Page 207 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

“You’re staring,” I whispered.

“Yes.”

That should not have made me smile, but it did.

He bent and kissed the smile from my mouth.

This time, his control thinned. I felt it in the pressure of his hands when they slid from my waist to my ribs, in the way his thumbs traced the line beneath my breasts and stopped there, waiting. Always waiting, even when his breathing had gone rough and his body had settled over mine with enough heat to make the sheets beneath me feel cool by comparison.

I arched into his touch because I wanted to answer before he could ask.

His mouth left mine and moved to my jaw, then lower, finding the place below my ear that made my whole body go loose and bright. He kissed me there, then again, slower, as if he had felt the change in me and meant to learn exactly what caused it. My hands slid over his shoulders, careful near the bandage, then down the hard plane of his back. He was warm everywhere, solid everywhere, and when my nails grazed his skin, his breath caught against my throat.

That tiny break in him did terrible things to me.

I dragged my nails lightly down his back.

Rafe made a sound low enough to feel rather than hear, and the last careful inch between us disappeared. His hips pressed into mine, letting me feel what wanting had done to him. My breath left me in a rush.

“Oh,” I said, because apparently law school hadn’t prepared me for vocabulary under pressure.

His mouth curved against my collarbone. “Is that an objection?”

“No. More of a formal acknowledgment.”

“Noted.”

His hands slid under me, lifting me enough to ease the borrowed sweater up my body. He peeled the fabric away slowly, watching my face as cool air touched my stomach, my ribs, the bare skin above my bra. When I raised my arms, he pulled it over my head and dropped it somewhere behind him without looking away from me.

The firelight warmed one side of his face. The other was shadowed. He looked severe and hungry and so careful I wanted to shake him.

Or kiss him until he stopped thinking.

I reached for his shirt instead. The buttons gave beneath my fingers, one by one, less neatly than I would have liked. My hands were shaking. I blamed the explosion, which felt reasonable and also deeply unconvincing. When I pushed the fabric from his shoulders, I had to stop for a second.

He was beautiful in a way that felt almost unfair up close. Real. A dressing on one shoulder. A bruise spreading near his ribs. Scars I hadn’t seen before, thin and pale against warm skin. Strength everywhere, but not the careless kind. Built, carried, earned.

I kissed the scar near his ribs before I could talk myself out of it.

Rafe went still.

I looked up. “Okay?”

His hand came to the back of my head, fingers sliding into my hair. “Yes.”

The word sounded scraped raw.

So I kissed him there again.

His control slipped another fraction.

He lowered over me, bracing one arm beside my head, the other hand moving along my side to my hip, then down my thigh. He followed the path with his mouth: shoulder, sternum, the upper curve of my breast. When he reached the clasp of my bra, he paused and frowned.

I laughed, breathless. “It’s front-hook.”

“I see that.”

“Do you?”