But she couldn’t.

Every good thing she’d had in the past months had revolved around thoughts of that night, of those letters Dana had long ago committed to memory.

Even though I’d love to hear your sweet voice, even if it was only words on a page, it doesn’t matter. When I sleep, I share dreams with you. You’re right next to me in this cot.

I hear your breathing, and feel peace; at the same time I ache because you’re also so far away. I think loving you, having you in my life, will be like that. A never-ending craving and peace at once.

“Dana, say it.”

She shook her head again. She couldn’t give herself that dream. Not for real.

He rolled her to her back. She clutched the shirt, but she’d defended the wrong perimeter.

Putting her legs over his shoulders, he knelt and put his mouth between her legs.

The minute those clever lips touched her pussy, she bowed up, nearly swallowing her tongue. After the surgeries and healing of her physical injuries, there’d been no extremes of pain or pleasure, everything a straight, monotone highway, the unrelenting fires of hell her mental horizon. This was cold water in desert heat, a miracle and painful shock at once, potentially dangerous if taken too fast or at too extreme a temperature.

He seized her wrists, held them to her sides. Stop, stop, stop. Those bottled emotions were rising so fast, the pressure capable of detonating within the sexual response, tearing her apart from the inside. She’d be incapable of distinguishing the emotional torment from the physical. But his tongue knew how to drive thought away. He scraped and teased her cunt, plunged his tongue deep, sucked on her labia, rubbed his face against her so she felt the five-o’clock stubble on her tender inner thighs and the prickle against her sex as he made wide circles, then tight ones, licked and bit.

Her body couldn’t care less about the turmoil in her mind. She worked herself against his mouth now, her fingernails digging into his wrists. “Oh, God . . .” Her body strained for that pinnacle like an out-of-shape runner. Helping or torturing her, he slowed the pace, lapping at her like a wolf tasting blood, learning her particular flavor.

Her foot pressed into his back, heel sliding over the muscled skin beneath his shirt. She thought of the fountain and how he’d laid her on the grass, placing his bare body on hers, the blissful artistry of skin and muscle.

Peter . . . The sad mental cry of loss washed down the tunnel of memory, a flood of anguish wrenched from deep inside of her. The orgasm turned it into a powerful, mind-shattering force, ripping a scream from her throat. She fought against him, fought the climax. She needed to get free. It was too much and she couldn’t handle any more. No more . . .

When his hands left her at last, she went back into a protective ball, rocking, the aftershocks still shuddering through her in small jerks. He curled around her again, but this time to hold her tightly, his legs coming up under hers, his wide back curved around her so she was a sea creature safely ensconced in its shell. His breath against her ear became the sound of the ocean, a soft rush that carried her wherever it would. He was stroking her head, a firm, reassuring touch, slow and massaging at once, his thumb caressing the sensitive occipital bone.

“That’s it, sweetheart. Let it out.”

It was different when someone was holding you, when you mattered specifically to them, not a faceless nurse or VA volunteer being painfully kind. It offered a terrifying glimpse of new possibilities. She couldn’t depend on him this way.

That was, unless he didn’t give her any other choice. For the first time in months, that thought—not having control—didn’t bring bowel-loosening fear. In fact, the kind of anxiety that gripped her now dared to include an emotion she hadn’t felt in a while.

Hope.

Seven

Peter set Dana’s suitcase outside the screen door, with a defining smack intended to catch her attention. It did, her head tilting in response. She was backed up into the corner formed by the entertainment center in her front room, her feet braced. He studied her, the set of the chin, the faint quiver in the hands she clenched against herself. All it had taken was the idea of leaving this hole and she was back in panic mode, digging in. He’d already seen enough to know he wasn’t going to get her to agree to anything by morning.

But he’d also seen she still had fight and spirit in her, and knew in his gut the most important thing was to get her out of this bleak cave. Even if he had to take her right now, in the middle of night, when Christina was sleeping. He’d written a note and left it on the front table, so the nurse wouldn’t call the cops. Hopefully.

“I’m not going with you, Peter,” Dana said. Her voice was one octave away from shrill.

“I have no interest in being your little project. I’m fine here, doing just fine.” Yeah, if her life’s ambition was to be a mushroom.

