This was Maggie.
If anyone deserved to see all of him, it was her.
She lifted the undershirt carefully, and he raised his arms to help her, steeling himself for her reaction. Cold air hit his bare torso, and he resisted the urge to cross his arms over his chest. To hide. Her gaze traced the landscape of his scars—the puckered burn tissue that covered most of his right side, the neat surgical lines where doctors had put him back together.
She didn’t flinch.
Didn’t look away.
Instead, she took his hand and pulled him toward the bed.
He followed, unable to deny her anything in this moment. When his legs hit the edge of the mattress, she pushed on his shoulders, guiding him down. He settled back on the matress and his mouth went dry as she straddled his lap, her knees pressing into the mattress on either side of his hips. His cock throbbed to hard, instant life, but he was also hyperaware of theruined flesh she’d exposed, of every weird texture and graft, the way the right side of his chest looked melted in some places and caved in in others.
Maggie bent, her hair falling around his face like a curtain, and kissed the hard ridge of a scar below his clavicle. All the air left his lungs at once.
“Close your eyes,” she whispered.
He obeyed and felt her shift against his growing erection as she reached for something on the bedside table. Fireworks lit off in his blood at the unintentional contact, and he bit back a groan.
“Open,” she said.
When he opened his eyes, she was holding a small bottle of gold body paint. She squeezed some onto her fingertips and spread it across his chest. “Kintsugi.”
His breath caught in his lungs. “Maggie?—”
“Shh.” She dabbed more gold onto her fingers and traced it over his lips. “You fixed Ghost’s mug. Now let me do this for you.”
“I don’t—I can’t—” The words tangled in his throat.
“You aren’t broken, Anson.” Her voice was steady, her eyes never leaving his. “You were transformed by fire. Like your metal.” She lifted her gold-tipped finger, holding it just above his heart. “Let me show you how beautiful that transformation is.”
The wall he’d spent years building around his shame—it wasn’t going to fall on its own. He had to let her rip it down. He nodded once, a jerky dip of his chin that felt like the bravest thing he’d done since leaving prison.
Her smile bloomed, and she leaned forward to press a kiss to his lips, smearing the paint. “Thank you,” she whispered against his mouth.
He didn’t know why she was thanking him when she was the one offering this gift—this chance to see himself through her eyes.
She spread the gold with reverence. The first stroke followed the seam of an old graft, her thumb smoothing the metallic shimmer across the ridged topography of his chest. She didn’t avoid the places that puckered or dipped, didn’t hesitate as she mapped the territory of his ruin. She took her time, and God, it was torture—the soft drag of her touch, a tickle followed by a lingering heat as the paint dried on his skin.
He couldn’t look away. His own chest, transformed, shining in the lamplight. He’d always hated his body like this.
Until now.
Until her.
She sat up, her weight again shifting maddeningly against his cock, and reached for more paint before moving to the next scar. He flinched as she pressed her palm flat over a patchwork of skin where the nerves had never quite come back.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, not stopping.
“Not... bad,” he rasped. The way she was inadvertently rocking against his cock hurt more than his scars at the moment.
“Good.” She traced the edge of the burn, then dipped lower, circling his left nipple, watching his face as her thumb flicked over it. He groaned, and she smiled, a flash of teeth that was all challenge.
She painted a line down his sternum, detouring to outline the faded, angry slice of a shrapnel wound. He couldn’t stop watching.
Her lips parted, and her breath came faster as she touched him. She moved lower, working the gold in slow, deliberate arcs along the whorls of his abdomen, and each touch sent a pulse straight to his cock.
“Maggie…”
