Worth The Wait: A Nature Of Desire Series Novel (45 page)

"So what’s the real reason you’re not on a donor list? Even if it’s not a genetic match, why let that stop you? You told me you don't let a doctor or anyone else tell you how long you have to live. And as Betty said, you’re pretty darn healthy. Except for the whole kidney failure thing.”

She wasn’t sure if the mild tease would be useful or not, but anything that would get him talking was worth a shot.

Desmond stopped, yanking off the gloves and tossing them to the side. "You know what being on a list means? It means there's someone below you, someone who will be waiting for a kidney longer. Maybe a kid, maybe a middle-aged woman who wants to live long enough to retire and have that house at the beach she's always wanted. Maybe a loser who's never done much with his life but, when he gets the gift of a kidney, it opens his eyes and he realizes how much more he could be and do, and he becomes the center of someone's world as a result.”

He swiped a lock of hair out of his eyes that had come loose from the band holding it back. She wanted to stroke it away from his face herself, but she curled her hands on her lap, waiting him out. “I have no family,” he said. “I'm a roofer and I'll always be a roofer, because that's what I like. I'm a guy who gets his freak on with rope and topping beautiful women. I know who I am, I like my life, I like the people in my life. I've figured out my shit. I don't need more time on that. Someone else might. I'm not going to be the one who takes it away from them, just because I'm scared of dying.”

Every word pummeled her. It was unbearable to hear him write himself off, as if her feelings for him didn't matter, as if she didn't matter. Then he pinned her with a blazing gaze.

“Or because the very thought of not having more time with you makes me want to shove every damn person on that list out of my way. Just to get a single moment more together."

Before she could fully wrap her mind around the words, the fierce, frustrated way he said them, he had her on her feet and pushed her against the outside shed wall, kissing her in that hot, take-over way he had. His body pressed between her legs, his other callused hand gripping her thigh and pulling it up against his hip so she had to let him against her core.

They were surrounded by barn, forest and pasture, so they had their privacy, sort of. She hazily wondered if he was going to take her right here. The remarkable thing was she'd let him, her whole being hurting for and craving him. It made his anger contagious, so that she was shoving at him, pinching, scratching, slapping.

He seized her hair, yanking her head back and biting her lip. He was rough with her, pushing her to her knees, holding her against the wall with his work shoe against her abdomen, the heel firm between her legs, eyes glittering as he unbuckled his belt and stripped it with a hard yank. He opened his jeans and reached down to scoop her up and hold her against the wall.

He had his hand under her skirt, the underwear ripped away, and then he sheathed himself in her. When she snapped at him, caught between a snarl and a moan, he pulled out, turned and pushed her down over a dilapidated table, clearing a brace of old paint cans sitting on it with a sweep of his arm, sending them tumbling into the grass.

"If that's the way you want it," he muttered. She hissed a creative curse at him that insulted his manhood.

"Baby, you know that's not the truth," he said, slamming back into her, violently enough she cried out. "Yeah, there’s no fucking problem in that department. Keep fighting me. You'll lose."

She did fight him, and he held her down, and they climaxed at almost the same moment, her strangling on her cries and him grunting with visceral satisfaction. Then things got quiet, and he settled over her, arm over her chest. Where she would have bitten him a moment ago, now her tear-stained mouth was pressed against his forearm, sticky with sweat and grit. His forehead rested between her shoulder blades, and his other arm was banded around her waist. As clarity returned, she registered that he was holding her so tightly she almost couldn't breathe. He was shaking as if he was going to come apart.

He wouldn't let her hold him, but he held onto her. She wondered if he was using her as an anchor, one that wouldn't tear loose, something that he could depend upon in the midst of the storm, not something that would surround and hold him. He was a rigger, after all. That was his job.

When she realized the heated slickness on her back were his tears, she went still as her heart cracked inside her. How could she bear to stay if she was going to lose him?

"I love you," he said against her flesh, and she closed her eyes.

That was why.

“Des, I could give you a kidney. We could check and see…”

“Oh, Christ. No.” He pulled away from her so abruptly he left her cold and aching, though he courteously eased her skirt back down, smoothing his hands over her buttocks. She heard him adjust his own clothes, then he turned and sat her on the table with one easy hoist, though his arms were tense and he averted his face, wiping at it self-consciously with the back of his arm. “Shut up and don’t bring that up again.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not happening. You’re not going to have an organ cut out of your body for a guy you’ve just met. We’re not going to have that between us.”

“So it’s better for me to stand over your grave?”

“For me, yes.” At her stricken look, he stepped closer, his abdomen brushing her knees. “This is why I’ve avoided relationships. Julie, I want to share my life with you, I want to love you, be in love with you, but my body, my choices, are mine. If I choose to die because I won’t take someone else’s damn kidney, especially yours, that’s my choice. If you can’t be with me because of that choice, I get it.” He swallowed, his expression taut, drained. “It sounds fucked up, but it is what it is.”

“Is it a control thing?” She didn’t want to fight any more. Her stomach hurt, and her body vibrated from his violent possession that said so much about the emotions churning between them, but she needed to know. “You’re my Dom, so you refuse to rely on me to keep you alive?”

“You make me feel alive, in a way I’ve never experienced. I’m ready to ride that ride as long as my body can handle it.” He dropped to one knee before her and grasped both her hands. “But I won’t let you give me a kidney. All I want from you is your love.”

