“You’re being efficient, sweetheart. Different thing.”
The smile she gives me could power every light on this ranch.
I take over, unfastening my shirt one button at a time, holding her gaze as I do so. She needs to see me choosing to be bare before I ask the same of her. The shirt falls open, and her gaze drops to my chest, her soft intake of breath hitting me like a jolt of electricity.
Her fingers glide along my collarbone, tracing down the center of my chest, skimming over the ridges of muscle sculpted by years of ranch work, and pausing at the scar on my left side, a reminder of a fence post that fought back.
She maps me the way she maps everything: carefully and thoroughly, filing every detail.
“Your turn,” I say. “Only if you want to.”
Her hands go to the tiny buttons at her throat. I watch her fingers work, and I don’t help, because this moment is hers. This is Jenna choosing to show me the body she’s hidden her entire life, and I won’t take that choice away by rushing it.
The lace parts. Underneath, her skin is flushed pink from nerves and warmth. The patches on her forearms are quiet tonight, pale rose against ivory, the calmest I’ve seen them. She pushes the dress off her shoulders, and it pools at her feet.
She stands before me in plain white underwear, arms at her sides, not covering herself. It’s the bravest thing I’ve ever witnessed.
The patches extend beyond her forearms. I can see them now in the lamplight on the insides of her elbows, scattered across her ribs, a faint bloom at her collarbone. Her skin tells the story of abody that’s been at war with itself for years, and she’s letting me see every battle.
“Jen,” I say hoarsely, “you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“I’m not being kind. I’m being accurate.”
Her breath hitches.
I close the distance. My hands find her waist, and the contact sends a tremor through both of us. Her skin is warm and impossibly soft between the patches, while the patches themselves are slightly raised and rougher. I trace them with my thumbs as if reading Braille.
She shivers. Not from cold.
“Still okay?”
“If you ask me that every thirty seconds, I’m going to lose my mind.”
“Good. I’ll ask every fifteen.”
I kiss the patch at her collarbone, and she sucks in a sharp breath that sounds like pain. Yet her hands fly to my hair, holding me in place, so I stay.
“I know where every one of these is,” I murmur against her skin. “This one”—my lips move to her wrist—“gets worse when you’re tired. This one”—I trace the edge of her shoulder, moving between smooth skin and raised scars—“is almost gone. You didn’t notice, but I did.”
I kiss along the line of her shoulder, finding each place where her skin changes texture, pressing my mouth against every part of her that’s been hidden, neglected, or avoided.
Her fingers tremble in my hair. “Ethan.”
“When I was waiting in the hallway,” I murmur against her wrist, “while Maggie put cream on your arms, I swore that if you ever let me, I’d touch your skin like it was the most important thing I’d ever held.”
Her knees buckle, and I catch her. I will always catch her.
Her legs wrap around my waist as I lift her, and her arms circle my neck. Her face is buried in my throat, and she’s shaking. I carry her to the bed the way I carried her from the ditch, pressed against my chest in a moment that’s both weightless and monumental. Like she's everything.
I lay her on the mattress carefully and settle over her, my weight on my elbows. “I thought about this moment. About what your skin would feel like, about the sound you’d make when I finally—” I shift my hips, and she makes that sound, causing my breath to hitch. “That one. I imagined that one. But the real thing is—God, Jen. The real thing is so much more than I?—”
I lose my train of thought when she finishes my sentence by pressing her mouth to mine. I kiss her deeply, sliding my tongue into her mouth to tangle with hers, committing her taste to memory.
When we break apart for air, I look at her.Reallylook. Her glasses are crooked. Her hair is spread on the pillow. Her chest rises and falls fast, and her eyes are wide and dark and trusting in a way that unravels something inside me.
“You looked like this as you walked toward me.” My mouth trails over her neck, moving lower, pressing words into her skin. “The sun behind you. Your hands shaking around the bouquet. And I thought, she’s mine. She’s walking toward me, and she’s mine, and I’ll spend the rest of my life earning that.”
