“Faith made some of those marks on my back,” he says. “The ones on my shoulder blades.”
“I saw.”
“She liked watching me heal. The wolf healing.”
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
“Neither do I.” He rolls onto his side. His hand finds my jaw, thumb tracing the line. Warm. Unhurried. “I want to be here. With you. In this room that smells like carpet cleaner and vending-machine ham.”
“That’s your focus?”
“You’re my focus.”
His thumb moves to my lower lip. Heat pools low in my core. My pulse picks up.
“Can I touch you?” I ask, remembering that he likes it when I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “Any way you want to.”
I push him onto his back. He goes willingly. Arms falling to his sides, hands loose on the sheets.
This is different from what we did before. That was hunger. Raw need. Two people who’d waited too long, finally getting their hands on each other.
This is slower.
His body is known to me now…intimately. I know where he’s sensitive. Where his breath catches. But this morning, I don’t want to discover him like territory. I want to remind him that every part of him is still his.
I start with his hands.
The right first, because it’s closest. I lift it from the sheet and turn it palm-up. Broad palm. Long fingers. Scarred knuckles. The faint marks where restraints bit too often and too hard.
I kiss the center of his palm.
His breath stutters.
I kiss the inside of his wrist next, over the old chain groove, then the heel of his hand, then each damaged knuckle. He watches me as if I’m doing something more intimate than taking off my clothes.
Maybe I am.
The power is quiet this morning, settled deep, present without asking to be used. His heartbeat changes under my touch, but nothing flickers. Nothing breaks. Nothing in the room moves except us.
I press his hand flat against my cheek.
“This is yours,” I say.
His eyes darken.
Then I lower his hand to the bed and move to his shoulder, to the place where strength has returned over bone and scar. I kiss him there. Not to erase what was done. Not to make it beautiful. Just to make sure my mouth is part of what he remembers next.
I take a dark nipple into my mouth and trace it with my tongue. His body jerks, a full-body shudder, head pressing back into the pillow, hands fisting the sheets.
“Good?” I say against his skin.
“Yeah.” Rough. “Don’t stop.”
I take my time. His ribs. His hip. The line of muscle along his oblique, where gooseflesh rises under my breath. Every touch gets a response: a contraction, a twitch, a sound from his chest. He’s alive under my hands in a way that has nothing to do with vitals and monitors.
When my hand moves past his navel, his whole body goes taut. His hips roll once.
