Blind Commitment Read online

  Blind Commitment

  Virginia Nelson

  Blind Commitment

  By: Virginia Nelson

  Published by Virginia Nelson

  © 2015 Virginia Nelson

  Cover Art by Virginia Nelson

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  BLIND COMMITMENT

  Virginia Nelson

  Dedication

  For Kristen and Brad. Thanks for all you do and are. <3

  BLIND COMMITMENT

  Figgy Berlin made a name for himself in the art world with his gripping use of color and fearless use of impressionistic style in abstract art. One drunk driver later and he was left blind. He couldn’t see color; he couldn’t see his work, and most of all…he couldn’t see his wife.

  Through the terrifying days and nights of not knowing if he’d ever wake again, Mariana stayed by his side. When he fought to reclaim his body, she was there. Back home, he recaptured his art, but he didn’t reclaim his bride.

  Can this couple find love even though he can’t see how much his rejection hurts her?

  Mari

  His fingers gripped the brush with ease, and the angle of his wrist was perfect in relation to the canvas. Sunlight sliced bright streamers through the room, gleaming through the long hair dangling in his eyes, backlighting it until it glowed white rather than the usual dark blond. He never glanced her way, not once, as he dotted color in methodical stripes toward the upper edge of the framed white fabric.

  “Blue,” he snapped, and she jerked out of her reverie.

  Glancing at the paints in the spattered trough in front of her, she bit her lip. If she asked which blue, he’d be annoyed, but there were so many options. Dark blue? Sky blue? “Could you be more specific, Figgy?”

  Without warning, his temper snapped along with the brush in his paint spattered fingertips.

  “Dammit, Mariana, how many times do we have to go through this?”

  Blinking fast, she ducked her head. It wasn’t like he could see her cry, but she hid her pain anyway. Just like she’d hidden it since his car accident. Just like she’d hidden it when he was in recovery. Just like she’d hidden it when they told him—the man who she’d always joked had paint in his blood—that he would never see again.

  Since she hadn’t answered him, he sighed heavily. “I told you this would never work. You need to go—to leave me. I’m broken. You deserve better than this half-life, my Mariana.”

  The whiplash speed of his mood change, from fury to depressed, wasn’t a side effect from the accident. No, he’d been her short-tempered artist before the drunk driver stole his vision and left him feeling like less of a man. “I’m not leaving you.”

  If he heard the determination in her tone, he disregarded it as he didn’t answer.

  A glance his direction proved he gazed toward the canvas, even if he couldn’t see the brilliance he’d wrought there. He might have lost his sight, yet he still managed to create works

  that left her breathless in their beauty. He’d coated his newest canvas using mostly a dark red background, the shade of old, dried blood. Black seemed to bleed upward in veins of inky darkness, licking stripes through the blood, highlighted with streamers of white, like rain. Neon green and yellow sprouted from the black, not quite like birds or flowers, yet organic. Unnaturally organic, but startling in its simplistic beauty—at least that would be what she expected to read in their reviews of the piece when he’d finished it.

  Sort of like her husband since the accident. Unnaturally organic—continuing to make art even if he could no longer see the colors he used, but natural in his graceful transformation from seeing creator to a blind one. Simplistic beauty—the most handsome and wonderful man she’d ever met.

  While she’d studied his work, he’d managed to stand, and she could hear the whisper of sound as he counted the footsteps to the window.

  “Can you see the light?” she asked him.

  The doctor mentioned he might get his vision back, or maybe just part of it, but it would likely never be more than light recognition. So far, he couldn’t see anything. As he’d described it in one of his chatty moods, a rarity, the accident trapped him in an endless gray fog…a hell of nothingness.

  “No,” he answered. The one word answer signaled a retreat, likely ending with him lying face down on the bed and not speaking for who knew how long.

  “Do you still love me?” She’d blurted the question before she could think better of it. Faced with another day or two of his emotional abandonment, she couldn’t resist asking. If he didn’t love her anymore, maybe he was right.

  Maybe she should leave.

  “How can you even ask me that?” He whispered the words so softly, she hardly heard him. Wiping her hands on a cloth—he might not be able to see the painted fingerprints and

  streaks on everything, but she sure could—she joined him at the window. She didn’t touch him. Touching him when he’d gone into retreat tended to create more distance rather than removing it. It was like he’d hopped onboard a boat on a perfectly still lake. The closer she got to the side, the more wake she created with her swimming and the farther he drifted into uncharted waters alone.

  “I can’t help but ask, Figgy. I keep telling you I’m here. I’ve told you I still love you, still want you, that nothing changed for me, but you—”

  “How can you say that?” He’d spun and gripped her arms in an almost uncomfortably rough grip. “How can you even spit out those damned words? Nothing changed for you? Your husband is handicapped. I’m blind. I can’t see a thing, nothing. You lead me around like a dog on a leash—worse than a dog, because at least the dog can see where it is walking. You’ve even had to feed me. Nothing changed? Ha! I call bullshit on that notion. You had a husband. Now you have an albatross.” The agony of his words distracted her from his grip, and she leaned into him rather than trying to escape.

