He tosses it aside as if it’s an intrusion he can’t stand and then just…stops.
And stares.
Under that look, I forget that my body has spent years being a problem to solve. Too big here, too soft there, too much everywhere. Under that look, I am simply me.
His eyes roam over me with almost painful slowness. Goosebumps rise in their wake: along my arms, across my breasts, all the way down my belly. And his gaze tracks each patch of raised skin like they’re another language he’s memorizing.
My breath hitches as he leans in.
For a heartbeat, I think he’s going straight for my mouth again. Instead, his lips brush my neck, so gentle I barely feel the pressure, just the heat.
Then another, lower, on the scar along my forearm from the crash. Another on a faint dark line at my wrist from a childhood fall.
Holy shit.
He slides to his knees without looking away, forcing me back on my arms as his mouth trails lower, across the curve of my hip, the soft dip where my thigh begins. Each press is maddeningly gentle, his breath hot and damp against my skin.
It’s the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me.
It is also, biologically speaking, driving me absolutely insane.
When he rises, big hands sliding up from my shins to my calves to my thighs, my legs tremble, my gaze falling to the heavy pendulum swinging between his legs.
My hand moves back to him before I can think. I wrap my fingers around him again and he jerks in my palm, head falling back, throat bared, ears flicking as his hips buck once against my grip.
“Mih-kay-lah.” He groans, like the word is a prayer and a curse all at once.
He’s hot, the weight solid in my hand. I run my thumb over one of the ridges, marveling at the texture, the alien firmness of it.
“Okay,” I whisper, flicking my focus between my hand, his face, and the impressive stretch of anatomy between us. “Wow. So. We…might need to talk about dimensions.”
His eyes snap down to me, instantly sharper.
“Because I am human,” I explain, swallowing the anticipation battling with the fear, “and you are…very much not.”
For a moment, he blinks.
“You’re big,” I clarify.
The haze of lust clears from his gaze like someone pulled it away with their bare hands.
His whole body stills. The stars beneath his skin seem to pause mid-pulse.
“Big?” his thoughts rasp into my mind, colored with sudden panic. His hands leave my hips like I burned him. “I hurt…you?” Horror twists his features. “No. No hurt. We stop.”
He actually starts to pull away.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” I say, one hand reaching up to grip his shoulders as I dig my heels in. “Sarven. Hey.”
He freezes, forced to look at me.
I soften my voice. “I didn’t say stop. I said talk.” My thumb strokes along one of the ridges before sanity can intervene; his breath stutters. “We just have to go slow. Okay? Slow and careful. That I am very on board with.”
The stars beneath his skin seem frozen. “You…want to?” His voice sounds wrecked. Disbelieving. Like he needs to hear this out loud more than I need to say it.
I lean in, pressing my forehead to his so he knows for sure. “Yes,” I whisper. “I want this.”
The effect is…instant.
