Overwhelmed, she tried to laugh and failed miserably. "Oh, Tris…I'm not-"

"Shh…" His hands gently turned her. She stood with her head bowed, eyes closed, trembling…exposed…vulnerable…while his hands glided over her hips…buttocks…pelvic ridges, like a potter's hands shaping clay. When he kissed the nerve-rich spot above the base of her spine, she gasped, and her muscles contracted violently. Her knees buckled and she clutched at his forearms for support. Every part of her body had begun to swell and ache. In the protected, feminine places, she felt heat and throbbing pressure already building…building, pushing against the limits of her self-control. It had been a long time since anyone had touched her like this… Had anyone ever touched her like this?

She felt his mouth, his breath, his beard-roughed skin caress her buttocks, the small of her back, while his hands slid around her hips and his fingers wove their way into the thicket of hair between her thighs. "I'm going to fall," she whispered, but didn't think he heard her. She began to whimper softly.

He turned her again, his mouth dragging kisses across her belly, then lower…and lower still. His mouth was hot…humid…and so was she, and his tongue slipped into her, found her throbbing place and began to move rhythmically with the beat. Her body jerked and she gripped his shoulders, breathing in ragged sobs while his hands, cupping her buttocks, held her firm against the relentless stroking of his mouth and tongue.

She must have cried out…she may have screamed. If so, she didn't hear it. Her mind had left her body, but her body no longer belonged to her…it was only a clenching, quaking, sobbing, trembling mindless bundle of sensation, and he…Tristan…controlled it all. He played her body like an instrument, spinning out the sensations, holding on to the throbbings, making the quaking go on and on, refusing to let it die. Until she thought she surely would.

When she came to herself again she was lying on the bed, cuddled in Tristan's arms with her face buried against his chest, and he was murmuring wordless reassurances into her sweat-damp hair. Her body ached, her breasts felt tight, and her feet tingled with pins and needles. Her cheeks burned. She couldn't bring herself to pull her face out of its warm, protective nest; she wanted to crawl into it and never come out. How, she wondered, would she ever look him in the eye?

But, the voice of reason inside her head asked, why should you feel embarrassed? I don't know why, but I do. But he's your husband! Yes, and for some reason that only makes it worse.

"Well," said Tristan, and his voice was a throaty growl, full of masculine smugness, "we know everything still works."

Jessie's self-consciousness vanished in a heartbeat. She rolled back onto the pillow of his arm, made little murmuring, settling sounds in her throat, then said in a parody of a Southern woman's honeyed primness, "No, suh, I do not believe that is true." Surprised, he raised his head to look at her, and she smiled demurely at him from under her lashes. "I do believe there is one area that has not been thoroughly tested…"

"Is that a fact?" His smile grew slowly, making the commas at the corners of his mouth emerge little by little, like shy children.

"Yes, suh, it surely is." Already thirsting for the taste of his mouth, she couldn't take her eyes from it, and when he lowered it at last to hers, she closed her eyes with a happy sigh and drank him in as if she would never have enough. The kiss was leisurely and deep, and she was quickly intoxicated.

"You sure you're ready to have me inside you?" he murmured into her mouth.

Languid and dizzy she murmured back into his, "Yes, please."

He left her to finish his undressing and she lay naked under his avid eyes and stretched like a cat, too drunk with desire to be self-conscious. Back again, naked himself now, he knelt astride her legs, rising tall above her, his angular body mysterious to her in that gentle light. She gasped when he gripped her thighs and thrust them apart, but that was his only roughness. He lowered himself into the place he'd made and entered her with exquisite care, easing into her already swollen and lubricated body slowly, and as he filled her she arched into him and exhaled with a long, replete sigh.

"That about do it?" he asked, his voice thick and broken, trying to tease, anyway.

"Oh, yes," she whispered.

"Better be…that's 'bout all I've got…"

Breathless, she couldn't answer, except to laugh. It felt good to laugh with him inside her, and to feel him laughing, too. She felt his arms quiver with the strain of holding his weight away from her and writhed upward to nudge him with her body. "You don't need to do that."

"Don't want…to crush you."

"Pshaw. I'm not exactly a fragile flower of Southern womanhood, and you're not about to crush anybody. Come here to me." She looped her arms around his neck and, laughing, he lowered his body onto hers, then quickly rolled them both so that she was on top of him instead. "Oh," she moaned, "now I'm gonna crush you."

But when she would have risen to straddle him, he wouldn't let her. Holding her tightly around her hips, he brought his knees up between hers so that his thighs caressed her buttocks, and they were touching in every possible way. Then, as deeply seated inside her as he could be, he began to rock her, and all the while looked intently into her eyes. Without breath, he whispered, "Jessie…love…you feel so good."

Light-headed, sinking deeper and deeper into arousal, she wanted-needed-to close her eyes. But in a guttural rasping voice he cried out, "No…no. Look at me, Jessie…love…look at me."

She moaned, but obeyed…and in all too short a time felt her body spiral once more out of control and sobs burst from her throat and tears jump from her eyes. "I can't…I…can't," she wailed, and as her eyes refused to obey her a second longer and drifted closed at last, she felt his arms tighten and his body surge and shudder, then surge again.

Lying spent and sated on Tris's chest, Jessie tried to hold the world at bay. Like a child singing loudly with her eyes shut tight and her hands over her ears to keep from hearing what she doesn't want to hear, she closed her mind to all but loud and happy thoughts about staying right where she was forever. The world came in, anyway.

