She didn’t want him to see her scars.
Not because she was embarrassed or ashamed of them. But because she didn’t want the spell to be broken with all that shit from her past: He would inevitably ask about them, and she would feel compelled to explain, and then he would get that look on his face that people did, that sorrow that was on the knife-edge of pity.
And suddenly, once again, as always, it would become about what had happened to her and her family, that single, defining night, taking this single, electric night away from her.
She was tired of being cheated of normal things like a sex life that was about pleasure and nothing more. A work life that was uncomplicated. A leisure life that wasn’t tainted by the chance a documentary was going to be made about her tragedy.
“Can I keep that on?” she asked roughly as she put her hand on his to stop him.
His head lifted from her neck. There was a passing shift in his expression, like he didn’t understand why she wouldn’t want him to see her breasts or touch them or kiss them. But then he nodded.
“Of course. Do you want the light off?”
He was so concerned as he asked the question, as if he would have done anything to make her feel comfortable.
Funny, how the simplest things could make someone feel cherished.
She stroked his face and had to blink a couple of times. “No, because then I can’t watch you.”
That smile of his came back, that naughty, sexy smile. “Good. I want your eyes on me.”
On that note, he eased back, his weight lifting from her. As his enormous chest retreated, she did what he approved of and looked down his ribbed abdomen. His erect sex hung from the front of his pelvis and the sight of it made her moan and shift her knees up so she was even more open for him.
Except he eased her legs back together.
Just so he could take off her boxers, though.
Lifting her hips to help, she brought her arms over her head, one of her hands finding her mouth, her fingertips brushing against her lips. Arching again, she felt uninhibited and free thanks to keeping the top half of her covered—and she had a thought that she was glad he hadn’t made a big deal out of the request.
Compatibility had a lot to do with mutual respect.
And holy crap were they in lockstep with each other.
* * *
As Balz let Erika’s boxers drop to the floor, he was totally into the sex—and yet aware that his heart was breaking.
It was a strange duality, being stretched between the extremes of wanting to fuck his woman so good she cried from the release… to wanting to hold her so she could tell him herself exactly what was under that shirt she wanted to keep on.
He had accessed her memories before. He knew that her skin carried the legacy of all that physical and emotional pain. And he wanted to know her origin story firsthand because she chose to tell him.
Now was not the time, however. She had made that clear.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured as he resettled on top of her.
Her legs accommodated his larger body, stretching wide to give him a place, and he loved the way she penetrated her mouth with her fingers, probing the interior like in her mind, she was playing out how it would feel to have his cock buried deep in her body.
“So are you,” she said. “Beautiful.”
“Really?” He winked at her. “You can tell me more if you want.”
Her laugh was the best sound in all the world. “Fishing for compliments?”
“A male wants to know he pleases his female.”
As she got serious, he wanted to kick himself. But then she whispered, “I wouldn’t mind being yours, you know. If the world were different. If… we were different.”
He studied her face, memorizing, for the hundredth time, what the curve of her cheek was like, and the arch of her brows, and the lashes around her deep-set hazel eyes.
“I’m going to make you mine tonight,” he told her. “And then we’ll see about tomorrow.”
It was the best he could do. And as she just closed her eyes and nodded, he knew she was equally aware that there would be very few tomorrows for them.
Better make the dark hours count, then.
And what do you know, his erection was right where it needed to be—almost. As he rolled his hips, he reached down between their bodies, grabbed his shaft, and stroked himself on her core. In response, she moaned and arched once again. Her arousal scented the air even more thickly with that perfume that got into his brain and altered his chrome-dome’s chemistry, yet even as his blood pounded through his veins, he wasn’t worried about hurting her. He would never—