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He shook his head.
“It wouldn’t be therapy if I did.”
He pulled his shirt out of his jeans and unbuttoned it, all the while watching her, watching him. It was surreal. The first time she asks a man to dinner in her home and she gets a private strip show in her living room. Kirsty swallowed hard at the sight of him half naked in the middle of the room. The maleness of him was completely at odds with her soft feminine decor. He reached for the button on his jeans. Kirsty’s hand shot out to stop him.
“I’m not ready for this,” she said.
She felt like her heart was racing hard inside her and was going to crash against the wall of her chest any minute.
“Yes. You are. You can do this. Just like the time you posed in the street. It’s no big deal.”
“I’m not the person I used to be. I’m...” She faltered. “I’m not ready for anyone to see me.”
“I’m not asking to see you,” he said. Then he thought about it. “I’m not asking right now. But yeah. I want to see you. I want to touch you. Every damn inch of you. I want to eat you up like dessert and come back for seconds.”
Kirsty stopped breathing. His dark eyes were so intense she felt the words as he spoke them. He took a deep breath and she watched the muscles of his chest ripple with it.
“Right now, we’re working on your list. So you stay there. Stay fully dressed. I’m not coming for you.”
The way he said it made Kirsty hear the rest of his thought. He wasn’t coming to get her—this time. But he would. She saw the way his jaw clenched and she knew he would. As much as she wanted him to, she was terrified that he would.
Lake unzipped his jeans, pushed them down his legs and stepped out of them. He flicked off his socks and Kirsty felt a new wave of panic when she looked at his Calvin Klein briefs.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a cheeky grin. “I don’t have any scars in there.”
Kirsty sat frozen in place. Her life was beyond surreal. There was a naked man in her house wanting her to touch him, and her mother was breaking into the shop over the road. The stress of it all was going to send her right to hospital. Or jail.
“So,” Lake said as though he stood pretty much naked in front of women every day. “This scar I got in a knife fight in Eritrea.”
Slowly, the words began to penetrate Kirsty’s brain. She looked at where he was pointing, aware that he’d been waiting for her to catch up. He showed her the spot on his arm under his elbow where a faint white line cut through his tan.
“Oh,” she said as his words sunk in. “Did it hurt?”
He lifted one eyebrow. Kirsty flushed.
“Stupid question, huh?”
He pointed to the hollow of his left shoulder.
“Bullet wound,” he said of the puckered dot.
Kirsty tried to stay focused on where he was pointing and not let her eyes wander over the rest of him. It was all a little too much to handle.
“Where did that happen?” Her voice was strained.
He smiled knowingly.
“Training. With live ammo and the Belgians. One of their guys couldn’t shoot worth a damn.”
“You must have been mad.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
A little smile played around his lips and she could only imagine what he’d done to the guy who shot him. He turned slightly; she could see his left side under his ribcage.
“Knife again. Hostage rescue. Things got out of hand.”
The scar was large—it curved around to his back where his kidney sat. Kirsty reached her hand out, without thinking, to touch it. She stopped, her hand suspended in mid-air. Lake took it and pressed her fingers to the line. Kirsty stood and stepped towards him. Gently, she traced the line on his skin.
