Page 82 of Bedroom Therapy

She saw he was listening closely.

“I’d say you already had problems, and she used the kidnapping as an excuse to leave you.”

Probably he never would have reached that conclusion on his own. It seemed he felt too guilty about what had happened a year ago, and that guilt had spilled over into her relationship with him.

“I think she made you feel that you weren’t worth being loved,” she said softly, wanting to say still more, yet reluctant to put too many ideas into his head.

Neither of them spoke for several moments, and she watched him comb his fingers against the sofa cushions. Finally, he cleared his throat.

“After . . . after you and I made love, I left the house because I didn’t want . . . to explain what’s wrong with me.”

She wanted to shout that nothing was wrong, and if there was, they could work it out together. But she kept the words locked in her throat.

“Just before Anderson hustled you out of the house, I was coming back to tell you about it.”

She felt simultaneously elated and fearful. “What did you want to say?” she managed to ask.

“It’s not that easy to talk about.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But maybe I can make it a little easier.” Climbing out of the chair, she crossed the room and lowered herself to the sofa, so that she was sitting beside him, but not with her back against the sofa cushions. Instead she swung around to face him. Leaning forward, she slung her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. For heartbeats, he sat stiffly. Then he clasped her to him.

They held each other for long moments before she murmured, “There’s nothing you can tell me that I haven’t heard before.”

“Oh yeah? You mean—like a guy who can’t reach climax when he’s with a woman?” he asked in a gritty voice. “I mean a guy who can do it by himself but not with a partner.”

She had suspected that might be what he was going to say. Keeping her own voice low and even, she asked, “And that’s been true since your wife pinned the kidnapping rap on you?”

“Yeah.”

Raising her head, she looked him in the eye. “But you wanted to get close to me—so you came up with all kinds of nice inventive ways to get around the problem. Very arousing ways.”

She saw him swallow. “But you wanted more than that,” he said. “You deserve more than that.”

“Zach, I loved everything we did together. You are a very sexy man, whether you believe it or not. You knew how to give a woman great pleasure with your hands and mouth. And you can make me go up in smoke just by talking sexy to me on the phone. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to have intercourse with you—that I didn’t want us to both climax that way.”

“And what if I can’t?”

“I believe you can,” she answered, thinking that unless they solved his problem, it would be tough to have his children. But she didn’t say that, because it would be giving too much away.

“It’s been almost a year since I could. . . ” He stopped and clenched his jaw. “Since I could function normally.”

“Don’t put it that way.”

“How would Dr. O’Neal put it?”

She gave a little shrug. “You know how shrinks are. They don’t give opinions lightly.”

He laughed, then sobered again. “Okay, you can call it anything you like. I want you right now. Just holding you and knowing that you’re naked under that robe is making me so hard I can barely sit still. But I’m afraid that if we went down the hall to the bedroom, it would end up the same way it did last night.”

“I’m not suggesting that we go down the hall right now. Dr. O’Neal has a more inventive prescription.”

He cocked one eyebrow. “And just what would Dr. O’Neal suggest?”

She leaned back and gave him a sweet smile, drawing out the moment before answering. “Well, for starters. I’d ask you to unpack your bags. Or I’d pack mine. Because I can write the column anywhere, and we don’t have to stay here. We can go to New Jersey, and you can get back to work. We’ll try a variation of a Masters and Johnson technique. I can stay with you, but we won’t try to make love. Not for a while. No pressure to perform. We’ll get to know each other better. But we won’t do anything that leads to sexual satisfaction. We’ll wait on that until we’re both so hot that we’re close to spontaneous combustion.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“Yes.”

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