Devlin's Grace (9 page)

“Then
take a nap while I clean up the kitchen.”

He
shook his head. “I don’t sleep much.
 
I
told you so.”

Feeling
almost maternal, Gracie said, “You need some rest.
 
If you don’t want to sleep just stretch out
and shut your eyes for a few minutes.”

His
heavy eyes stared at her as he sighed. “I think I will.
 
Thanks, Gracie.”

“Sure.”
 
She figured he’d go to sleep if he would lie
down, and she vowed she wouldn’t wake him.
 
Devlin’s fatigue concerned her and he could use the rest.
  
By the time she filled the sink with hot,
soapy water and washed the few dishes his soft snores were audible.
 
Gracie paused in her domestic chore with a
smile.
 

In
repose, Devlin’s features softened and he looked much younger asleep.
 
The troubles he wore daily, the ones living
behind his eyes receded as he slept, and she marveled at how carefree he seemed
for the moment.
 
After drying her hands
and rubbing a little Jergen’s hand lotion into her skin, she settled down in
her rocker beside Devlin.

Just
watching Dev at rest tickled her and Gracie almost dozed as she relaxed,
too.
 
Having a man sprawled out in her
apartment might’ve seemed shocking at one time, but it didn’t now.
 
She liked it.
 
There wasn’t any strangeness about it and it felt like a home for the
first time.
 
Maybe she’d been lonelier
than she knew, Gracie mused,
then
Devlin began talking
in his sleep.
 
At first she couldn’t make
out the words, just heard the mumbles, but he became restless, shifting first
his legs then waving his arms.
 
Roused
from her own somnolent state, she leaned over and touched his face.

“Devlin?”

He
erupted off the couch and hit the floor with his feet.
 
Devlin stood on her braided rug,
then
crouched as if he held a weapon.
 
“Get out of the way!” He yelled with frantic
volume. Then he screamed, making a harsh and terrible noise.
 
“Oh, God, no,” he shouted.
“Christ,
no.
 
Not the fucking kids.”

Devlin
choked and began to weep, still babbling, swearing and praying all at
once.
 
Gracie stared, shock delaying her
reaction.
 
Now she understood why he
didn’t sleep much and she stood up.
 
“Devlin,” she said, “Wake up.”

“They’re
dead,” he said, still caught in the anguished nightmare.
“Oh,
Jesus.”

Gracie
caught his hands in hers and held them.
 
“Devlin, it’s a bad dream.
 
It’s
not happening now.
 
Come on, wake up.”

 
When he stood erect, he seemed to tower over
her.
 
As she held his hands, he struggled
against her and lunged at her.
 
Afraid he
might hit her while dreaming, something Gracie knew he’d regret, she raised her
voice and used his name, the one he said he didn’t like. “Robert! Robert,
listen to me.
 
Wake up.
 
It’s me, it’s Gracie.
 
Devlin, come on, wake up!”

Matching
dark eyes riveted on her face and all the pain absent when he slept filled
them, brimming over as he awoke.
 
His
torment existed, almost tangible enough to touch, and he stared at Gracie.
 
As cognizance returned, his face shifted from
agony to shame and he dropped her hands.

“I’m
sorry,” Devlin said in a voice hoarse from shouting. “Whatever I did or said,
Gracie, I’m sorry and I’ll go.”
 
He
turned away from her, groping to find the shoes he shed earlier and sat down to
put them onto his feet.
 
As soon as they
were in place, he stood and moved toward the door, avoiding eye contact with
her.

 
Within her chest, her heart shattered, broke
the way a dropped china cup does when it hits a hardwood floor.
 
“Dev, don’t leave,” Gracie said.
 
She moved across the room with speed to stand
in front of the door and put her hand on his right arm.
 
A little blood seeped through the bandage on
his left. “I don’t want you to go.
 
And,
you don’t need to apologize.”

As
if storm winds buffeted his body, Devlin shook. He trembled from his head and
shoulders down to his feet.
 
His face
worked as he struggled to maintain control and misery turned his face into a
tragic mask.
 
“Gracie, oh, Gracie, I’m an
asshole, a fucked up mess.
 
I don’t
deserve to be around someone like you and you deserve better.
 
Let me go.”

Sorrow
wreaked havoc on her emotions, destroyed her inner calm and yet in the dark
depths of despair, Gracie wanted Devlin.
 
Somehow she knew if he left, she’d lose him forever and she valued him
enough to fight.
 
“I can’t,” she said,
simply. “I won’t.”

His
ragged breath echoed in her ears as he struggled to be rational.
 
“You should’ve let me leave,” Devlin said. “I
need you.
 
I can’t stop, Gracie.
 
I can’t.”

His
unconscious echo of her words reached her, but she paid no mind as his arms
grasped her with such force she gasped.
 
Devlin’s fingers bit hard into her flesh, holding her prisoner with an
amazing strength, but she didn’t resist or even want to oppose.
 
As he drew her into his rough embrace, Gracie
wrapped her arms around him and held tight.
 
She gripped him and sensed the shudders rocking him as they slowed.
 
One of his hands caught the back of her head
and held, his fingers tangled in her curls, but despite his fierce hold, she
knew no fear.

Devlin
took her mouth and kissed it, his lips swift and savage against hers.
 
