As it was now. She could feel it tightening in and around her body, reminding her of all the desires and explicit fantasies that had tormented her through the years.
“Thirsty?” He moved to the low fridge, opening it to pull out a beer and lift it to her in invitation.
“No.” She shook her head as she pushed her hair from her shoulder and faced him awkwardly.
God, she had no idea what to say to him.
He continued to stare back at her intently.
“I’m sorry,” she sighed; she didn’t know what else to say. “It was my fault Ray didn’t tell you what happened.”
His lips quirked as he lowered his head, hiding the hurt she knew he must have been feeling.
He finally shrugged as he lifted his gaze. “Why didn’t you let him?”
She blinked furiously at the tears that threatened to fill her eyes.
“You couldn’t do anything.” She shrugged heavily. “You were a world away, Rowdy. You weren’t free. I didn’t want you to worry.”
He snorted at that. “I would have come home, Kelly. I could have come home without repercussion.”
And that was what had scared here.
She breathed in roughly. “I’m doing okay. I’ve been seeing a therapist and she’s really helped. It’s just, sometimes, I still get scared.” She shrugged helplessly. “I feel like such a wimp.”
And she felt watched. Stalked. Not that she had told Ray or her mother how she felt. Her therapist assured her it was normal, under the circumstances. But it eroded her confidence, kept her awake long into the night. His eyes darkened as he moved slowly toward her.
She stepped back instinctively.
“You’re scared to death of me,” he said softly.
She could hear the dark torment in his voice, see it in his eyes.
“I’m not scared of you.” She fought the trembling of her lips as she stared up at him, fought to stand in place rather than running as she wanted to.
“Then what are you scared of?” He reached out, his fingers running down a long curl that fell over her shoulder. “Why are you trembling, Kelly?”
“You’ve always made me tremble.” She bit her lip at the admission. “Now…” She stared back at him miserably. “I’m not scared of you, Rowdy, but forgetting…sometimes, I can’t forget.”
His thumb smoothed down her cheek, nearly taking her breath with the latent sensuality of his touch.
“Are you going to keep running, Kelly?” he asked then. “You knew if you told me what happened I’d come home. You knew I would have never stayed away. What couldn’t you handle about that?”
“You couldn’t come home—”
“Bullshit,” he growled. “I would have found a way back to you, you knew it. But you swore my dad to secrecy and, it seems, my cousins as well. You were scared of me.”
“No…” She shook her head again, desperate to make him believe her now.
“You knew what I wanted from you, Kelly.” He turned away, stalking across the room before turning back to her. “You knew I wanted you in my bed. You knew what was going to happen when I came home. Didn’t you?”
“I knew.” She couldn’t deny it.
“Did you think I’d try to take you while you were raw from an attempted rape?” Disgust filled his voice.
“That’s not true.” She couldn’t let him believe that.
Moving across the room, she gripped his arm, holding him in place when he would have moved from her.
“I knew you wouldn’t, Rowdy,” she cried fiercely. “I know you would never, ever hurt me. I can’t help it. You don’t know how long I waited for you to come home, how much I needed you to touch me, and now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make sense of any of it.”
She stared back at him, desperate for him to understand, on the edge of crying and knowing the tears would do her no good.
“What you made me feel has always scared me,” she finally admitted, her voice trembling. “How much I needed your touch always terrified me. And now, it’s like all the fears are swirling together until I can’t make any sense of any of it.”
His expression twisted into a grimace of raw pain as his arms came around her. Slowly. Powerful, naked, sun-heated, he pulled her against him as her hands clutched at his waist as the scent of him infused her senses.
“Kelly. God, baby, do you have any idea of what it did to me to realize I wasn’t here to protect you?” he whispered against her hair, one big hand holding her head against his chest as the opposite arm wrapped around her back. “If I had been here, I would have been in your bed that night. No one would have touched you.”
“This isn’t your fault,” she snapped, her head lifting, a frown tightening her brow as she glared back at him. “I knew you were going to think that.”
“I don’t think it, I know it,” he growled, holding her tighter, pressing his h*ps against her lower belly as she felt the breath slam out of her chest.
His erection, impossibly large, hot even through the denim, pressed against her as he stared down at her with heavy-lidded arousal.
“I know, Kelly.” His hands moved to her h*ps as she felt the familiar weakness sweeping through her body. “There’s not a damned thing that could have kept me away from you. Why the hell do you think I spent so much time in the Marines? I stayed away because I couldn’t keep my hands off you.”
His hands were on her now, clasped at her h*ps as hers flattened against his bare chest and she stared back at him in shock.
“I want you until I can’t breathe for it,” he whispered then. “But I would never hurt you. And I would never take what you can’t give me, Kelly. Ever.”
“I know that, Rowdy,” she cried, the aching need and shadowed fears that rose inside her clenching in her chest. “I never thought you would.”
“I wanted to hold you this morning.” His hands smoothed over her back, her hips. “I wanted to pull you in my arms and put myself between you and the world to keep anything, everything, from threatening you ever again.”
She shook her head. God, what was she going to do? He wasn’t even concerned with what his father had said, the fact that he had been thrown out of his home. He wasn’t angry with her or with Ray. He was angry with himself for not being there.