Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [37]
Abruptly he sat up and thrust her hands away from his legs. “That’s enough,” he said curtly. “I don’t know what kind of a thrill you get out of handling cripples, but you can play with someone else’s legs. You might try Richard; I’m sure he could do you more good than I can.”
Dione sat there astonished, her mouth open. How could he dare to say something like that? She’d pulled her nightgown up to give her legs more freedom of movement when she’d climbed on his bed, and now she thrust the cloth down to cover her long legs. “You need slapping,” she said, her voice shaking with anger. “Damn it, what’s wrong with you? You know I’m not seeing Richard, and I’m sick of you throwing him up to me! You called me, remember? I didn’t sneak in here to take advantage of you.”
“You’d have a hard time doing that,” he sneered.
“You’re pretty sure of yourself since you’ve gotten stronger, aren’t you?” she said sarcastically. It made her doubly angry that he’d act like that after what they’d shared earlier. He’d kissed her. Of course, he couldn’t possibly know that he was the only man to have touched her since she was eighteen, which had been twelve years before, but still…the injustice of it made her get to her knees on the bed, leaning forward as she jabbed a finger at him.
“You listen to me, Mr. Grouch Remington! I’ve been driving myself into the ground trying to help you, and you’ve fought me every step of the way! I don’t know what’s eating you and I don’t care, but I won’t let it interfere with your therapy. If I think your legs need massaging, then I’ll do it, if I have to tie you down first! Am I getting through that hard head of yours?”
“Who do you think you are? God?” he roared, his face darkening so much that she could see it even in the dim light that came through his windows. “What do you know about what I want, what I need? All you think about is that damned program you’ve mapped out. There are other things that I need, and if I can’t—”
He stopped, turning his head away. Dione waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t she prompted, “If you can’t…what?”
“Nothing,” he muttered sullenly.
“Blake!” she said in utter exasperation, reaching out and grasping his shoulders and shaking him. “What?”
He shrugged away from her grip and lay back down, his expression bleak as he turned his face back to the windows. “I thought that learning to walk again would be the answer,” he whispered. “But it’s not. My God, woman, you’ve been around me for weeks now, running around in almost nothing sometimes, and those see-through nightgowns of yours the rest of the time. Haven’t you noticed yet that I can’t…”
When his voice trailed off again Dione thought she’d explode. “Can’t what?” she tried again, forcibly keeping her tone level.
“I’m impotent,” he said, his voice so low that she had to lean closer to hear him.
She sat back on her heels, stunned.
Once he’d said the words aloud, the rest poured out of him in a torrent, as if he couldn’t control it. “I didn’t think about it before, because what was there to arouse me? It didn’t matter, if I couldn’t walk, but now I find that there’s an opposite side of the coin. If I can’t live life as a man instead of a sexless gelding, then it doesn’t matter if I walk or not.”
Dione’s mind went blank. She was a physical therapist, not a sex therapist. It was ironic that he should even mention the subject to her, of all people. She was in the same boat he was in; perhaps she’d sensed that from the beginning, and that was why she hadn’t been frightened of him.
But she couldn’t let this prey on his mind, or he’d give up. Desperately she tried to think of something to tell him.
“I don’t see why you’d even think you should be aroused by me,” she blurted. “I’m a therapist; it’s totally unethical for there to be any sort of relationship except a professional one between us. I