When he heard her voice break, saw her too-cold hands grip themselves, he fought his protective instincts for patience. Control. When she’d gripped the hem of her sweatshirt, not wanting him to see what was beneath it, that had been bad enough, but when he stripped off her sweatpants he’d seen the left leg. The scar tissue so twisted and virulent, from knee up to her thigh, a few pings on her shin. And the way she’d shaken under his touch, wanting touch so desperately, but so afraid of it, too, feeling everything he touched as if she was reliving it again.

The longer he stayed quiet now, the more her hands shook. It was epidemic, sweeping through her body. As he approached, she tensed, shrank back against the television. She could feel the floor’s vibration, or had detected his scent, his heat. Putting his palms on either side of her, he intensified it.

“Just go away, Peter. Please. Please don’t do this to me. Don’t destroy that good memory of our night together with some pathetic attempt to pretend there can be more now.

Maybe there couldn’t ever have been. I mean, what do we have in common, really?

Except sex.”

He leaned in. “Look up at me.”

“I can’t see you. What’s the point?”

“Because I told you to do it. And because you can feel what’s coming off of me. You know what’s in my eyes, Dana. What do we have in common? Maybe not much. Hell, my mother was a Yale graduate, and my dad was a Texas roughneck, working rigs out in the ocean. When they died, when I was fifteen, they were as crazy in love as ever. People aren’t jigsaw puzzles, Dana. Sometimes people don’t fit until they rub up against each other, chisel the rough edges and the shields away. The more they want it to work, the more willing they are to do that rubbing.”

She tightened her arms across herself. “I don’t want to try, Peter. I don’t want anything. I just want you to go.”

He stared down into her face; then he nodded, straightened. “Okay. I’ll just do one more thing.” He went to the front door, found what he was looking for and returned. Moving to the side table by the couch, he flipped open the top of the decorative box so it clattered loudly against the cheap wood.

Dana’s head went up. “What are you doing?”

“I’m burning these letters. You don’t want anything, so they don’t mean anything, right?

I mean, if what’s in them isn’t strong enough to weather one of us getting hurt, what’s the point? Hell, I guess I’m glad it wasn’t me who got blown up, because you would have ditched my ass in a heartbeat.”

“Peter, we don’t have a relationship. I’m not going to tie you to me because—”

“You’re not going to do anything to me, sweetheart. I came here on my own. If there’s any tying to be done, I’m the one who’ll be doing it.” Lighting the edge of one envelope, he waved it to let the smoke drift her way.

Her face transformed. She hadn’t thought he’d do it, obviously, but he hadn’t realized she’d charge across the room toward him, a thin scream tearing loose from her throat.

She hit the coffee table full throttle, slamming it against the sofa as she stumbled forward.

“Shit.” Dropping the paper into the metal ash bucket he’d brought in, he leaped for her, catching her right before she fell onto the glass top. But she twisted, making him follow her down as she writhed to the floor, turning on him like a wild animal.

“Those aren’t yours. You can’t burn them. Stop.” She scrambled to her feet, trying to fight past him, trying to get to them, even though she was facing a different direction, disoriented. The expression on her face was horrific. Twisted, desolate, enraged. Hanging on grimly and praying Christina was a heavy sleeper, he raised his voice to catch Dana’s attention.

“Dana, settle down. I didn’t burn them. They’re fine. Listen to me, damn it.” She stopped, panting, her clawed fingers clutching his arms, her muscles still banded in full resistance. She was so weak, though. Her attempts to push against him were comparable to village kids he’d playfully wrestled in Afghanistan. The thought snapped his control and he brought her to her back on the carpet, looming over her.

“I burned some blank stationery Christina left on the table. But goddamn it, I will not leave you here. I don’t care if I have to fucking carry you, kicking and screaming, between here and Baton Rouge. I will do it. You’re not staying here. This isn’t living.”

“I don’t want to go. Doesn’t that matter? Freedom, freedom, freedom. That’s my safe word to let me go and fuck off.” She snarled it in his face, and then lost it, all those nerves strung tight beneath him spasming as she disintegrated into a full-blown thrashing, screaming tantrum. He had no choice but to pin her full-body, keep his hands cupped behind her head so that she couldn’t slam her skull repeatedly against the wood floor. She beat at him, tried to kick, sank her teeth into his shoulder through his T-shirt. Like one of those terriers he’d written her about. Small, tough and honest.

She was broken into a hundred pieces, and couldn’t see to pick any of them up. But he could see every one of them. He would figure out how to bring them back together.