I reach out and trace the knife scar with my fingertip, my hand passing over the edge of a tattoo. He goes still, watching me.
"Does it bother you?" he asks quietly.
"No." I trace another scar, following the line where it intersects with dark ink. "They're part of you. Part of your story."
"It's not a pretty story."
"I know." I look up at him, my hand flat against his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart beneath the tattooed skin. "Tell me anyway. Someday."
Something shifts in his expression. The hunger is still there, but there's something else now. Something softer, more vulnerable.
"Someday," he agrees.
Then he's kissing me again, and all thoughts of scars and stories dissolve into sensation.
He unclasps my bra with practiced ease and tosses it aside. His mouth finds my breast, his tongue circling my nipple, and I arch into him with a moan I couldn't suppress if I tried. Hishands are everywhere—my waist, my hips, the curve of my ass. Learning me. Memorizing me.
My fingers trace the lines of ink across his back, feeling the raised ridges of old wounds beneath the tattoos. So much pain, written on his body. So much survival. I want to know every story, every scar, every piece of darkness he's carrying.
But not now. Now, I just want to feel.
I reach for his belt, desperate to feel more of him, but he catches my wrist.
"Slow down," he murmurs against my skin. "We have time."
"I don't want slow. I want—"
"I know what you want." He looks up at me, his eyes burning. "And I'm going to give it to you. But not yet. Not until you're ready."
"I am ready."
"You're not." He kisses his way down my stomach, his fingers hooking into the waistband of my pants. "But you will be."
He peels the wet fabric down my legs, taking my underwear with it, and I'm suddenly naked beneath him. Exposed. Vulnerable in a way I've never been with anyone.
Because there hasn't been anyone. Not really. A few awkward dates that went nowhere, kisses that felt wrong, hands I pushed away because they weren't his. I told myself I was too busy with medical school. Too focused on my career. But the truth was simpler and more pathetic.
I was waiting. For two years, without admitting it even to myself, I was waiting for him.
Misha settles between my thighs, his breath warm against my core, and I tense involuntarily. He notices immediately.
"Relax," he says softly. "I've got you."
His mouth finds me, and I stop thinking entirely.
The first stroke of his tongue pulls a sound from my throat that I don't recognize—something between a gasp and a moan. He does it again, and again, his hands gripping my hips to hold me still as I writhe beneath him.
He knows exactly what he's doing. Every movement is deliberate, calculated, designed to drive me higher. He reads my body like a map, finding the places that make me cry out and returning to them relentlessly.
The pleasure builds like a wave, cresting higher and higher until I'm balanced on the edge of something terrifying and beautiful. I fist my hands in the sheets, in his hair, in anything I can reach.
"Misha—" His name tears out of me. "I'm going to—"
"Let go," he says against my skin. "I want to feel you come apart."
And I do.
The orgasm crashes through me, whiting out my vision, stealing my breath. I hear myself cry out—his name, maybe, or just a wordless sound of release—and then I'm floating, shattered into a million pieces, held together only by his hands on my body.
