All I Need: Ian & Annie (All In 4)

I told myself that was why I felt a sudden urge to flee the scene after having gone down on her. The way she looked at me after she came in my mouth, as if I was her own personal deity, it suggested all sorts of intimacy. I could read so much in her gaze, so much caring, trust and genuine amazement. I told myself I found it unsettling because I didn't want her to feel that way.

The truth? I was freaked out by how much I loved it. The urge to scoop her into my arms, hold her naked, sweet and yielding on my lap and kiss her senseless until she was ready to go again? That was not how I usually felt with a woman. With Annie, I wanted to do that so badly my fingers clenched into fists to stop myself. There would be no sense in doing it. It would only lead to trouble. There was no future for the two of us.

Around dinnertime, we finally ran into each other in the kitchen. I poured myself a drink but didn't offer her one. She opened the fridge, stared into it blankly, then shut it with a bang.

“I'm going to head into town and grab some dinner there. Would you like me to bring you back something?”

“No need,” I answered, short and curt.

“Well, I know there's no need.” She gave a frustrated huff. Gesturing at the freezer, she added, “We've got enough leftovers in there to feed us for a month.”

“Then why are you going out for dinner?”

She shrugged her shoulders, crossed her arms against her chest and looked out the window at the gathering dark over the ocean. Everything about her body language was in stark opposite contrast to how she'd been last night, so open, vulnerable and trusting. I felt a pang of guilt, knowing she must be hurting. I caused that. She must have sensed it in the way I looked at her, because she raised her hand as if she were about to touch me. Thinking better of it, her hand dropped once again back by her side. She bit her lip and looked down, brow furrowed in frustration.

I left the room, mostly because I wanted to stay. I wanted to capture that hand she'd almost touched me with, and twine her fingers in mine. None of this made any sense. I should want to get away from her, put as much distance as I could between my scarred, hard-hearted self and her sweet, naïve attachment.

Instead, I almost asked for more from her. Last night, I'd even told her about Caitlin. I never told anyone about Caitlin. Annie still didn't know the half of it, and she never would. No one needed to know the words I'd overheard one evening when I’d approached a room I shouldn't have. Inside the doorway, Caitlin and her BFF had commiserated over her problem.

“He is so gross.” I’d recognized her voice straight away, been able to picture her pretty face all scrunched up as if she were smelling something distasteful. “I almost barfed the other day when he took off his shirt. But, you know…”

Her friend had answered with the sound of money “cha-ching.”

Their laughter had covered up the sound of my hasty retreat in my wheelchair. Even as it had stung, I was grateful I'd overheard. It taught me that physical intimacy was simply that and that alone. There was no use in attaching emotions to what was a purely physical response. I’d managed my interactions more tightly since then, and I’d never been hurt by a woman again.

But there was no reason why I should have told Annie all that. It had simply come out, as I'd been sitting there with her on the couch, her shining eyes looking at me with such devotion and understanding. I felt like I could tell her anything. It was dangerous.

Holed up in my room, I answered when my screen lit up with Vic’s suggestion of a video chat. Annie was out. I was worked up. I responded out of habit, guessing it would make sense to let off some steam.

“Guess where I am?” Vic sang out, a teasing gleam in her eyes.

“Paris?” I thought I remembered that's where she was when we last spoke.

“Somewhere better.” She looked like she had a naughty secret.

“New York?” She liked the nightlife there. Maybe she'd found a club catering to her needs. She might want to live-broadcast a session.

“I’m in Edinburgh!”

“You are?” She was the daughter of an oil magnate and had money to burn, so I wasn't surprised at her globetrotting. I was surprised to learn that she was a mere hour and a half away.

“You don't sound happy,” she pouted. “And here I thought you'd like to see me. I thought you'd want to play.”

I resisted rolling my eyes. She sounded like a three-year-old. “What's that you have on?” I used distraction as a tactic. It worked on toddlers. She brightened up, standing and turning this way and that, striking poses to show off her new lingerie. Apparently, diversion worked on Vic, too.

“Do you like it?” She cupped her breasts and showed them to me, barely encased in scraps of lace. She had a gorgeous body and she knew it. She also had an unlimited budget and knew exactly how to showcase her assets. But somehow the look of her all tarted up didn't affect me even a fraction as much as Annie had last night in her simple white bra.

I murmured my approval, but I must not have done it convincingly. “You’re ignoring me.” She looked into the camera. “I don't like being ignored.”

“Yeah, about that, Vic.” I brought my hand up to the back of my head, scratching my hair. Suddenly, I wished I hadn’t accepted the call. In fact, maybe it was time to end things between us. Our routine had grown stale. We never had much emotional connection to begin with, and now it seemed we lacked physical as well.

