherished the smooth flatness of her stomach, relished the curly hair at the juncture of her thighs that he was sure was the same honey-blond shade as the hair on her head.

  Working his way down her legs, kissing, caressing, he reached her fine-boned ankles, like silk over porcelain. He nibbled her toes, massaged her high, proud arches like those of a ballerina. In his imagination he saw her wearing bright pink polish on her toenails, sexy feet in sandals. Even better in his bed.

  During the return trip up her legs and beyond, he tasted her heat, drinking deeply while she cried out his name. He inhaled the musky scent of her sex.

  Barely able to restrain himself, he rolled away long enough to fumble in the bedside drawer and find a pack of condoms. He ripped the foil open.

  “Hurry,” she whispered, her fingers finishing the job for him, sheathing him.

  When he rose above her, she spread her legs, eager for him. He lingered over the excruciating pleasure of entering her, moving slowly, testing his patience. His stamina. His willpower. Until he could no longer resist thrusting into her. Filling her. Claiming her as his own, if not forever at least for today. Claiming his dream.

  Kim lifted her hips to meet his thrust, wanting to prolong the exquisite tension building within her. But when he quickened his pace she felt herself rocketing beyond the point of no return. A scream ripped from her throat. She shuddered on the precipice then toppled over the edge, sobbing, wanting him with her wherever the journey might take her.

  A moment later, her body still pulsing with its release, she felt a tremor shimmer through Jay, his muscles tensing, and knew he had joined her in going over the top of the world. Only then did he collapse on her, his weight as welcome as though she were an addict who had finally given in to cravings she had denied herself for far too long.

  Chapter Nine

  The muted daylight in Jay’s room had an ethereal quality, as though Kim were in some other, more gentle world that lacked the stark shine of kleig lights. The quiet patter of rain on the roof and the rhythmic dripping from the eaves cocooned them in a secret, private place.

  A place she never wanted to leave.

  She rested her head on his chest, enjoying the feel of his arm wrapped around her shoulders. During the night, she’d given him his eye drops, except for a few hours of sleep, the only breaks they’d taken from their lovemaking.

  Idly she picked up his hand, examining his long, tapered fingers and broad palm that eclipsed hers when she placed them together. A strong hand. A hand that had caressed her, aroused her beyond her wildest imagination. A hand crisscrossed with scars.

  “Are all these scars from playing fireman?” She brought the back of his hand to her lips, kissing it tenderly.

  “Firefighter,” he muttered, correcting her use of the outdated term. He waggled his index finger, showing her a fine white line on the outside of his finger. “That one, I was cutting a candy bar to share with my buddy at the Saturday afternoon matinee when I was about ten. Had me a big ol’ Boy Scout knife that was so dull it wouldn’t cut butter.”

  “But it cut your finger.”

  “Bled all over the place. The theater manager gave me a month’s worth of free passes and told me never to bring a knife in there again. And if I did, I should cut the damn candy bar on the seat, not in my hand.”

  “A wise man.” Feeling warm and content, relaxed for the first time in months, she fingered a circular scar on the back of his hand. “This one?”

  “Hot metal. A couple of years ago. A garage went up in flames and a tank of propane exploded. A piece of shrapnel caught me. I didn’t even know it had happened until the chunk burned right through my glove.”

  She shuddered. The gloves firemen—firefighters—wore were thick. The thought of heat so potent it would burn through the material gave her a painful, knotted feeling right in the middle of her stomach.

  She kissed the last knuckle on his baby finger, a crooked joint. “This?”

  “Hmm, I was about twelve years old and playing catcher for a game of street ball. Some kid fired a pitch at a hundred miles an hour. I didn’t catch it right.”

  “Fortunate it didn’t hit you in the head.”

  Smiling, he reversed their hands and kissed hers, lingering, sucking gently on her fingers, first one and then another, drawing the sensation out until her body grew weak with wanting all over again.

  “Oh, I got beaned a couple of times,” he said, nibbling on her baby finger. “We didn’t exactly have helmets in this neighborhood.”

  “And that’s why you’re such a crazy man?”

  “No, you’re the only one who makes me crazy.”

  He rose up on one elbow and looked down at her, though obviously he couldn’t see through his bandages. Still, she could imagine his copper-brown eyes darkening and knew that behind the gauze she’d see a heated look. Just as he would see the same need, as yet unsated, in her eyes.

