Carolina Moon

repeated. “I need to feel you.” She put her palms against his chest. “You’re warm. You’re real. Make me real, Cade.”
    She sank into him when his mouth came back to hers, sank deep into the tenderness of it, the kindness that erased the horror she’d seen. The calm came first, the understanding that this brush and slide of flesh, this meeting of bodies, had nothing to do with pain or fear.
    His mouth on her breast, feeding, arousing, sped the beat of her blood. His hands, strong, patient, washed her mind clear of everything but the need to join.
    She sighed out his name as he danced over the first peak.
    She was fluid, and open, rising toward him, sliding against him. When she rolled, he found her mouth again, then let her set the pace. She rose over him, her hair like wet ropes gleaming over her shoulders. Her face was flushed with life, damp with tears.
    She took him into her, bowing back, her breath catching, releasing, her fingers locking with his as she began to move.
    There was nothing in his world now but her, the heat of her surrounding him, the steady rise and fall of her hips as she rode him. The dark smoke of her eyes stayed wide and fixed on his even as her breath began to tear.
    He saw her come, watched the force of it ripple through her.
    “God.” She brought their joined hands to her breasts. “More. Again. Touch me, touch me, touch me.”
    He took her breasts in his hands, reared up, and took them into his mouth so that she arched back. When she gripped his hair, he drove deeper. Filling her, taking her. Taking himself.
    They stayed wrapped around each other. Even when he shifted to lie with her, they remained tangled and close. She breathed him in.
    “You should sleep now,” he murmured.
    “I’m afraid to sleep.”
    “I’ll be right here.”
    “I thought you would go.”
    “I know.”
    “You were so angry. I thought…” No, she needed another minute. Courage didn’t come without effort. “Would you get me some water?”
    “All right.” He shifted, and rising, pulled on his jeans before he went out into the kitchen.
    She heard him open a cupboard for a glass, close it again. And when he came back she was sitting on the side of the bed in her robe. “Thank you.”
    “Tory, are you always sick afterward?”
    “No.” Her hand tightened on the glass. “I’ve never done anything like … I can’t talk about that yet. But I need to talk. I need to tell you about something else. About when I was in New York.”
    “I know what happened. It wasn’t your fault.”
    “You only know parts and pieces. What you heard in the news. I need to explain.”
    Because she’d tightened up again, he combed his fingers through her hair. “You wore your hair differently there. You’d lightened it, cut it shorter.”
    She managed a laugh. “My attempt at a new me.”
    “I like it better this way.”
    “I changed a lot more than my hair when I went there. Escaped there. I was only eighteen. Terrified but exhilarated. They couldn’t make me go back, and even if he came after me, he couldn’t make me go back. I was free. I’d saved some money. I’ve always been good at saving money, and Gran gave me two thousand dollars. I suppose it saved my life. I was able to afford a little apartment. Well, a room. It was on the West Side, this cramped little space. I loved it. It was all mine.”
    She could remember, could bring back inside her, the sheer joy of standing in that empty box of a room, of hugging herself as she stared out the window at the dour brick face of the next building. She could hear the riot of noise from the street below as New York shoved its way toward the business of the day.
    She could remember the absolute bliss of being free.
    “I got a job at a souvenir shop, sold a lot of Empire State Building paperweights and T-shirts. After a couple of months, I found a better job, at a classy gift shop. It was a longer commute, but the pay was a little better and it was so nice to be around all those lovely things. I was good at it.”
    “I don’t doubt it.”
    “The first year, I was so happy. I was promoted to assistant manager, and I made some friends. Dated. It was so blessedly normal. I’d forget for long periods that I hadn’t always lived there, then someone would comment on my accent and it would bring me back here. But that was all right. I’d gotten away. I was exactly where I wanted to be, who I wanted to be.”
    She looked at him then. “I didn’t think