He moved his hand under the bunched cloth of her nightdress. His fingertip just barely—or so she thought—brushed the small, tight curls at the tops of her thighs.
She had read of electric shocks and had imagined what they must be like. But that was scarcely an adequate comparison when he touched the most private place beneath that downy shield.
He had asked if she felt for herself. No answer was necessary. Pleasure like pain danced and burned with each small rotation of his finger, wringing gasps from deep in her chest. Standing on her own feet, walking, running again… all that was nothing compared to the ecstasy that reached into the very center of all she was or could ever be.
Was this it, the thing women spoke of in veiled allusions and whispers when men were safely out of hearing? The thing that made sharing a man’s bed more than a duty and a way of making children?
Morgan. He touched her again, and her voice lost its way somewhere between throat and tongue.
To feel… to feel so gloriously was worth any price. To feel this at Morgan’s hands, with his body stretched out above her was a miracle she did not deserve.
But what did Morgan get for himself? He had started this to silence her—to prove something to her, to himself, that he was master of his own fate and hardened against any sentiment she could offer. Yet his attempt at mastery had become a giving—of pleasure, of new feelings and wonder such as Athena had never known.
Did he realize what he did to her? Was it part of his game? Or was it as real and sincere as the renewed wholeness of her body?
He was no fool, and neither was she. The exact nature of the physical consummation between man and woman was but a vague idea in Athena’s mind, but it must be connected to the way he touched her, the way her body responded and grew moist and warm and wanting. She could understand, now, how women bore children outside the bonds of marriage.
But Morgan’s skilled fingers were not the organs capable of planting new life in a woman’s body. Children—good heavens, children—she had dismissed that future as completely as she had one that freed her from the chair.
Children, marriage, physical love. Suddenly all three had become solid and tangible, vivid landscapes she could see through an open window instead of hazy specters glimpsed in a fog of resignation.
Morgan had made them all possible. He alone. He gave and gave, without knowing how much, and now he gave again. She knew in her heart that he wouldn’t force himself upon her, risk getting her with child. God forbid that he should create such an unbreakable tie between them.
But if he thought of her—of her reputation, which he had seemed to ignore in Denver—and of the future he would alter forever if he continued—then how could she accuse him of such a sensible selfishness?
No. If he had meant to prove his independence, his indifference to human tenderness, he had chosen the wrong way. He gave unstintingly, denying himself the kind of fulfillment men must derive from such a joining. And she could not bear the thought that he had nothing but the dubious comfort of knowing he could make her feel.
That was when she realized she had fallen in love with him.
The notion was so blindingly obvious that she was briefly numb to sensation. Everything froze—lungs, heart, even her ability to hear and see.
She loved Morgan Holt. It wasn’t mere attraction for one like herself, one who could understand. It wasn’t some sort of rebellion against the life she thought she had chosen after the accident. It wasn’t even this, this marvelous thing he did with his lips and his hands.
And it was not at all what she expected love to be. She had thought it beyond her reach, an emotion connected with gallant, handsome, courteous men who had wealth and presence and would never look twice at a woman in a invalid’s chair. Men like her brother and his associates, the husbands and fathers of her society friends.