“Pectoralis major,” she whispered, breathless, because the lessons from those long-ago books of anatomy steadied her and teased him both.
He laughed and kissed her, desperate and tender. “Cruel girl.”
“Rectus abdominis,” she said, sliding her hand down the solid ridges of his abdomen, and he made a noise that did not sound like a man in possession of himself.
“Isabella.” Just her name, strangled with want.
Her fingers found the fall of his trousers and fumbled there, too, until the placket gave beneath her insistence. She pushed the fabric down over his hips and her knuckles brushed the heat and silk-smooth skin of his member. He shuddered.
In the firelight, she saw his scars. His left leg was seamed and shiny, the fire’s mark laddering his skin, marks of survival and pain endured. She touched one pale line with two fingers, then bent to press her lips to his marred flesh, her kiss saying what she dared not put to words: You are not ruined. You are perfect as you are. You are mine.
His breath broke on a rough sound.
Straightening, she kissed his lips and pressed her hand once to his member, very light, because boldness had a line and she had just stepped over it. He folded around her, forehead to hers, as if that smallest of touches had undone him.
“Come here,” he said, and kissed her like he would die without it.
They reached the bed by accident, by slow retreat, by the drag of his mouth on hers and the way her bare feet sought purchase. Her calves bumped the mattress. She sat hard, breath huffing from her.
He came over her at once, braced on his arms, heat and weight and the cage of his body, careful even in his haste. She waited for terror to scissor through her. It did not come. What rose instead was a heat so fierce it was almost grief.
Deep and hungry, his kiss consumed her. And she answered, her hands mapping his shoulders, his back, his buttocks, the flex of muscle under her palms. He was so solid. She had spent a life among things that could not touch. Here was the antidote: all touch. Here was proof, undeniable and necessary, that they were alive.
His lips went to her breast, and when he drew her nipple into his mouth she cried out, shocked at the flood of sensation…pleasure, sharp as a blade and sweet as honey. He learned her quickly. He learned that a careful scrape of teeth at the edge of her nipple made her arch, that a slow pull and a soft suction made a sound leave her that she would never confess to in any other room. He lingered until she trembled and then lingered more, leaving a shining kiss where he had been, before his mouth traced lower, to the tender skin beneath her breast, to her ribs, to the soft dip of her belly.
“Rhys,” she said, not to stop him but to anchor herself to something that had a name.
His hand slid between her thighs.
She went still, then not still at all, because the touch was careful, and then it wasn’t careful but purposeful, and the ache at her core that had been a throb became an ache that argued for more. He learned that too, how she arched into his palm, how her breath broke in his mouth when he kissed her at the same moment his fingers stroked. She had thought herself a study in control, in denial. There was no denial here. There was only heat, and the way the world narrowed to a point of light where he touched and widened again, hungrier each time he returned.
“Tell me if I err,” he said, hoarse, and the care in it made her throat hurt.
“You do not,” she said, so fiercely she made him laugh again, low and amazed.
The fire settled with a sigh. The quiet held.
His fingers were a slick glide on her sex, then an intrusion, unfamiliar but wonderful as they slid inside. She wanted him in ways that felt indecent and right, half urges, half prayers. She dragged him upward by the nape and kissed him thoroughly, the kind of kiss that told a man he was wanted. It made him shake; she felt the tremor pass through him like a fever.
He reached down and guided his shaft to the opening his fingers had teased. She felt swollen there, aching, yearning. The hard unyielding press of him now made her go rigid for a breath, not fear, exactly, but the mind’s bright awareness of a threshold. He felt her stiffen and stopped, everything in him straining, held on a leash of his own making.
“Don’t stop,” she said, and meant that more than she had ever meant anything. “Please.”
He entered her the way he had first kissed her, his thrust gentler than she expected. The stretch burned, stung. He took his time, slowly, slowly.
She gasped as he pushed fully inside her, quick, sharp, and then he went still, his mouth on her temple, his breath a broken prayer, their bodies joined, pain blossoming at her centre. For a handful of heartbeats, they didn’t move at all, and in that stillness, she felt every place they touched as if it had been set alight. The burn eased.
He moved, just a little. Then more. The ache reshaped itself into something that made her toes curl.
His rhythm cautious, he thrust, slow and shallow. The feeling of being filled by him was like grief untying inside her. And as he moved faster, deeper, his thrusts filling her completely, pleasure rode her, leaving her mindless, writhing, needing.
There was nothing tidy in the way he pressed his forehead to hers, as if he needed her breath to remember how to take his own, nothing gentle in the way each thrust filled her and dragged her closer to an edge she could not name.
She wrapped her legs about his waist, a shameless, greedy clasp that made him groan against her throat.
“You are so beautiful, so perfect,” he said, and he thrust deeper.
In that instant, she felt beautiful, perfect. He made a sound, low and rough, unlike anything she had ever heard from any man.