Tris was stirring purposefully beneath her. "Hate to do this, love," he mumbled. "Better let me up before I fall asleep right here."

"Sounds good to me," she murmured, knowing even as she said it that it wouldn't make any difference.

He kissed her forehead and separated from her gently. He eased her to one side and himself to the other and sat up. "Wish I could. But I think it's best if I sleep on the couch tonight."

With her elbow planted and her head propped on her hand, Jessie watched the scars on his back stretch over the bumps of his spine as he leaned to reach for his pants. Her throat ached. Stubbornly she said, "Why? You've been sleeping fine. Stay here. Hold me for a little while…"

"Sorry…" He rose and turned, thin as a wraith, his smile dark and wry. "Nothing I'd like to do more than stay and hold you. I'd like to spend the whole damn night holding you…sleeping with you in my arms. But…" and his eyes were soft with regret as he leaned down to kiss her, "I haven't had enough beer to calm my nightmares. So I'm gonna sleep out there…and you're gonna stay in here…and behave yourself…" The kisses he inserted into each pause grew progressively deeper and more arousing. Jessie's heart had begun to thump and her head to spin by the time he drew back with a wicked chuckle. "That oughta do you till morning, anyway."

She didn't agree with him, but knew it was pointless to argue. Playing along, she slapped at him, pretending outrage, then snuggled back into the pillows with a Scarlett O'Hara pout. "Well. I feel like Ah have been serviced."

Grinning, Tris leaned down to drop a last kiss on her forehead. "So you have been-and very well, too."

"Nothin' wrong with your ego, that's for sure," Jessie said with a sniff, but she was secretly delighted with his arrogance.

He chuckled. "G'night-sleep tight." In the doorway he paused. "Oh-and remember, if you hear anything-"

"-don't touch you. I know." She blew him a kiss and snuggled back into the pillows with a quivering, throat-easing sigh. It's going to be all right. He's going to be okay… And for the first time, for that moment, she believed it.


* * *

Tristan walked with an unhurried stride, winding casually among families of tourists sunning themselves or picnicking on the mall, testing the spring in his knee and in the new grass, quietly appreciating the miracles of dandelions and laughing children and Jessie beside him and kites dancing in a pale-blue sky. And freedom. Yes, the biggest miracle of all, and he still wasn't sure it had sunk in completely. It would hit him every once in a while, though-come upon him unexpectedly, like now-and he'd feel kind of a kick in his chest, and there'd be a catch in his breathing, and the sting of tears would come into his eyes. I'm free. And I'm home.

Home. That was something else he had to keep telling himself. Because he still didn't believe that, either. Maybe because he didn't feel as if he was home. Maybe because he didn't know where home was, anymore.

One thing that had surprised him, though, was how he'd felt this morning, walking around Washington, D.C., with Jess. It had been her idea to spend some time seeing the sights before catching their flight to Atlanta, since it was something neither one of them had ever done before. Max and Sammi June had planned to visit the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, which had rather appealed to Tristan, too. But Jess had wanted to see the monuments, and he hadn't been in a frame of mind to disappoint her. Now he was glad he hadn't. It was a perfect day to be outdoors, not too warm, with a breeze that carried the scent of fresh-cut grass. The monuments were pristine white against that soft-blue sky, making him think of that line in "America the Beautiful" about alabaster cities, undimmed by human tears. But he'd expected beautiful. He'd even expected to be touched by it all…the history, the symbolism. What he hadn't expected was to feel proud. "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty…"

His eyes stung and, uneasy with that, he laughed out loud. Jessie gave him a questioning look, and he said, "Nothing-just glad to be here, is all," and reached for her hand. It gave him a little pang in his heart to realize she hadn't asked him to tell her why he'd laughed or how he felt. And that she'd probably stopped asking right after he'd snapped at her that day on the plane.

Ah hell, he thought, as familiar clouds drifted into his day. Just as well. That only meant he didn't have to try so hard to protect her from his thoughts…his feelings.

They paused to crane at the Washington Monument, hands lifted to shade their eyes from the morning sun but didn't join the line of tourists waiting to go inside. They were short of time, and Tristan's newly developed claustrophobia was a compelling enough reason all by itself to skip that experience.

"Feel like going all the way to the Lincoln?" Jess asked it lightly, and he knew she thought he'd be impatient with her "mothering."

So he squeezed her hand and forced a grin to let her know he didn't mind. "Sure, why not-we can always catch a cab to the hotel from there."

He didn't know exactly when it had come to him, the realization that it wasn't the Lincoln Memorial he wanted to see, but something else nearby. But he knew that this was a pilgrimage he'd have made on his hands and knees, if necessary. And maybe it was something in his face, his silence, or some kind of woman's intuition, but he didn't have to tell Jessie where he wanted to go. It seemed they both just aimed in that direction without either of them saying a word to the other.

They came to The Wall at its end, the tapering point of the black granite slash that represented the conclusion of the war…that terrible war that had ended with a whimper rather than a bang. Holding hands, they walked slowly along the pathway that led deeper and deeper into the heart of the conflict…the worst of the killing. Beside them, The Wall rose ever higher, and at its apex, the names seemed to tumble out of the granite and overwhelm by their sheer numbers.

Finally Tristan's steps slowed. He paused, heart hammering, turned and faced the shiny black surface. The names…so many names…seemed to dance and shimmer before his eyes. He put out his hand and rested his palm against the cool, smooth stone. His fingers found and traced the tiny cross carved beside one of the names. He felt smothered. The breeze was gone, the bright-blue sky had darkened, and now the cold black wall seemed to close around him.