"Did you?" She could barely talk, now…barely stand.

"Umm-hmm…more than you'll ever know." The unfathomable pools that were his eyes darkened…deepened. His lips tightened briefly and then quirked sideways, as if he'd felt a spasm of pain and was determined to hide it.

More than you'll ever know… How will I know if you won't tell me? she thought. But her mind and body were in different places. Her heart was bumping against his arm, and lower down, his fingers measured the frantic thrumming of her pulse.

She wanted to close her eyes but somehow knew he wouldn't want her to, so she fiercely ordered them to stay open and watched herself…watched him…as he slipped his fingers into her. Not gently-suddenly and deeply, and holding her tightly so that the thrust of his hand made her feel his hardness pressed against her buttocks. But she was ready for him, and the gasp that burst from her wasn't pain. Her body liquefied. Her palms and the soles of her feet felt scorched. In the murky glass of the old mirror, her eyes looked wild, and her cheeks glowed as if with a fever.

"I can't-"

"Yes-you can. You can."

But her body was already spiraling out of her control-if it had ever been in it-and she was breaking up in a thousand tiny explosions, all cold fire and flooding warmth. She gave a soft, desperate cry and let the kindly darkness come, and as she closed her eyes she felt his mouth, hot and open on her neck, and his fingers inside her, playing her body's sensations like quivering guitar strings, making them last and last and last…

And then he was laying her down on the bed and taking off her clothes…guiding her thighs apart and entering her still-throbbing body. Gently now, he moved within her, braced above her on taut and trembling arms, eyes closed, neck muscles corded. Dazed, Jessie drew her hands down his back, stroking rigid muscles and sliding over the ropy ribbons of scar tissue, rocking with his thrusts, arching her body into his, remembering what it had been like, remembering this…remembering.

His climax was restrained, almost…polite, Jessie thought. Afterward, he kissed her, used his discarded T-shirt for a towel, then gathered her against him-her back to his front-and fell asleep, breathing softly…snoring gently into her hair.

It was early, nowhere near Jessie's customary bedtime, and she lay awake for a long time, afraid to move or get up and go to the bathroom or turn off the lights Tris had left burning.

It's going to be all right, she told herself, staring at the familiar room…the wallpaper, the furniture, the curtains she knew so well. We've come so far already. Haven't we?

It'll be better once we have a place of our own.

Chapter 13

Gradually the days returned to more normal rhythms. On Monday Max left to go back to his home in Florida, and Sammi June drove off to school in Athens in the little red Chevy pickup truck Jimmy Joe had fixed up for her to use. Her professors were being understanding about giving her make-up exams and extensions on overdue papers. The last of the media people had left; their interest in Tristan's story had waned rapidly when they discovered he wasn't going to share with their audiences any of the gory details about his POW experience.

On Monday Jessie called the hospital to see how things were going in the NICU and found out that two of her nurses were out with the flu and a third had fallen off of a stepladder and broken her wrist. So on Tuesday she went back to work.

Tristan started running every morning with C.J. and working out with weights in his garage afterward. He'd been putting on weight, and was beginning to look almost like his normal self again. In the afternoon and evening he studied flight manuals and answered some of the hundreds of letters that had been pouring in from around the country, and drank beer steadily until he fell asleep around dusk, which in mid-May was about eight o'clock. By the time Jessie went up to bed he was snorin' like a buzz saw, as Granny Calhoun would've put it. He got up early, though, sometimes as early as four o'clock, tiptoeing around in the dark so as not to wake up Jessie while he dressed in his sweats and went downstairs to wait for it to get light enough to go running.

One evening he'd dozed off in Granny Calhoun's old recliner chair, watching the evening news on the TV in the living room. Not knowing what else to do, Jessie left him alone until ten o'clock, when she was ready to go upstairs to bed. Then she leaned over him and murmured, "Tris? Honey, you need to come to bed now-you're gonna get a crick in your neck." And she put her hand on his shoulder.

He made a wild, grunting sound and shot up out of the chair so fast the top of his head hit her in the mouth, and at the same time he was flailing at the air with his arms. An instant later he was on his hands and knees on the rug, and his face…Jessie had never seen such a look on anyone's face before, and to see it on his-her husband's-was almost more than she could bear. Shattered, tasting blood, she dropped to her knees and reached toward him in desperate apology.

"Oh God-Oh God-I'm so sorry-I forgot. I forgot. I'm sorry…" Tears were streaming down her face. "Tris, it's okay, honey. It's okay…"

He was looking around, not at her, eyes darting here and there like those of a trapped animal. Then, slowly, the bright terror in his eyes faded to dull awareness. He darted one quick, embarrassed look over his shoulder and said in a choked voice, "Your mom-"

"It's okay, she's already gone to bed. Oh, Tris-"

He reached out to brush her lip with his thumb. "I told you not to touch me." His voice was as harsh as his touch was gentle.

She caught her lip with her teeth and sucked it in, hiding the blood from him. "I know…I know. It's just that…you look so…you've been seeming so…"

"Normal?" Wearing a travesty of a smile like a Mardi Gras mask, he got stiffly to his feet, then took her hand and helped her to hers. "I thought this was normal-for someone like me, anyway. At least, that's what they keep tellin' me."

Aching inside, she slipped an arm around his waist. "We just have to be patient, give it time…"

He dropped his arm across her shoulders and drew her close to his side. "Yeah," he said, as they started up the stairs together, "they keep telling me that, too."

