Be With Me(62)

Pain curled its fist around him, squeezing uncomfortably. She was afraid. Of him.

“Why are you looking at me that way?” she asked.

He must have al owed his feelings to show, not that he’d ever been good at hiding them from her. She had a way of prying him open, flaying him wide for the world to see. Not a comfortable prospect for a man.

“You’re afraid of me,” he said in a low voice.

Sorrow fil ed her eyes, and she reached out to cup his face. He couldn’t help the reaction that had him turning into her palm to kiss the baby-soft skin.

“Not of you,” she whispered. “Never of you, Hutch.

But I won’t lie to you and say I’m not afraid. Not of you, but of what you think. Of what you feel.” His brows drew together in confusion. He sensed this was an important conversation, and he didn’t want to have it down here, no matter that he was supposed to be wil ing to share Reggie with Cam and Sawyer. No one ever said he couldn’t hold some part of her special, away from the others.

“Wil you come upstairs with me, baby? We can talk in the bedroom.”

She nodded, and he took her hand, holding it tightly in his. They walked to the stairs, side by side, and he curled his arm around her waist as they started up.

He nudged her into his room and shut the door behind them. Without hesitation, he pulled her against his chest, tilting her head back so he could claim her lips.

“I’ve waited so long to have you like this, Reggie,” he whispered as he walked her backward toward the bed. “In my arms, looking at me like you looked at me in the kitchen.”

He eased her down onto the bed, coming with her, holding himself above her as he stared intently into her eyes.

“Tel me what you’re afraid of, baby.” She gazed up at him and reached to touch his face. She traced the lines of his forehead and feathered down to his jawline. Tentatively, she ran one finger over his firm lips.

He caught the tip between his teeth, nipping ever so slightly as he sucked it into his mouth.

A quiver worked over her body. She wanted that mouth on hers. He would be so exquisitely gentle.

He’d always treated her like fine china. Had always been protective of her, always supported her hopes and dreams.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she hastened to explain.

“Never of you, Hutch. I’m afraid of seeing the way you look at me changing. Of the way you feel about me changing.”

His brow crinkled, and his eyes flared. “Why would any of that change?”

“Because I made love with Cam,” she said quietly.

“Because . . . I’l make love to Sawyer.” His breath blew slightly over her hair, ruffling it from her forehead.

“Cam said . . .”

“What did Cam say?” he asked, a note of curiosity in his tone.

“He said that if it had been you or Sawyer who made love to me the other night, that while he would have wanted it to be him, he wouldn’t have been upset. He said he’d have been relieved.”

“Relieved.” He frowned a little as he said it, and she held her breath until his expression eased. “I suppose I can understand why he put it that way.”

“Can you?” she asked. “Are you angry or hurt that I was with him?”

He shook his head emphatical y, even as his expression remained indecisive. He slid his knee between her legs and shifted a little to her right so they rol ed to their sides. He pil owed her head on his muscular arm, and he stroked his other hand down her side until it came to rest on her hip.

“I’m not angry or hurt, baby. I knew if this was going to work for us that you would be making love with Cam and Sawyer. I don’t expect the times you spend with them to always be in a group setting. I don’t expect to share my every moment with you with them, so it isn’t fair for me to expect it of them.”

“But are you real y okay with it?” she asked anxiously. There was stil an undercurrent of doubt in his voice, and it pulled at her.

“Define ‘okay,’ ” he said with a wry laugh. “I won’t lie to you and say that when I walked downstairs and saw you lying with Cam on the couch that my chest didn’t cave in just a little. But there was also a lightness there, relief, as Cam put it. I wanted it to be me, but I also realized that it would be me. Al I had to do was give you time.”

He worked his hand back up to her shoulder and then to the curve of her neck and final y her face. He kissed her again, just a light peck at the corner of her mouth, but she felt the love behind the gesture, felt it to her toes.

“I feel like I’ve loved you forever, Reggie. Ever since we met in that creek bottom, and if I didn’t love you then, I lost my heart when you decked Sawyer and Cam for making fun of me. There are times when I resent the fact that I have to share you with them. In my heart, you were mine first.” She sucked in her breath and trembled as tears wel ed in her eyes.

“But I also know as much as I love you that they love you too. And then I imagine having to be without you, and it hurts me. It’s a physical ache I can’t control. I know it’s how they’d feel. They’re brothers to me, and I know you love them too. I can sit here and talk about the hurt it would cause me and them, but it’s nothing to the pain it would cause you if we made you choose. I know you wel enough to know it’s something you’d never do. It’s why you ran so hard. Because you didn’t want to hurt us, no matter how much you were hurting yourself.”