Come Lie With Me by Linda Howard Page B

in his shoulders and arms. Watching him, Dione noted the way his musclesbunched and played. He had real muscles now, not just skin over bone. He was still thin, too thin, but no longer did he have the physique of a famine victim. Even his legs had responded to the forced exercises she gave him every day by forming a layer of muscle.
    He was pale, and sweat dripped down his face as Dione positioned his feet firmly under him. “Now,” she said softly, “let your weight off your hands. Let your legs hold you. You may fall; don’t worry about it. Everyone falls when he reaches this phase of therapy.”
    â€œI won’t fall,” he said grimly, throwing his head back and clenching his teeth. He was balancing himself with his hands, but his weight was on his feet. He groaned aloud. “You didn’t say it would hurt!” he protested through his teeth.
    Dione’s head jerked up, her golden eyes firing with excitement. “Does it hurt?”
    â€œLike hell! Hot needles—”
    She let out a whoop of joy and reached for him, drawing back as she remembered his precarious balance. Unbidden, her eyes moistened. She hadn’t cried since she was a child, but now she was so proud she was helpless against the tears that formed. Still, she blinked them back, though they shimmered like liquid gold between her black lashes as she offered him a tremulous smile. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
    â€œNo, what?”
    â€œThat the nerves are working! It’s all working! The massages, the exercises, the whirlpool… your legs! Don’t you understand?” she shrieked, practically jumping up and down.
    His head jerked around to her. All the color washedout of his face, leaving his eyes glowing like blue coals. “Say it!” he whispered. “Spell it out!”
    â€œYou’re going to walk!” she screamed at him. Then she couldn’t control the tears any longer and they trickled down her face, blurring her vision. She brushed them away with the back of her hand and gave a watery chuckle. “You’re going to walk,” she said again.
    His face twisted, contorted by an agony of joy; he let go of the bars and reached for her, falling forward as his body pitched off-balance. Dione caught him, wrapping her arms tightly around him, but he was too heavy for her now, and she staggered and went down under his weight. He had both arms around her, and he buried his face in her neck. Her heart gave an enormous leap, her blood turned by icy terror into a sluggish river that barely moved. “No,” she whispered, her mind suddenly blanking, and her hands moved to his shoulders to push him off.
    There was an odd quivering to his shoulders. And there was a sound…it wasn’t the same sound of her nightmares.
    Then, like someone throwing a light switch and changing a room from dark to light, she knew that this was Blake, not Scott. Scott had hurt her; Blake never would. And the strange sound was the sound of his weeping.
    He was crying. He couldn’t stop the tears of joy any more than she’d been able to a moment before; the heaving sobs that tore out of him released two long years of torment and despair. “My God,” he said brokenly. “My God.”
    It was like a dam bursting inside her. A lifetime of holding her hurts inside, of having no one to turn to for comfort, no one to hold her while she cried, was suddenly too much. A great searing pain in her chest rose into her throat and burst out in a choked, anguished cry.
    Her body shuddered with the force of her sobs, and her enormous golden eyes flooded with tears. For the first time in her life she was being held close in someone’s arms while she cried, and it was too much. She couldn’t bear the bittersweet pain and joy of it, yet at the same time she felt as if something had changed inside her. The simple act of weeping together had torn down the wall that kept