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His lips at my neck.

His warm hands ghosting down my arms.

His voice rumbling against my skin.

I let out a slow breath, letting myself lean on him, just for a moment.

Then I turn in his embrace and kiss him for the first time in what feels like days, weeks, years, and every jagged edge of the last twenty-four hours fades.

He answers with a groan low enough for me to feel as my hand settles on his chest. He grips my hip and the back of my neck, and deepens the kiss by slow degrees, smiling into my mouth as the room disappears and the only sound I’m chasing is in the runaway pulse between us.

I chase him when he eases back with another deep rumble, and he chuckles.

“I need to change that sensor before I am so lost in you I forget it exists.”

Oscar strokes my hip with his thumb before he steps off, but he doesn’t go far. What he needs is on the coffee table, and I watch as he perches on the arm of the couch and peels the old sensor from the back of his arm.

It leaves a pale circle on his sun-stained skin and a faint outline of stubborn adhesive that has clung on through saltwater and sweat.

He scrubs it off and shifts his attention to his other arm, wiping it clean before he presses a new applicator onto his skin.

I lean forward. “How often do you have to do this?”

“Ten days or so. Sometimes less if the sea has her way.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Sometimes.”

It’s not the answer I want, and I flinch as his thumb depresses the applicator.

Oscar notices. “It is okay.”

“Is it?”

He lifts the applicator away, revealing the fresh sensor on his arm. “Come and see for yourself.”

I shouldn’t do that either. But I cross the room before I think better of it and study Oscar’s arm as if he’s just survived amputation. Check the edge of the adhesive, smoothing a tiny wrinkle.

He nudges me until I look at him. “You are inspecting my work?”

“I’m inspecting you.”

“And why is that?”

“Because every part of you matters to me.”

His smile arrives slowly. He rises to tidy away the old sensor and the packaging of the new one.

Then he comes back to me and the kiss we share isn’t as sweet as the one from a few minutes ago. It’s sharper, charged with the energy that’s simmered between us since we met, and it pulls a rough breath from me before he eases back again.

Or tries to.

I don’t let him.

I catch the back of his neck and his cinnamon eyes darken.

There it is.