She smiled at him, feeling her heart swell in her chest at his words. “Tell me about your injuries, Sam. Tell me about this one.” She bent her head to tenderly press a kiss against the scar below his rib cage.
“Lacerated spleen. It won’t be a problem if I’m ever in another wreck,” he said drily, although Erin sensed the underlying anger at himself in his words. “I don’t have it anymore.”
“And this?” She repeated the kiss with the scar on his jaw.
“My cellphone, oddly enough. Funny thing when your car is forced to stop rapidly. You and everything else in it don’t.” He shifted his hand to rest on his thigh. “And this was a compound fracture of my femur. A bone infection, post surgery, ensured my stay in hospital was longer than either I or the medical staff were happy with.”
“Not a good patient?”
“Not patient, period,” he said bluntly. “Too much time to think about what choices I should have made that day, rather than the ones I did. I learned a lot about myself while I was in hospital, and I didn’t like most of it. Eventually I decided, if I had to survive, I had to change. I will never again put my work or myself before my family.”
There was a steely undertone to his voice now that resonated with Erin. She knew exactly how he felt. Nothing and no one would get between her and her son. Ever.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that,” she whispered, stroking her hand across his belly with featherlight movements.
His recovery must have been tough. The fact that he hadn’t given up on it was a strong measure of the man, and how far he’d come since that awful day. Dare she begin to hope that the rest of his journey might be with her?
* * *
Sam lay there, his thoughts churning. Making love with Erin tonight had been a temptation he simply couldn’t resist. He wasn’t ready for this, for the feelings that being with her aroused in him, for wanting her the way he had—the way he still did. His feelings for her went beyond the physical attraction they so clearly shared. It was something he hadn’t anticipated and he had no preselected mechanism to cope with this resurgence of emotions.
He’d thought he’d learned to shut himself down. To be the quintessential iceman as far as his feelings were concerned. He knew what it was like to go through the wringer. Sentiment wasn’t something he welcomed into his life anymore. And yet, with Erin, and with Riley, he’d found an awakening of hope. A small kernel of a dream he’d once had. A dream he’d expected to share with Laura but to which, in light of his role in her death, he’d decided he was no longer entitled.
He still didn’t believe he deserved to find happiness, but fate had thrown him a second chance with the possibility that Riley might be his son. Was it possible that, together with Erin and Riley, he could have that chance of a family that he’d thought he’d lost forever? Could he reach for the happiness he so wanted, yet deep down didn’t believe he deserved?
Maybe he could.
He reached down to his jeans on the floor next to the bed, sliding the other condom he’d put in there—just in case—into his hand. Whatever happiness there was to be taken, it began now—here, with Erin. The ice in his veins had begun to thaw, leaving in its wake a hot drumming need to bury himself in Erin’s softness, her welcoming warmth.
He rolled over her, loving the sizzle of sensitivity that sparked between them, skin to skin. She was so responsive, so giving.
This time as they made love, he took his time. Bringing to her the crest of a peak, then letting her slowly dip before he allowed her to launch again. His need was strung so tight, by the time he ripped open the foil packet he’d shoved under the pillow he almost messed up putting the condom on. But then finally he was there, his erection arrowed straight toward her body.
Their joining was slow as he fought to prolong every second, his hands holding her hips when she would have pushed against him, enveloping him in her heat. The pleasure-pain of holding back, of teasing her as he withdrew only to enter her again, slowly, oh, so slowly, took every ounce of concentration he had. Concentration that went flying to the four corners of the room the minute he allowed his body to penetrate her fully. She closed around him, holding him to her, tight. Her arms snaked around his body, pulling him down against her, length for length. And as he began to rock gently within her he knew they had no beginning, they had no end. They just had each other in this perfect moment in time.
Nine
Sam wiped away the remnants of shaving foam from his jaw and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He could barely keep a smile off his face these days. Over the past two weeks, since the first night he and Erin had made love, their days and nights had slid into an easy rhythm. One punctuated only by the day she and Riley had gone to her lawyer’s office for the supervised sample taking. Knowing where they were going, and why, had driven him crazy for the couple of hours they were gone. But now things were really in motion, his kind of motion.