She swallowed over jagged glass. Taking the hem of her shirt, she lifted it, touched it to the tracks of tears he hadn’t been able to brush away with his arm. His expression flickered, revealing raw pain, and a weariness that made her think he wanted to put his head down on her lap and let her hold him. She would have done it, but his expression shut down and hid that need away. He closed his hand around her wrist to stop her cosseting and the moment was lost.

“You want my love on your own terms, where you don’t end up feeling like you owe me.” She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her.

“No. I just don’t want that to have anything to do with why we’re together.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” she said. “You don’t set terms when it comes to love. It’s all or nothing, do whatever you need to do to be together, to love one another. It’s messy, and ugly, and angry and beautiful and perfect, all rolled up in this messy ball like spaghetti.
That’s
the way it’s supposed to work.”

He blinked. “I never thought of love like pasta.”

She wanted to snarl at him, because he was trying to make a joke, but she was too messed up right now, brimming over with the need to scream, to cry, to punch him. She jerked her hands away and shoved off the table. “You’re right, I need to get out of here. But you don’t get to say we’re done. You’re not going to break my heart because you’re too stubborn to let someone help you.”

He caught her by the shoulders before she could move past him and gave her a sharp shake. “And how is being less than who I am going to help?”

“I don’t know,” she shouted. “But I can’t figure out how you being dead is going to make things any better. Can you?”

At his tight look, she bolted, hurrying up the path back toward his house. Yeah, she’d go, because she needed to get away from him and think some. It wasn’t until she was in his place, packing her overnight bag, that she remembered he’d driven her here. Well, fuck that. She’d call a cab if she had to do so.

Then she heard his truck starting. Moving to the window, she saw the vehicle trundling up the gravel drive. What the hell?

A knock on the door resolved that question. When she opened it, Betty stood there with a pained smile on her lined face. “He said since I ruined your morning, the least I could do is give you a ride back to your place. He figured you weren’t interested in riding with him.”

“I think the reverse is true. But he’s being an asshole. You didn’t ruin my morning. Maybe I can get the answers from you he won’t give to me.” At Betty’s hesitant look, Julie shot her a dubious look. “Really? You’re going to resort to being tightlipped now? I’m here, I’m interested, and I want to help. ”

Betty’s green eyes sparked with grim humor. “I think I’m starting to like you.”

“Well, don’t make any hasty decisions. I’m in a really bitchy mood.”

“That’s why I know we’ll get along.”

* * *

B
y the time
Betty dropped her off at the theater, Julie had rethought wanting to be told the things she was told. Desmond had fought this battle all his life, struggling against myriad complications that had stacked the odds against him, over and over. He and his body had overcome those challenges each time, often with great personal cost. His erratic health history had interfered not only with relationships, but with college and career choices. It had impacted unexpected things, like getting business loans approved, and less unexpected things, like medical costs and insurance coverage.

It made her understand better the brick wall of dark emotion she’d hit, the frustration that had made so much of what he said initially seem insensible. He was fighting with himself now, and she hadn’t know which questions to ask or the things to say to help him untangle it. She’d been too focused on her own personal cost. So first she had to deal with that, right?

She tried working, but she couldn’t. She told Harris in a voice she knew was suspiciously choked up that she had to go out for a while, and she wasn’t sure when she’d be back. She got in her car and drove without clear purpose, but she wasn’t surprised to see where she ended up.

She walked into the empty church, relieved to find it unlocked and her the only person in the nave. She had no idea what denomination it was. The white clapboard structure had beds of petunias and pansies on the outside, so it had felt welcoming.

As she walked down the main aisle, she soaked in the hushed, calming energy, and studied the blocks of color on the stained glass windows. She wondered why so many churches used stained glass, what the history was behind that. She’d have to look it up.

Her gaze went to the plain wooden cross mounted over an altar up front. More fresh flowers were gathered at its base. As she slipped into a pew, the simple beauty of it caused tears to well up in her eyes. That, and Betty’s words.

Renal failure… He seems mostly fine, but that’s the way kidney failure can be… Several months at most before he has to start dialysis… Prognosis for the effectiveness of dialysis differs from person to person… Attitude is everything… He refuses a kidney…

She was weeping, and she hated being weepy. She much preferred to be angry.

“I finally have someone who loves me the way I always dreamed about being loved, and You want to take him away. What did I ever do to You that You hate me so much?”

Her voice echoed through the chamber. Normally she spoke in a low voice in a church, like everyone else. But she wanted to be heard. She demanded to be heard. She glared at the cross. Everything here was supposed to be soothing and comforting, but it all felt like a mockery. She’d debated religion in countless coffee shops with lofty cynicism and academic boredom, but when it came to facing the foxhole, she was like anyone else. She was a child blindly seeking comfort… Or a lost adult realizing all the wishful thinking for an attentive, loving Divine Force was just that.

No.
No.
It wasn’t wishful thinking. Rainbows and flowers, summer storms that electrified the sky, lizards that could look exactly like the plants on which they were resting. All the complexity of the human anatomy and musicals like
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Camelot
and
Man of La Mancha
. Those things didn’t come out of a void.

She had a great life, she knew she did. She shouldn’t feel this way. But it didn’t matter. She was going to have it out with Him, Her, It, and she’d do it on Their home turf.

"What kind of sadistic asshole are You?” she demanded. “Sure, Julie, you can have the prince, but just not for long? What is your fucking problem? And why would You do this to Des? This great guy who’s just…he’s so wonderful…”

“Miss?”

She turned to see a middle-aged black man with a kind face. He wore jeans and an Oxford shirt in a pale lavender color, but he had that air that told her he was one of the pastors here, lack of robes or collar notwithstanding.