Part 15 (1/2)

Their gazes held across the short distance that separated them, and for a moment, he studied her, a thoughtful frown flickering across his brow. Then, with a purposeful look, he came toward her.

Kate drew back, a little frightened by the tension radiating from him. He sat on the edge of the sofa, turning sideways to face her, and when he reached for her hands, she was filled with a strange reluctance. Yet she let him draw her hands into his, feeling both the strength and the gentleness of his grasp. She started to speak, seeking to relieve her uneasiness, but an instant later, she forgot what she was going to say.

It was happening. Her gaze fell to his hands, wrapped around hers, and she realized they were growing warm. Not hot, like they'd been the night he'd healed Ray c.o.o.ney, but warm-a s.h.i.+mmering, electric warmth. As it seeped slowly into her own skin, the reluctance she'd been feeling drained out of her. There was nothing to be afraid of, nothing in this that would ever hurt her.

”Do you see what I'm saying, Katie?” he asked. ”Do you feel it? Feel it here-” He squeezed her hands a little. ”Feel what I'm trying to tell you.”

Oh, yes, she felt it. And she realized that until that moment, she hadn't begun to understand it. How had she thought it happened? She'd seen him lay these hands upon a dying man, and it had seemed like magic that the man lived. Yet the hands that held hers were flesh and blood, strong and big and tanned, the backs dusted lightly with fine hair, the fingers long and tapered. They were wonderful hands-but only a man's hands, nothing more, and it was impossible to grasp that they had become the vehicle for such a powerful force, the essence of life itself. The force wasn't the man, yet, somehow, he could contain it in his body; more than that, he could direct it into other people's bodies.

But how could he? And how could he go on, walking, eating, sleeping-living-knowing what he could do?

But then, that was the problem, wasn't it?

In a voice filled with wonder, she breathed, ”The other night, it . . . your hands were so hot, and yet . . . yet it doesn't hurt.”

”No, it doesn't hurt. It heals,” he said. ”It only gets hot when I'm using it for real, but it's always there, like this, under the surface . . . just waiting.”

He released her then, and she stared at her hands, feeling the warmth he'd imprinted upon her skin fade until, at last, it was gone. Then slowly, she brought her gaze up to his.

His clear gray eyes were less guarded than she'd ever seen them, and they revealed that incredible strength of spirit she'd always sensed was there but had never seen in such full measure. Yet his eyes also spoke of things not so wonderful, things Kate could better understand, and the sum of it was a wrenching ambivalence.

Sam searched her features for a moment, then turned away as he spoke. ”Katie, I'm not trying to scare you or prove something to you. I'm trying to tell you that I don't recognize myself anymore. Since the day I put my hands on Sid and stopped that artery from pumping blood, I wake up every morning wondering what I'll find that day that's different about me. And often enough, some new thing catches me off guard-like the fish last week.”

Her gaze followed as he rose to move restlessly around the confined s.p.a.ce between the sofa and the hearth.

”But it's more than a matter of changing habits or the way I live,” he said. ”I spend all kinds of time now just thinking. Thinking and asking myself questions that never would have occurred to me before. And it's all tied up with knowing . . . knowing what comes after this . . . understanding that being dead isn't an end to life but a continuation of it. Except it's . . . it's . . .” He stopped by the fireplace and closed his eyes on a long, ragged sigh. ”Katie, there aren't any words to talk about that place. I could call it heaven, but that wouldn't tell you anything. There isn't any way . . . any language to describe it. But in my mind it's got color and shape and size. I remember what it looked like, how it felt. How peaceful it was.”

His eyes opened slowly, and in a voice that held all the bitterness of a lonely lifetime, he said, ”But I had to come back here. And now I'm supposed to go on living in a body that looks and feels like mine-mostly -and that has all my memories. But it's a body that feels things mine never felt. And it can do things I never knew how to do. And I ask myself-Are you really who you think you are? Do you even know who -or what-you are? And honest to G.o.d, some days . . .” He shook his head. ”Some days I'm really not sure.”

He gave her a brief look, his mouth twisting in self-mock-ery. ”Katie, I didn't leave California to get away from sick people. I left to get away from the stares. I couldn't take being treated like a freak in a sideshow. I couldn't stand listening to people talk about me like I was a laboratory rat or some religious nut' s latest idea of the Messiah.” With an angry gesture, he insisted, ”I'm just a man, dammit!” But in the flash of silence that followed, he turned away, muttering, ”Not that I know what the h.e.l.l that means anymore, either.”

And that, Kate thought, said it all.

She could no more have kept from going to him then than she could have stopped spring from coming. So many times she'd wanted to touch him, to reach for him, but hadn't for fear of . . . of what? Of making him angry? Of being rejected? Of falling in love with him if she got too close? Well, it was too late for that. Still, as she rose from the sofa and walked slowly toward him, her heart was racing, and she was frighteningly aware that she was taking the biggest risk she'd ever taken in her life.

Twelve.

Sam watched Katie approach, his body tensing. He didn't want her near him. He didn't want anyone near him. He wasn't even sure why he hadn't left in the first place, when he'd realized what was coming, except that it would have been like lying. To have walked out, when it was so obvious she knew the truth, would have looked worse than just admitting it.

Well, so he had. He'd told her more about himself than he'd ever told another human being. And, honest to G.o.d, he didn't know where people ever got the idea that talking about their problems made them feel better. As far as he was concerned, they could have it. He felt awful. Raw, like in the hospital, when the doctor had sc.r.a.ped the burned skin off his face every day so he wouldn't scar, and he'd had to lie there and not scream and act like he wasn't just horrified at the whole idea. They'd wanted to sc.r.a.pe the rest of him, too, and he'd told them to forget it. He'd take the scars.