  “You found your art again. Everyone said you’d never paint again, and you’ve proved them wrong.” Tilting her chin up, she stared into his sightless eyes, wishing she could see the recognition she’d always taken for granted.

  He shook her once, but his touch had gentled, and he almost absentmindedly stroked his palms up and down her arms. Just his touch, after so long of him intentionally crafting distance between them, wakened the hunger for more of him. For what they’d had before the accident. But she wasn’t foolish enough to tell him so, not even while her breath sped and her heart began to race. Instead, she kept talking, hoping to keep his embrace for however long he’d allow the moment to last. “You might not be able to see your work, but it is as stunning as ever. You might not be able to see me, but I want you as much as I ever did.”

  He snorted, shoving away from her as if the contact burned him. “You want this? A blind man who can’t see enough to walk across the room without stumbling?”

  As if to put words to action, he tripped and banged his shin on th
e coffee table near the bed. Hopping and cursing, he shoved her away when she tried to help. Dropping to the bed, he clutched at his leg in obvious pain.

  “Okay, you got me. I’ve always had a weird sexual kink. I think people that trip are really hot. You should see me watching videos of people falling. It gets me going more than porn,” she joked. When he snorted again, this time in an attempt to hide his laughter, she grinned up at him. “Lift your butt.”

  She’d unsnapped his pants, and he cooperated so she could remove them to get a better look at his leg. The large red mark suggested he’d have a whopper of a bruise, but it didn’t look serious.

  She ran her fingertips up and down his leg, massaging the muscle to hopefully alleviate some of his pain. Her immediate view of his thigh reminded her of nights spent trying out various positions—of nights spent screaming his name as he seemed focused on only wringing as many orgasms as possible from her all too willing flesh.

  Clearing his throat, he again snapped her back to the present. He dropped one hand onto her head, his fingertips weaving through the strands in an achingly familiar way. “I’ll live, you kinky little nurse.”

  Licking her lips, she imagined how kinky she could be if he let her. “You ain’t seen nothing yet, Figgy.”

  His low growl lifted the hairs on her arms in a delicious shiver of electrified nerves. A glance lower showed her he wasn’t immune to the attraction between them. Not immune and willing to make love to his wife were two very different things. Then again…perhaps their whole problem would be alleviated if she simply took matters into her own hands. Or, if not matters, perhaps something a bit more tangible. Reaching out, she grasped him in her hand.

  “We shouldn’t, Mariana. We’re just delaying the inevitable. How long until you tire of all this? How long until you leave me for a man who can be just that—a man?” His carved features, the thing she’d noticed first about him years ago, were a brittle show of tortured agony.

  “Is this inevitable then?” Leaning forward, she captured the tip of his cock between her lips, gently kissing him. “How about this?”

  She sucked him deep into her mouth as he gripped her hair and moaned. The sound left her grinding her legs together in an attempt to ease the burning ache there. She needed his touch, needed her husband.

  His whole body had gone taut, endless masculine beauty arching toward her as she controlled his pleasure. Keeping her pace slow, she intentionally tormented him, hoping to build his need to heights as great as her own.

  Surprising her, he slid off the bed which made her lose her gentle grip on his cock. Once they were chest to chest, he captured her face between his hands. “How can you want this thing I’ve become? How can you stand me when I can’t stand myself?”

  “You’re the same man. My man. You’re the man who saw me as a janitor in the gallery. The lowest person there and the least important—and yet you saw me.” Tugging his shirt off, she revealed more of his irresistible flesh. She’d longed for him for so long.

  “How could I not see you? God, your skin…” He trailed off, dragging open-mouthed kisses across her neck. Biting down on her collarbone, he added, “I saw you. I wanted you, and then I got to know you and realized I couldn’t live without you.”

  Tears threatened again, a few leaking through, but he captured them with his fingertips.

  “Don’t cry, my Mariana.” He released a frustrated breath and pulled back. “This is what I was afraid of.” Naked and beautiful, he stood to stride away from her, but she’d come too far to allow him to escape so easily.

  Catching his ankle, she halted his motion. “Why do you think I’m crying, you idiotic man?”

  Scowling down at her, he tried to shake free of her grip with no success. One big perk to him not being able to see was he had to be far more careful. He’d never hurt her on purpose.

  Something apparently only she’d realized so far, since he still seemed oblivious to that very important fact. He might accidentally scrape great scores of wounds on her heart, but he’d never inflict an iota of physical pain on purpose.

  “You’re crying because you pity me. Because I’m pitiable. Because I’m broken.” He shook his ankle harder before abandoning the effort to drop to the bed.