“I know what I'll do!” Her eyes lit up and she scrambled off the bed where she'd sat down. “How do you like this look?” She grabbed a trenchcoat out of what looked like a hotel room closet and wrapped it around her nearly naked body. Twirling, she flirted with me through the camera, opening the coat to give me little flashes of her, smiling and laughing. “How do you like me now?”

I watched her, but I thought about how best to get her attention to tell her what we’d had between us was over.

She got real close to the camera and blew me a kiss. “I'll see you soon.” The screen went black.

“Vic?” I tapped at the screen, knowing she was no longer connected to the call but hoping she hadn't meant what I guessed she had. Was she on her way to the house? Annie was out now, but she'd be home soon. I did not want the two of them to meet, never mind try to have it out with Vic while Annie was under the same roof.

Picking up my phone, I dialed Vic's number. She didn't pick up. Fuck.

The two trains were heading toward each other on the track. Unable to stop the collision, I picked the only sane choice. I poured myself a glass of Scotch.

Over in the library, usually my sanctuary, my den of relaxation, I got no relief. The library was haunted by Annie. I could almost hear her little cries of need, see her writhing under my touch, taste her slick arousal on my tongue.

Goddamn it. A random flash of pain shot down my leg and I rubbed it, trying to ease the ache. That was why I needed some more pain pills, for my fucking crippled legs.

That was the problem with Annie, I realized. The problem was Annie didn’t see me as an invalid. Most people did, even Vic. With her particular perversions and preferences for kink, she liked that about me, how I commanded her from my wheelchair. But Vic was an odd bird.

Most people saw the wheelchair more than the man inside it, and I’d gotten used to two types of reactions. Those with a medical background treated me clinically, dispassionate, observing and offering recommendations. As disconnected and impersonal as those interactions were, those were the ones I preferred.

Harder to handle were friends and family. After I’d first gotten injured, that had been the worst. Seeing a young man in the prime of his adolescence go from a lacrosse-playing heartthrob to a bed-ridden cripple tended to throw people. When people who’d known me well came to visit me at the hospital, they didn't handle it well. They couldn’t meet my eyes. They’d stare at the wrong things, awkward corners of the room or the television, anywhere but my bandaged burns. Some of them cried. Most of them struggled to find anything to say.

Even my closest friends, the

other three kids who'd been on the boat with me in the accident, they didn't always know what to say. After me, Chase was the one who'd suffered the most serious injuries. He'd nearly drowned, tossed off the boat but then dredged up from the ocean by Liam in a heroic rescue. Chase had needed a couple weeks in the hospital, but ultimately he'd walked away unscathed. As for Jax and Liam, they'd basically needed to warm up and dry off. The morning after the accident, it was all just a bad memory for them.

Liam had dealt with it the best. He'd always had the gift of gab, able to talk to anyone anywhere. After the accident, he insisted on staying in touch, calling me, coming into Boston once a month from Naugatuck to visit me in person. A lot of the time, he just launched into a monologue. But it helped, listening to him.

Chase and Jax? Shame and guilt, that's what I saw in their eyes. Chase was the strongest swimmer of all of us, and he felt ashamed that he’d been the one to nearly drown. And Jax? He'd been on what remained of the boat with me, unable to do anything more than cling on and try to save himself as it lurched and tilted in the waves. He felt so guilty he could barely look at me. The one time he’d tried to apologize, choking out his words, sputtering about how he should've done more, hated that he hadn't, I'd cut him off. We'd been nothing more than a toy in Mother Nature's hands. There was nothing any of us could've done to change the outcome. What I hated was realizing that just the sight of me made them suffer even more.

When even your closest friends saw you as little more than a reminder of their deepest failings, it didn’t tend to make you want to be too social. My circle shrank to just family. Even that was painful. After the initial flurry of activity, and enrolling me in surgeries and therapy the way she used to arrange extra-curriculars, sports and tutors, my mother retreated into her drinking. My father traveled more, his business interests pulling him everywhere but to my bedside. I couldn't fault my sisters for not staying closer. My older sister Margot had been off in college, living her life. My younger sister Sophie had the opportunity to move to New York City and study ballet. People's lives moved on, even as mine did not.

Once I moved to Scotland, exiling myself to the edge of the earth, I tightly controlled my interactions. I couldn’t remember the last time I'd even crossed paths with anyone like Annie. She was so fresh and real, honest and unpolished. She looked straight at me and somehow seemed to see through all the bullshit. And she seemed to like what she saw. That might be what gave me the most pause.