Knight In Black Leather by Gail Dayton (people reading books .txt) 📗

tight, soaking it all in. It didn't change a thing. It shouldn't make any difference. But it did.

He couldn't let her know that, though. He wanted things from her other than pity. So he shrugged. "What was there for her to say?"

"No, for one thing. 'You're not kicking a thirteen-year-old child out of his home,' for another. She didn't object at all?"

Eli shrugged again, basking in the heat of her righteous anger. "No big deal. I'm here now, aren't I?" He tugged on her hand, pulling her down again to lie beside him.

Reluctantly she came, lying on her side facing him, her eyes dark in the pale shadow of her face. "How?" she asked as she tucked his hand beneath her cheek. "How did you survive?"

"I managed."

"Yes, but how?"

He shook his head. "There are ways. Doesn't matter now. I don't want to talk about it." He never would, if he had his way. About this, he intended to.

"I can't believe your mother let it happen." She still sounded indignant, clutching his hand to her as if somehow she could protect his thirteen-year-old self.

Eli wanted to laugh out loud, despite the pain still carried in the memory. "She needed him more than she needed me." That pain had the strength to dredge up old hurt, old, powerful anger, but it was familiar. He knew how to handle it.

"I don't care what she needed," Marilyn snapped. "She's your mother. It's the mother's job to look after the child, not the other way round. I just-- I--" She sputtered to a halt. "I want to call her up and tell her just what I think. I want to chew her into little pieces."

He did laugh then. "You're so tough. Relax, woman. I'm twenty-five. Not thirteen."

Marilyn lay silent a moment, watching him. "I want to hug you," she said finally, "but I'm afraid I'll hurt something."

"Do it anyway." He tugged at her hands clasped around his, wanting that hug, wanting her arms around him more than he'd wanted anything before in his life--anything he could have. He wouldn't let himself want things he couldn't have. This had nothing to do with sex, or very little, and everything to do with her delightful outrage. Probably more than that besides, but Eli refused to think about that.

He tugged again, gently. "Come on, Marilyn. You know you want to. One little hug. What can it hurt?"

"That's what worries me." Her half-stifled mutter made him laugh.

"You won't hurt me and I already promised not to bite unless you ask. Come on. Take a little risk." He pulled her hands all the way to his side of the bed when she suddenly rolled up onto her elbow.

"Oh, all right," she grumbled, leaning toward him. "I don't know what the big deal is about a hug anyway."

"True. You've had your arms around me all day. No big deal."

Marilyn realized she had made it into a big deal all by herself, by hesitating and holding back. If she'd just hugged him spontaneously, the way she'd wanted, neither one of them would have thought anything about it. Now, much as she tried to think of that abandoned child he once was, Marilyn could only see the man Eli was now.

Reminding herself that a dozen years ago, when he'd been a child, she had been a housewife and mother, Marilyn put her hand on the far side of the bed, past his shoulder. The cast on his arm bumped her ribs as she leaned closer. She brushed her cheek against his, hoping she could get away with no more than that, but Eli's good arm clamped down on her shoulders, bringing her into abrupt, close contact.

She couldn't help it. She hugged him back, tight, breathing in his male scent, savoring the sandpaper of his jaw, the strength in his one arm. She'd forgotten how she needed this.

"I'm glad you survived," she whispered in his ear just before she pushed away and retreated to her own side of the bed.

"Me, too." His reply came so soft she almost didn't hear it.

"Your turn," he said, reclaiming his grip on her hand. "Tell me about you and your brother. What's the worst thing you ever did when you were kids?"

The moment was over. Marilyn recognized it with relief and let him turn the conversation. She wanted to know more, know everything about him, but she'd heard things beneath the flat words he'd spoken. He needed the break. So did she. She could carry the conversational weight a while. There would be other nights. She hoped. Or maybe she didn't.

"The worst thing?" She brought Eli's hand back up under her chin where he was safe. "Maybe when we put grasshoppers in our sister's beds. Or maybe--"

"You have sisters? You never said you had sisters."

"Two. They're a fair bit older than Joey and me. Six and seven years."

She talked until silence told her Eli slept. Marilyn thought about him and the awful story he'd told for another minute more, before she lost the battle and joined him in sleep.

The next evening, Marilyn and Joey drove over to the youth center to retrieve the long scarf she'd left behind and Eli's motorcycle, then to the fleabag motel where Eli had been staying and checked him out. It bothered her to see the kind of place he was apparently used to. She tried not to snoop through his belongings too much as they packed them up, but it was impossible not to snoop at all. Eli's wardrobe ran heavily to black T-shirts and faded jeans, also generally black, just enough of them to fill the saddlebags he apparently carried on his Harley.

She wanted to mother him. At least, that's what she tried to tell herself as she carried his things downstairs and waited for Joey to pull up on the motorcycle so they could head back to the apartment together. But if she wanted to be honest--which she didn't particularly--motherly wasn't the best way to describe how she felt