Ivy glanced up from the bed when he opened the bedroom door, and her eyes lit in surprise, then darkened in dread. All kinds of emotions galloped inside him. Her eyes looked gold. The orbs went dark when she was being taken by him and turned a clear pale when she was thoughtful.
This moment they were shuttered and concerned as she stared at him, as though not knowing what he’d do. “Hi,” she said warily.
His hands clenched at his sides. He still didn’t know what to do with them. What to do with himself. With her.
He kicked the door shut and entered the room. “How do you feel?” He couldn’t look at her. He felt too many things, too strongly, all at once.
Her legs were bare for his perusal, long and slim and creamy. He could see her toes, painted a bright berry pink, and remembered nibbling the soft flat spots on the insides of her ankles.
Don’t look.
He jerked his gaze from her and frowned at his dog, lying on the bed, at her feet. “What’s Genghis doing on the bed?”
“Keeping me company.” She petted him, and the simple act of watching her fingers delve into his dog’s fur made his body scream out in urgent jealousy.
“He could hurt you! Off the damned bed, you fucking mutt. Off!” Genghis immediately obeyed, then he fisted his hands at his sides and paced.
Ivy sat up and stared at him, completely alien to him in that wig.
Look away, look away.
“Cade, are we going to talk about this?” she whispered.
He raised his hand to halt her words, and his eyes met hers. She seemed tired and weary and still, so beautiful. She was so freaking beautiful he could barely breathe.
Cade closed his eyes, counted to ten and back. And no. His body still burned from the inside out. Thinking of himself as a snowman did not help, did not keep him from wanting, needing, to be inside her. It was a need beyond physical, a need to ground her to him, to feel her alive and twisting around him, beyond anything he could comprehend.
“I know I should’ve told you…”
He raked his hands through his hair and paced away, only to return, glaring. “Stop apologizing. I’m glad you didn’t tell me. Otherwise I’d…”
“What? You wouldn’t have set a hand on me?”
His jaw tightened, and he didn’t answer her.
“Cancer is not contagious, Cade.”
He expelled a long breath, hanging on by threads. “Right now I don’t want to hurt you, Ivy.”
“Why am I even here? I have friends who can invite me over, I think I’d much rather you drive me over to one of them!” She stood up purposefully from the bed.
“Get back on that bed, Ivy.”
“I don’t need your pity, Cade.”
“Get back on that fucking bed!” he roared.
She glared at him and started walking to the door, and he grabbed her to stop her. “Get up on that fucking bed or I’m tying you to it!”
“What for? You’re clearly not touching me again!”
He saw that he was holding her elbow too hard, and he released her, his face melting with pain and regret as he lifted his hands, palms up. “Ivy, I don’t want to hurt you, baby.”
“Well you’re hurting me now, you fucking asshole!”
Her voice broke, and he immediately reached out to touch her again, but when she caught back a sob, he jerked his hand away.
“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Cade, I’m still a woman. I’m still a woman. I need your touch … I need your touch so much.”
He crushed her possessively in his arms and pressed his jaw into her neck, a dark, desperate feeling spreading through him. “Damn you, you’re not just a woman. You’re my woman, Ivy. Mine.”
He felt her wig tickle his neck, and he growled and tossed it aside, then scooped her up and carried her back to the bed.
Ivy gasped in delayed response and covered her head. “No!”
She reached blindly in the air in the direction of the stupid wig, but it had landed far away. “No, Cade!” Her eyes flashed and she twisted and flailed angrily as he lay her down. “What are you doing? Why do you insist on baring me like this?”
He caught her wrists and pinned them down. “Stop hiding shit from me. Stop hiding yourself from me. Can’t you see how much I fucking want you? Be real to me, Ivy! I’ve held nothing back from you—nothing.”
“I am real to you! I’m realer to you than to anyone!”
“Then stop treating me like I’m only here to fuck you!”
She started crying, and Cade cursed and buried his face in his hands, scraping them over his own burning eyes. He heard her fumbling with the buttons of her shirt, and he whipped his head up and halted her hands.
“Stop. Stop. You don’t need to do this now. It’s just that you’re so damned beautiful to me and I feel totally played here. You’re—”
Prying free of his hold, she parted her ripped shirt open, still quietly crying, and Cade saw her.
His heart shattered, and then it felt like it got pieced together wrong, because it couldn’t even beat right. If he weren’t already crazy as hell in love with her, she would’ve stolen his heart right this second, when she bared herself to him even when he could see how much it was hurting.
It hurt to see her, too.
His eyes blurred at the sight of her nipples. Sore. Bright pink. Two small dressings covering her incisions, just below the curves, of both the breasts she’d been removing.
“Ivy.” He stroked the top swells gently, then her throat, feeling the sobs that racked her under his fingers. “You’re so fucking perfect. I love your breasts. I love your smooth little head.” He cupped her scalp and felt how smooth and round it was, stared into her eyes with his blurred vision. “I love the way you make me feel. The man you make me. All of you.” His voice broke and he gathered her against him, and he tipped her face back and kissed her lips. “I love the way you fight. Your spirit. How you help people when you need it more. How you saved me. Ivy. Me.”
She cried harder, her hands on his shirt as her tears soaked it. He trembled at the feel of her, warm and rare like a comet in his arms, and at the sensual brush of her lips against his, seeking more, his lips locked over hers as though gravity were pulling them down. “I love you. Ivy. You. God help me, I do.”
“Me, too. I love you so much,” she said softly to him in a heartbreaking, tear-laced voice.