She launches the pillow and I manage to get my arm up just in time to knock it out of the way as I stride toward the bed to head off any more attacks. They don’t hurt, but she doesn’t have the energy for this. She barely managed to get the second pillow the few feet away from the bed to even hit me, she’s already that tired.
I sit on the bed beside her and grab her up in my arms. She struggles for the slightest bit before going slack.
“Don’t you dare,” she hisses. Apparently she hasn’t completely given up the fight yet.
“Dare what?” I asked, genuinely fucking bewildered. “Usually I can follow your moods, babe, but you got even me stumped.”
“My moods? My moods?”
I arch an eyebrow. “I feel like anywhere I step is a landmine.”
She looks away from me, staring at the wall and biting her lip. So many times I’ve wished I could read her mind. If I could just see into that broiling brain of hers that’s always ten steps ahead, maybe I could finally feel like I understand what’s—
She suddenly looks back at me, a desperation in her eyes I’ve never seen from her before. “Make love to me.”
Her words make me harden instantly. Because I’m a selfish fuckwit like that and I want her, all the time. Any way I can get her.
But I’m trying to be a better man. I peel her off of me. “Daph, no. We can’t. You’re way too tired for that.”
“Says who? You? Suddenly you’re inside my body and know what I can and cannot take?” She’s challenging. Belligerent. Angry. And afraid.
Because underneath everything else, I see her fear. I see her vulnerability.
I might not understand everything that’s going on in her head. Or hell, maybe I don’t understand anything that’s going on in her head.
But I can see she needs me right now. And I’ll always give my Daphne everything she needs.
So I pull her against me and drop my lips to hers in the gentlest kiss imaginable. But Daphne’s not having it.
She crushes her lips against mine and tears at my shirt. But it’s like she barely has patience for that, only shoving it past my abs far enough so that she can get to my bare skin. And then so that she can get to the button on my jeans.
“Whoa whoa, Daph, maybe we should slow down?”
But she just grins up at me, the shadows under her eyes doing nothing to diminish her beauty.
She reaches into my pants and squeezes my ever-hardening length. “It doesn’t feel like you want to slow down.”
I groan and devour her lips, because I can’t not. “You know that’s not the problem,” I murmur in her ear. “I’m trying to handle you with care.”
“Don’t.” She leans up and bites my ear. “Just fuck me. Hard like I like it.”
My cock lurches towards her like a heat seeking missile. Maybe if I’m extra careful… If I take it slow and watch her body for signals…
But slow is not on Daphne’s radar tonight. She pushes me back on the bed—well, she applies the tiniest force to my chest and I go back because I know it’s what she wants. And then, before I can consider anything else, she’s climbing on top, straddling me.
“Daphne—”
But she silences me with a kiss. I’m not sure it’s passionate, but it certainly is desperate. My Daphne is desperate and it fucking kills me.
So I kiss her back. In spite of the alarm bells going off in my head about how her being on top is the most taxing position for her, and how limited her energy levels are, and—
I wrap my arms around her to help hold her in place, and I kiss the woman I love back.
It’s a shameful rush. Giving us what we both want so desperately, but in the back of my mind, a chorus of voices chant: you’re hurting her, you’re hurting her, you’re hurting her—
I’m about to push her away when she suddenly collapses to the side, feebly reaching for her pillow.
“Daphne!” I exclaim, but she turns her face away from me.
“Go away,” she says weakly into the pillow, still not letting me see her face.
“Daph, what the hell just happened?”
Finally she shoves the pillow to the side and glares at me. “I don’t have enough fucking energy to seduce my fucking boyfriend, that’s what.”
First of all, her boyfriend? The term is ridiculous for what we are. And secondly, when did she get so foulmouthed?
She turns her face away again. “I just keep sticking my foot in it. I didn’t mean to say you’re my boyfriend. I know we’ve never, like, defined things…” Her voice turns bitter. “Especially now that we can’t even fuck.”
This woman… I shake my head at her. Have I taught her nothing? Then again, I’ve been so concerned with her external well-being that I’ve been neglecting the appetite I helped her develop. And sex was always the place where the two of us went to find clarity.
I lean over her and capture her wrists, pinning them on either side of her body. “I think you should take one of the sleeping pills the doctor prescribed tonight,” I say in my lowest, most dangerous voice. It’s the voice of the Master. “You’ll need your rest for what I have planned for you tomorrow.”
I’m hovering so close above her, I feel the shiver that runs through her body, head to toe. Even in the middle of everything she’s going through, I can still affect her.
I want to curl myself behind her and clutch her to me, to prove to myself that she’s real and she’s not going anywhere.
But her needs come first and I need her anticipating tomorrow. Her life is in chaos and she needs order.
She needs her Master.
So I peel myself away from the bed and release her wrists. “Until tomorrow. Sleep now and sleep soundly.”
Five
Daphne
I wake midmorning, feeling refreshed for the first time in days. I actually slept. Soundly, the whole night through. Usually my sleep is full of nightmare terrors.
But last night?
Quiet. If I had dreams, I don’t remember them.
Is that really his power over me? He orders me to sleep soundly…and I do? Or was it because I knew that behind those words, there would come action?
No more time to mull things over because there he is, pushing the door open with the morning breakfast tray.
But unlike normal, he doesn’t set it up over my lap. He lays the tray on my nightstand and sits beside me on the bed.
Right beside me.
So close, I feel the blazing heat of his thigh against my side. It makes sparks zing elsewhere throughout my body.
They don’t tell you this. But just because you’re sick, it doesn’t mean the rest of your body just shuts off. Maybe if we were doing traditional chemotherapy… But we’re not. And I feel just as needy as ever, maybe even more—but instead Logan’s been pulling away.
There’s just been so much distance between us. Even at a physical level. I’ve missed sleeping with him because I’m stuck on this narrow hospital bed. So much distance.
Until now.
What does this mean? Why is he suddenly being like this? Because of my pathetic attempts to seduce him yesterday?
Then again, maybe he’s as hard up as I am.