“Lie down, Sky,” he says.
When I do, he reaches back and pulls his shirt over his head in one smooth motion.
He was beautiful before. That has always been the inconvenient truth about Zane Rivera. But he was a boy before, restless and still becoming. What stands in front of me now is something else entirely. Muscle cut harder and carved deeper, the kind of body built from years of having nothing but time and the need to survive. The tattoos I remember are still there—the ink I used to trace with my fingers in the dark—but there is more now, spreading across his ribs and climbing his left shoulder. And beneath the ink, scars I was not there to see heal, pale lines crossing skin I knew before. The sight of them does something complicated and painful to my chest even as the rest of me is on fire.
I reach for him before I can think about it.
My palms glide over his stomach, then his chest.
He goes still under my hands. His eyes close and the expression on his face is the most unguarded thing I have ever seen on this man, as if my touch hurts and heals at once and he cannot separate them.
His eyes open and the grin that follows is slow and filthy.
“Been thinking about your hands on me,” he says, his voice dropping low. “Dreamed about them enough that waking up was the cruelest part of every fucking morning.”
He leans forward, pushing me back down onto the bed. His mouth finds my collarbone, my sternum, moving down with unhurried intent. His hands slide my underwear down my legs, and then he settles between my thighs, looking up at me from there with those dark gray eyes.
“Seven fucking years,” he says, his breath warm against the inside of my thigh. His thumb parts me with a slow stroke that makes my hips jerk off the mattress.
“Seven fucking years I have been thinking about this pussy.” His eyes stay on mine. “Just so you know I’m going to take my fucking time.”
His mouth closes over my clit and I stop being capable of language. He watches me as his tongue moves, and when I make a sound, he groans against me like he has been starving for exactly that noise. His hands hold my hips down when I try to move because he is in no hurry and wants me to understand that, wants me to lie here and take it and trust him, and god help me, I do. I trust him with this even now, even after everything. My body has never stopped trusting him with this.
I gasp when he slides two fingers inside me, finding the place that makes my thighs shake.
His mouth never stops working my clit. I’m coming apart at the seams, my hands fisting in his hair, back arching off the mattress, breathing his name like it is the only word I have left.
“Zane… fuck… please.”
He lifts his head. “Please what?”
“You know what.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Rivera, I swear to god.”
His lips curve against my inner thigh. “Tell me.”
“I want you inside me,” I say. “Now. Please.”
The words come out broken and needy and I hate how desperate they sound, but I can’t hate them enough to take them back. Not when Zane is between my thighs, all heat, muscle, and dark eyes.
He blows hot air on my wet pussy causing my whole body to jerk.
“No, not yet, we’ll get there soon.” He presses a soft kiss and goes back and sucks my clit.
“Soon?” My voice nearly cracks on the word. “Rivera… if you make me wait… I swear to God I will murder you and tell Rainer… you fell.”
His smile deepens. There he is. The cocky boy I’ve never stopped wanting.
“You always did get dramatic when you were wet.”
My breath catches. Heat flashes through me so intensely that my fingers curl into the sheets.
“You are… such an… asshole.”
“Yeah,” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to the inside of my thigh. “But you came back to me anyway.”