He became the match to ignite her desire but
even as her body came to life, Gracie knew what fueled him.
 
He acted not with a sensual passion or even a
hunger, but with need, pure and unbridled need.

His
want stretched beyond any simple gratification or dream.
 
He required her, her mouth and her kisses and
her body to survive.
 
As simple and basic
as it might be, Gracie understood.
 
In
these moments, Devlin wasn’t making love or giving lust power.
 
He sought life, simple and eternal and
thought he could find it in her arms.

She
realized it on a gut level and knew she was the life jacket tossed to a
drowning man, the oxygen given the patient to survive, and the escape route to
safety.
 
Gracie offered herself, a willing
sacrifice to banish remembered death and to be the conduit to drain some of
Devlin’s emotional anguish away.
 
If she
didn’t, he might die of it and she felt it, stronger than almost anything she’d
known.
 
As he kissed her, his tongue
found her mouth and entered.
 
His
unshaven cheeks raked against hers, prickly and abrasive as sandpaper, but
somehow she couldn’t mind, not when his extreme need roared like a beast
between them.

She
was far from sexually experienced, but she wasn’t a virgin either. Her few
experiences, interludes with unhappy endings, were nothing like what Gracie
knew now.
 
His extreme need evoked a
response within her and the passion born of his essential requirement birthed a
greater, wilder desire within.
 
She ached
to please him, to take his pain and channel it back with love.
 
As Devlin’s hands caressed her body,
awakening it, Gracie gave him back the same.
 
Her fingers touched him, fondled him, and by the time he stripped away
his clothing with urgency, she’d shucked her own.
 
Gracie caressed his terrible scars. Her mouth
rained kisses on them, and she took care not to injure his side where she’d
pulled out the shrapnel.

Devlin
ravished her, but with her full consent and participation.
 
He took her the way a storm pounds the
landscape, with force and power but with undeniable majesty.
 
Even as he rubbed his naked body against
hers, as his hands clutched her breasts and his mouth suckled at her nipples
with harsh desire, Gracie gloried in it.
 
He swept her with him in the turbulent floodwaters of his wild emotions
and she clung to him for the ride.

“Bedroom,”
she said as their crazy lovemaking neared a peak.
 

Through
his berserk yearning Dev heard her and they headed for her bedroom, mauling one
another worse than a bar room brawl.
 
In
her pink and pretty sleeping space, he pulled the rose sprigged comforter from
the bed and thrust it aside.
 
Devlin put
Gracie on her back against the soft sheets and he entered her without further
foreplay.
 
His cock rammed her hard, but
she opened to him, her body squeezing him to caress, his pleasure becoming hers,
too.
 

He
moaned aloud with pleasure and rocked her until they came in a burst of
completion.
 
Exhilaration exploded within
and her body spasmed with a delight beyond anything she expected.
 
In the final moments, their bodies become one
force, living and loving.
 
Such a
powerful rush of physical wonder and emotional joy combined to carry Gracie to
the stars and back. She cried out with it, wordless and guttural.

Devlin
shuddered against her then collapsed on top of her, his voice echoing in her
ears.
 
She had no idea what he said, but
Gracie knew his emotion as her own, and when she felt the soft moisture of his
tears, she realized she’d been crying, too.
 
Her arms went around him and held him close to her.
 
He rolled so they could lie side by side,
intertwined and close.
 
Their lovemaking
leached away his frenzy, and he wiped a single tear from her cheek with one
finger.

“Did
I hurt you?” he asked. His voice was no more than a sigh in the night.

“No,”
Gracie replied, hoarse yet happy.
 

“I
needed you,” Devlin whispered. “Oh, Jesus, Gracie, I’m sorry if it was too
much…”

“It
wasn’t,” she said. “Don’t apologize, Devlin, don’t.”

In
the faint light shining from the living room lamp in the otherwise dark bedroom,
Gracie watched a slow smile creep over his lips. “You liked it?”

“Well,
yeah,” she replied. “I probably wouldn’t want it so intense every time, but oh,
yeah, I did.”

“Jesus
Christ,” he breathed and it wasn’t meant as an oath.
 
He said it with wonder, with shock and
awe.
 
“You’re a woman in ten thousand,
then.”

She
liked his compliment and so Gracie snuggled against him.
 
They lay quiet, content in each other’s arms
and presence, but after a while, Devlin said, “Now you understand why I don’t
sleep much.”

Gracie
nodded, head against his chest. “Do the nightmares happen a lot?”

“Every
damn night, sooner or later, they do.
 
If
I could live without sleeping, I would.
 
How long did I sleep before I went ape shit in front of you?”

“Twenty, thirty minutes.”

“Really?”
He sounded impressed. “That’s
longer than I usually go.
 
You’re not
going to kick me out now that you’ve seen me at my worst?”

“No
way,” Gracie said.
 
A warm trickle against
her arm caught her attention and she realized it must be blood from his wound,
knocked open in all their exertion. “I think you’re bleeding on me.”

“It’s
okay,” he said.
 
“I’d just open it up
again.”

For
a moment she didn’t understand his meaning, but then, as Devlin began kissing
her with slow sweetness, she realized he meant to love her again.
  
This time, he touched her as if she were
fragile, breakable, and she reveled in his tenderness.
  
And afterward, he slept for a space of a few
hours without dreams and without waking.

So
did
she
.