  Was it possible to trust the feelings that were swamping her senses? Emotions that careened beyond simple lust. Their situation was so unusual, both of them wounded. And needy. If circumstances hadn’t conspired to bring them together, none of this would be happening.

  Was it fate? Karma?

  Or simply a moment out of time?

  She couldn’t help feeling they had nothing in common, no shared interests, yet it felt so right to be in his arms. So right to be loving him.

  “Kim?” His voice hitched, hoarse and needy.

  “We’re not done yet, are we?” she asked.

  “I’m game if you are.”

  “I’ve already noticed you’re not a quitter. Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t expect anything less than another round.” Whatever their reason for being together, she didn’t want it to end. Not yet. Though she knew if—when—he regained his eyesight, the show would be a wrap. She couldn’t burden any man with her ugliness. Nor could she risk seeing pity in his eyes. To prevent that, she’d walk away first.

  But not yet. Not today.

  For now, the future would simply have to take care of itself.

  “After this we might just try it a third time,” he whispered. “I understand practice makes perfect.” With unerring accuracy, Jay covered her lips with his, taking his fill of her with his mouth and tongue.

  He felt as though he already knew her in intimate detail, not just in his imagination but in reality as well. He knew the taste of her lips and the tiny sigh she made when he kissed that sensitive spot beneath her ear. The column of her throat, the slight indentation at the base, was velvety soft, her nipples tiny buds that pebbled under his tongue. His palms caressed her rib cage and smoothed over her slender thighs. She moaned when his hand covered her most intimate place.

  He had always desired her. One night of burying himself within her hadn’t come close to sating that desire. A thousand times wouldn’t be enough.

  But he wanted to see her, see her blue eyes darken to violet in response to his touch, see her honey-blond hair spilling across his pillow in wild disarray. Watch her when he entered her. Claimed her as his own. See her lazy smile of satisfaction when he’d brought her to the peak and let her go over the top.

  If the earth hadn’t slipped off its axis for a scant thirty seconds, Kimberly Lydell would never have been in his arms now. Jay was hard-pressed, even as he slipped into her warmth, to believe the earth wouldn’t shake again, setting things back where they had been. Where they belonged. Leaving him out in the cold.

  And if he never got his sight back…

  Raw, primitive pain sliced through him as though to deny that possibility. His jaw clenched. He thrust into her more deeply, and she surged upward to meet him. His breath came in ragged gasps. Hers did too.

  She cried his name as she shuddered, her climax wrapping around him. He drove into her once more before h
is own powerful release crashed over him.

  His strength gone, he buried his head at the juncture of her shoulder and neck, inhaled her sweet scent, and let the darkness overtake him.

  A NIGHT of lovemaking had given Kim both an appetite and a glorious sense of being feminine.

  “Do you have any onions?” she asked as Jay came into the kitchen, his hair still damp from his morning shower. Shirtless, he hadn’t yet snapped the top button of his jeans. In spite of her best intentions, her gaze was drawn to that enticing sight.

  No, she didn’t want to make love again, she told herself even as the urge fluttered deep in her midsec-tion. For heaven’s sake! Never before had she had such an insatiable appetite—a craving for something other than chocolate.

  “If I’ve got any, they should be on the bottom shelf of the pantry,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward the cupboard on the left side of the refrigerator where he kept his canned goods. His eye patches were in place over the gauze dressing, making him look like a pirate who had just risen from the sea to capture a wayward ship and ravish every woman on board.

  Smiling at the fanciful image, she said, “I thought I’d make huevos rancheros for breakfast.”

  “Sounds great to me. I think we must have skipped dinner last night. I’m starved.”

  So was she, though she’d willingly forego breakfast for another tumble in bed, she suspected. “I fed Cat. He didn’t seem at all pleased we’d forgotten him.”

  “Not to worry. He could live off his fat for a month and no one would even notice.” Running his hand along the counter, Jay found his way to the coffee pot. He poured too much into the mug she’d left out for him and the cup overflowed, burning his fingers. “Damn,” he muttered.

  She eyed him with concern. “You know, the Braille Institute has some household aids for blind people—”

  “I’ll have these damn patches off in a couple of weeks. There’s no sense to—”

  “Your vision could still be impaired.”

  He slammed his mug down on the counter, sloshing more coffee out of the cup. He whirled toward her, his aim a little off as he appeared to glower at the kitchen table. “My eyes are going to be fine, okay? And I thought you were making breakfast. Unless you want me to do it. I’m terrific with cereal and toast, assuming Cat didn’t get into the Cheerios on his own.”