  “Hardly.” Crawling up his body, she lay on his chest even though he covered his face with one hand. “You do the overwrought artist thing really well. No, Figgy, I’m not crying because I pity you. I’m crying because you said something beautiful. Because you couldn’t say something that sweet if you didn’t still love me.”

  He released his face to grip her head. “Of course I love you. You’re my life.”

  “I’m also your wife. Make love to me, Figgy?” She hadn’t meant it to come out a question, but as emotions flitted across his face, she was glad she had.

  Again he spoke very softly. “May I be perfectly blunt with you?”

  It was her turn to snort. “You’re trying to say you aren’t normally perfectly blunt? I’ll call bullshit on that one.”

  He didn’t smile at her lighthearted tone, but frowned harder instead. “I’m being serious,

  Mar.”

  “Fine,” she grumbled. Resting her head on his chest, she listened to the steady thump of his heart. She much preferred listening to it this way rather than on one of those damned hospital monitors.

  As if he couldn’t resist, he ran his hands up and down her back, hugging her head closer to himself. “I can’t see, Mariana.”

  “Thanks for the newsflash, Captain Obvious,” she snarked before biting his nipple. His small gasp satisfied her. His dick still lay thick between them so she squirmed a bit, reveling in the erotic friction.

  Catching her hips in his skilled hands, he stilled her movements. “I wasn’t done talking. What I meant was, I can’t see. I don’t know if I can. There are bits a man needs to see to preform, so to speak.”

  Her giggle didn’t amuse him as he rolled her off the bed and moved to escape again. She caught him, streaking her hands around his body to rock his cock. Biting his ass gently, she watched as his breath sped and the muscles on his back rippled from her quick tugs.

  “We’ve done it in the dark. I think this is one of those things we should just try out.” Sightless or not, she didn’t doubt for a second they’d find the same passion between them they’d always enjoyed. “You keep saying you’re not a man anymore. Maybe you need to prove it to yourself instead of me.”

  Growling, he spun and pinned her to the bed. “You want to see how broken I am, my

  Mariana? Fine, I’ll show you.”

  And then his lips were on hers, and she found heaven.

  Figgy

  When he’d met Mariana, she’d been wearing a dumpy gray pair of coveralls and pushed a garbage can. No one believed him when he said he knew at that moment she was his, but he did.

  Something about the curve of her smile, the way her cheeks flushed when he talked to her,

  wasn’t like meeting a new love. It was like finding an old love, a reunion of souls.

  He’d painted a hundred pictures inspired by how she made him feel and never captured the tangled joy just being with her caused.

  Then, in the squeal of brakes, the crash of metal, and the crunch of his life into a metallic death ball, he lost everything. He lost color. He lost texture. He lost line. He lost beauty.

  The one thing that remained was his Mariana, and he understood he shouldn’t even have her. If he were a good man, a good person, he’d free her so she could have the kind of life he thought he would have provided for her, the kind he’d never be able to provide with this broken body.

  Perhaps he was greedy, but he wouldn’t be the first artist to be accused of that particular sin. If it was greedy to want to hear her voice, to smell her scent, to listen to her hum as she moved around their loft apartment, so be it. He would be greedy, but so far, he’d resisted touching her. He loved her too much to tie her into the special hell his body became that long and terrible ni
ght.

  Until now.

  God, she smelled like roses and candy—like candied roses—and tasted a thousand times sweeter. Had he ever noticed before the intricate layers to her scent, the way her sweat added tang as she writhed under his touch?

  Had he ever noticed how sleek her skin felt under his palms? Because it was like warm silk, living silk that flowed into his touch like magic. When he freed her of her clothing, he captured one breast in his palm.

  The soft skin felt warmer at the crease where her breast met her body, and his thumb grazed her areola. Softer there, as if there were less muscle in that precious, sweet tasting circle, until he nibbled the hardened peak of her nipple. The whole areola wrinkled under his lips, delicate flesh tensed with her growing passion.

  Her legs wrapped around his waist, her movements and sounds fevered. Suddenly, he realized she’d likely been as starved for this ravenous beast of passion which overtook them when they were skin against skin, but he wasn’t willing to rush his first moments of discovering her again.

  Trailing his kisses higher, he whispered against the delicate shell of her ear. “Let me learn your body again, my love. Let me touch you.”

  Her soft sigh was an agreement, but her fingers continued to roam restlessly up and down his arms. Biting down on her lobe, he grinned at her impatient wiggle. She’d always been voracious in her passion, his precious Mariana.

  He touched her face with both his lips and his fingertips, learning each slope and rise before sinking into the intoxicating bliss of her kiss. He could stay lost in the tangle of their tongues and her fevered response for a lifetime, but his own desire wouldn’t allow that particular luxury.