So, when Katie stopped in front of him and raised her brown gaze to his, he felt like she must be seeing him without any skin. And he felt like screaming then, too. He almost did, when she lifted her hand and placed it on the spot just below his heart, where, under his s.h.i.+rt, the long surgical scar began its arc around the right side of his body. But then she did something that knocked the wind out of him and made the muscles in his belly tighten, so he couldn't scream; instead, all he could do was stand there, watching, as she let her gaze drop from his and began tracing the scar beneath the cloth with her fingertips.

It was as if she'd memorized it, for she followed the line unerringly. When she reached the halfway point of the scar, she retraced the path to where she'd started, finally letting her hand rest lightly on his s.h.i.+rtfront as she raised her gaze to his once more. This was no sympathetic pat on the hand but a deliberate attempt to shred the last of his control, and he knew the look he returned was suspicious and about as receptive as a brick wall.

”Sam,” she said, in a voice that was low and kind of shaky. ”I don't know what sort of man you were before, and it doesn't matter to me, because I know what kind of man you are now. I can tell you, you're more of a man than most men ever get to be. And it doesn't have a single thing to do with whether you can clean a fish or fly an airplane. In fact, you're . . .”

She trailed off, her thick, dark lashes lowering in a way that made it sink into his confused and wary mind that this wasn't at all what he'd expected-and that she was really nervous. But about what? Why should she be nervous?

When her hand moved, her fingers trembling as they slid up his chest, and a hint of pink crept into her cheeks, it hit him: This wasn't sympathy. It was seduction. And, d.a.m.n . . . it was working.

Her eyes were warm and heavy-lidded as she raised her gaze once more to his, and she continued on that same trembling note to tell him, ”You're more of a man than any man I've ever known. You're enough of a man that all I have to do is look at you, and . . . Oh, Sam”-her eyelids drifted closed- ”when you look at me or touch me . . . when you kiss me . . . you make me feel things no man has ever made me feel. You make me feel exactly the way a woman's supposed to feel. And it feels wonderful.”

”Ah, Katie . . .” His fingertips brushed her flushed cheek as he tilted her face up to his. How she'd done it, he didn't know, but in less than a minute flat she'd given him back the pride he'd spent the past hour wasting. He ran his thumb over her full lower lip. ”Honey, when you look at me like you are right now, you make me feel exactly like a man is supposed to feel. And it feels good . . . so d.a.m.ned good.”

”Does it?”

”You know it does.”

”Kiss me, Sam. Please.”

Her body was straining upward, toward him, and he felt himself bending, toward her. Their lips were only inches apart, and he could feel the current of antic.i.p.ation running between them. But before he kissed her, he had to tell her. . . .

”Katie, we're not going to stop this time. I want to . . .” He trailed off, his gaze searching her pretty face, skimming over her s.h.i.+ny hair, finally locking on her deep brown eyes, sinking into them. ”I'm going to make love to you,” he said.

Her breath rushed out on a little sob, and her eyes closed briefly. When she opened them, they were hazy with desire. ”That is what people do, isn't it,” she whispered, ”when they make each other feel this way?”

”Is it? I don't know.” His lips touched hers once. ”I've never felt this way before.”

Nor had he ever pulled a woman into his arms, settled his mouth over hers, and kissed her as if doing it meant more to him than anything else in the world. But it did. Somehow, at that moment, it meant everything. And he tried to tell her that. He tried to tell her that she was special, different from any other, and that he was different, too. And, for once, he was glad of that, because making love with her was going to be different from anything he'd ever known.

Slow, he said to her silently. Ah, Katie, we're going to take this so slow. Slow, like our mouths blending this way, so we feel everything, taste everything, so I know your mouth the way I know my own, and you know mine. Slow, so when we get where we're going, we'll know exactly where we've been. Because getting there . . . ah, Katie, getting there is going to be such a pleasure. . . .

He tried to tell her everything in that kiss-everything about needs and wants he hadn't known he had, and about wanting to give her things he'd never thought of giving anyone. He told her until she was liquid in his arms, until she was breathless and trembling, her face flushed and her lips wet and swollen. When he raised his head far enough to look down at her, her lashes fluttered, and she whispered his name. He kissed her again, briefly, then lifted her in his arms. He wouldn't have let her go for anything.

The bedroom was bathed in moonlight filtering through lacy curtains, and the moon provided all the light he needed to find the bed-and to see the look on her face when he stood her beside it. The slight lowering of her lashes, the hint of uncertainty, reminded him of how long it had been for her and that she was probably feeling shy and maybe a little scared. And so, when he pulled her into his arms, he tried to tell her it was all right.

Some of it, he told her in words.

”Katie, honey, it's going to be good between us.”

”It already is. . . . Oh, Sam, when you touch me likethat . . .”

”You're so soft. All-over soft, like I've never felt soft before. And your hair-”

”If it gets in the way, I can-”

”It's not in the way. I want to wrap us up in it and. . . . Katie, don't ever call your hair, or anything else about you, plain and ordinary again.”

”I've always thought I was.”

”Well, honey, you're about to find out you're not.”

He undressed her in a way meant to arouse, not to startle, and in a way meant to stretch it out and make it last a long, long time. His hands learned her through the fabric of her clothing, using the filmy lace of her blouse to shape the lush fullness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the soft folds of her skirt to mold the curve of her hips, to test the rounded swell of her bottom, and to caress for the first time the hot mound between her thighs. An accidental brush, a deliberate stroke. A fingertip here, the palm of his hand there. Long before her blouse or skirt were even unb.u.t.toned, the clothing under them was gone or undone, and he'd touched almost every inch of silky skin beneath them.

His own clothing came off in a slightly different way.