Tristan slept in one of the spare bedrooms that night, regretting the pain he knew it was causing Jess, but knowing full well he wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep after all that. He could feel the nightmares lurking still…feel the walls closing in on him even before he closed his eyes. Damned beer must be losing its effect, he thought.

Either that or it's this house. It gives me claustrophobia. It's Jess's place, not mine. There's no room for me here.

It wasn't that it was uncomfortable, this house his wife had grown up in. Just the opposite, in fact. In some sort of complicated, perverse way, it was the very comfort of it, the homeyness of it, that made him feel so alienated. He couldn't seem to get his mind around so much softness and warmth, the clean smells and good tastes, the laughter and the love. The cold and hunger, pain and fear and darkness of prison wouldn't let go of him. In the daylight hours he could convince himself he'd left all that behind him forever, but in the dark of night he knew better. He still hadn't escaped from those prison walls, and he was beginning to wonder if he ever would.

The next morning he told Jessie he was going to start looking for a house for them to rent. "I know your momma's got plenty of room," he said reasonably, "but we need a place of our own." He didn't use the word home. He still felt a long way from being able to do that.

His biggest problem, he soon discovered, was going to be transportation. There seemed to be plenty of vehicles around, but no spares, and even if there had been, it went against his grain to borrow a car from one of his wife's relatives. The obvious solution was to buy himself a car-he was going to have to, eventually. And money wasn't going to be an issue-he'd been given the first installment of his back military pay before he'd left Washington, which had amounted to a pretty sizable sum. But it was only one more confusing thing about his return to "normal" life that he found the idea of buying a car both thrilling and terrifying.

He didn't know where to begin. There were too damn many choices, that was the problem. After having someone else direct every aspect of his existence for eight years, he wasn't used to making decisions. Used or new? Foreign or domestic? Should he go for power and performance or fuel economy? He sort of liked the idea of the SUVs, but they were really more car than he needed. Sports cars tempted him, naturally, but that seemed a little too much like he was trying to overcompensate. On the other hand, everyday run-of-the-mill cars…hell, how would he ever decide on one? There had to be hundreds of them, all more or less alike.

In the end he said "The hell with it," and went out for his morning run. He was pumping iron over at C.J.'s when J.J. came ripping up on his shiny new Honda motorcycle. Tris stopped what he was doing to watch J.J. put the kick-stand down, take off his helmet and hang it on the handlebars, then dismount with a seventeen-year-old's flexible grace and come sauntering toward them, pulling off his gloves.

"Hey," J.J. said, grinning, the thrill of the ride still bright in his eyes.

Tris could feel that thrill himself, remembering his own brief spin on the bike. He felt it again now…a humming under his breastbone and a tingling in his thighs.

"Hey," C.J. grunted back to his nephew, between lifts.

Tris muttered something, he wasn't sure what. He was smiling and looking past J.J. at that black-and-yellow motorcycle.


* * *

"You did what?" Jessie couldn't believe what she was seeing with her own eyes. A motorcycle? But it was-a very big, very shiny, royal-blue motorcycle. And standing beside it was her husband, wearing a huge grin and a snug-fitting black leather jacket that seemed to have zippers everywhere.

"I bought it." He said it in a casual, offhand way, but the glow of pride in his eyes made her heart quiver. She tried to swallow the fear that had jumped into her throat and search for something positive to say.

"It's…" But it was no use. She shook her head helplessly.

"It's a BMW," Tris explained, as if she couldn't see that for herself. He was as enthusiastic as a boy. "It was between this and a Gold Wing-didn't want a Harley-I'm thinking, too much vibration-might be hard on my knee, you know? This hasn't got much vibration at all, just a nice, sweet hum… Hop on. Let's go for a ride."

"Oh, God, no…Tris-" She couldn't stop an involuntary recoil. She was remembering the autobahn, Tristan behind the wheel of a Euro-model Ford, and the wild light in his eyes and the twisted bitterness of his smile. Remembering her terror, her anger, she felt her breath grow shallow.

"Here, I even got you a helmet. And look-there's a backrest-and you can have armrests, too, if you want. It's like sitting in an easy chair."

He was imagining her there already, thinking how it would be with her behind him, arms locked tight around his waist and breasts pillowed against his back, and all that power under him and the wind pummeling his face and tearing the breath from his lungs. Power, speed and sex-all the things he'd been denied-right here, in one sleek, sexy package.

"Come on, Jess…ride with me," he murmured, folding his arms around her and nuzzling her neck with his sweetest voice and most seductive smile. Making a conscious point of doing what once had come as naturally to him as breathing. He felt her body expand with her indrawn breath, and her heart flutter inside her hospital smock, printed with alphabet blocks and Teddy bears in primary colors. Her skin was warm and damp and smelled of lotion and powder and disinfectant. "Just a short one…I'll take it easy, honey, I promise."

"Oh…" Her laugh was weak and fragmented, and he could feel her body softening…trembling…responding to him the way she always had…always would. It was one of the things that had made her so irresistible to him, back then. He chuckled and rocked her in his arms, rubbing himself suggestively against her, shameless in pressing his advantage. "Come on, darlin'…don't you trust me?"

And even as he said it, even before she laughed again and finally gave in, he knew that she didn't. Once she would have-utterly, completely, implicitly. And now she didn't.