He smiles, his eyes smoldering. “I like the way you think.”
I begin undressing him, starting with his jacket. I push it off his muscled biceps, my gaze flicking to his when I realize he’s wearing a shoulder holster and firearm strapped over his dark gray shirt. The black leather strap is thin and discreet, but the pistol snapped into the sheath is deadly serious.
“Are you always on duty, Boy Scout?”
A grimness seeps into his expression. “Always.”
He removes the holster, reaching around me to carefully set it and the weapon away from us on the floor beside the bed. I can hardly wait to attack the buttons on his shirt. His skin is tan and smooth beneath the crisp fabric. And scarred.
I hadn’t realized it the last time he was in my apartment, when I’d run my hands under his T-shirt. All along his left side, dozens of silvery, healed shrapnel wounds—some worse than others—pepper his chest and shoulders. The same side where he lost his leg. I want to know more, I want to understand everything he’s been through, but not now. Right now, I just want to be with him.
I open his shirt further, pushing it off his arms and then leaning down to kiss the center of his chest. His skin is hot beneath my lips, like velvet beneath my tongue. I kiss each scar I find, from his throat to his shoulders then down onto the ridges and valleys of his muscular abdomen. I revel in the controlled power of him, in the battle-tested beauty of his body.
His hands are in my hair, caressing my scalp as I move over him, kissing and licking my way back up to his mouth. When our lips join, his tongue invades, hot and hungry. Splaying his hand against my spine, he presses me against his bare chest. My nipples brush the smooth warmth of his skin and I moan into his mouth as arousal spirals through me.
“I need you, Gabe.” I rock into his embrace, needing the contact even more than I need my next breath. “I want my hands on you.”
I reach down between us, hastily unfastening his belt. It jangles softly, the only other sound except for the rush of our combined panting. I open the button of his dress slacks then tug down his zipper. His erection juts upward, the thick length straining the fabric of his dark boxer briefs. My mouth waters, and a surge of hot need floods me.
I slip my fingers inside the waistband and he groans,his stomach flexing sharply at the contact. His cock fills my grasp, overflows it. The girth and length and weight combine to make the hunger inside me roar into a wordless sound of pure need. With greedy hands I free his erection from the confining aggravation of his briefs. He helps me, pushing his pants down off his hips. The movement makes his shaft surge in my hold. He makes a strangled noise, pumping restlessly now.
I scoot back on his thighs to get a better look as I run my hands all over him. His spine arches as I stroke him, his powerful body rigid and taut as a bowstring.
“You’re beautiful, Gabriel.” I mean it sincerely, but he chuckles wryly, as if he takes my praise as a joke. I glance up at him. “What’s funny about that?”
“A woman who’s utter fucking perfection tells me I’m beautiful.” He scoffs, slowly shaking his head. “You haven’t seen the worst of me.”
His voice is low, almost a warning. I’m not sure he’s talking about physical flaws, not when I can see there is a storm brewing in his eyes. He’s trying to keep it shuttered from me, but it’s hard to hide wounds from someone who also bears her own.
I reach up with one hand and cup the back of his skull, compelling him to look inside me too. “I want to see all of you. I need to know that what I’m holding onto is real.”
“Don’t I feel real?” His mouth quirks, wicked and sensual, at the same time he thrusts deeply into my grasp on the hard length of his erection.
He’s evading and I know it, putting up a wall I don’t feel equipped to climb. Not now, when my desire for him is still swamping me.
“Come here,” he growls. Cupping my face in hiswarm palms, he draws me into his kiss.
His mouth is fierce on mine, leaving no room for my doubts. There is no room for anything but pleasure and sensation when my breasts are crushed to Gabe’s naked chest, our bodies melding together as he deepens our kiss into a breath-stealing conquest of my lips.
He’s even harder now, and the feel of so much power in my hand makes my desire twist into something ravenous. Panting, I break our kiss on a moan and slide off his lap, easing down onto the floor on my knees in front of his bent legs.
I tug his pants and briefs off his hips, captivated by the sight of his cock as it springs free, jutting high against his taut abdomen. I lick my lips in anticipation, swamped in carnal need of this man. His eyes are hungry on me too. But I detect the firming of his jaw, the fractional halting of his breath, as I pull his clothing farther down his thighs and uncover the top of the prosthesis on his left leg. A cushioned sleeve starts halfway up his thigh, covering the sturdy plastic cup that’s attached to the metal calf, ankle, and artificial foot below it.
Letting his pants fall off his knees and down around his ankles, I run my hands over the soft bristly hair on his bare thighs, sliding my fingers back up to stroke the length of his arousal all the way to its crown. I spread his knees with my body, turning my head to drag a kiss along the inner portion of one thigh, then the other.
I draw back, drinking in every scarred and beautiful inch of him as my hands make another slow trek along his legs. I keep going, sliding my caress over both his knees, the one that’s bare, warm flesh and the other that’s encased in the cool sleeve and plastic socket of the prosthesis.
“Does it turn you off?”
His voice is low and flat, emotionless. I glance up and find his gaze rooted on me, his handsome face schooled into a bland expression that I would never mistake for anything close to casual. I press my mouth to the inside of his left thigh, just above the edge of the sleeve.
“Nothing about you turns me off.”
His skin tenses beneath my lips and my tongue, and I hear the ragged breath he inhales through gritted teeth. I rise up on my knees, kissing my way back to his cock. He groans when I take him deep into my mouth, his hips bucking as I move atop him, my tongue teasing the underside of his shaft.
On a guttural curse, he arches up, pulling me off him and dragging me onto his lap again.
I swipe my tongue over my wet lips, frowning at him. “I wasn’t through with you.”
