Her gaze dropped. Was he cataloging her flaws?
He lifted her chin, bringing her eyes back to his. “They take nothing away from your beauty.”
Heat rushed to her chest, traveling all the way to her cheeks. This was different from the clinical way he cleaned her injuries. Now, his inspection was indulgent. Invited.
His focus moved lower to the column of her throat. He traced the backs of his fingernails over her fluttering pulse, down to the delicate wing of her collarbones.
He traced the slope of her shoulder with aching slowness. Down her arm to the bandage he’d wrapped around her wrist, then back up again. Across her collarbone, one finger followed the thin scratch that marred her skin. Into the hollow of her throat, where he paused to feel her pulse jumping against his touch.
“I didn’t think anything could be this soft.” The words emerged rough with wonder.
Her nipples tightened with every breath. Every subtle shift and change in her registered. The whisper of her breath. The tightness in her jaw.
His gaze drifted over the swell of her breasts to the darkening tips. Petite but plump. Her body seemed to bloom under the weight of his stare.
“You’re...” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I don’t have words.”
No one had ever looked at her in such a way. Reverent. Mindfully. Admiringly. “You don’t need words.”
His hand trembled, as if afraid to touch her. His split knuckles reminded her what kind of man he was, yet his hesitancy implied a sense of prudence she hadn’t expected in this place. He was nothing like the aggressive hunters running wild below. Perhaps that was why he was all alone, up here.
“It’s okay.” She gently pulled his hand closer, cupping her breast.
The sound that escaped him was almost wounded.
She let go, not wanting to force him. His hand continued its exploration, between her breasts, not touching the curves themselves but mapping the valley between them.
Daisy gradually eased back, reclining in the pillows as he traced the ladder of her ribs, each one too distinct beneath her too-thin skin. When his featherlight strokes moved to the concave plane of her belly, her muscles jumped.
He paused at the swell of her hip, fingers tracing the sensitive crease where thigh met pelvis. An unnamable ache formed deep within her core.
He seemed to deliberately avoid the places she assumed every man inevitably wanted to claim. His touch circled wider, skating down her outer thigh, over her knee, along her calf to the pool of black cashmere at her ankle.
The way he touched her made her feel like an outsider looking in, as though this was happening to him more than to her. He studied her body as if it were a sacred text he waited a lifetime to read.
His face told a story as his brow pinched and his focus intensified. Sometimes his lips would part in awe, other times they formed a hard line. His jaw ticked and his lashes flicked.
Even he didn’t seem to know what he needed.
Another ache formed, this one in her chest. Some instinctual part of her felt called to nurture him. A man. This very powerful man. It didn’t make sense, but her instinct to do so sounded like a church bell inside her.
There was something brittle and innocent about him, something he made an artform of hiding. The veneer was cracking. His mask was falling. Vulnerability spilled from him as he lost himself in learning the shape of her.
She wanted to protect him from whatever haunted him.
But she also wasn’t immune to him, to the things he was doing to her—all while barely touching her.
Daisy’s breath came faster now. Her body temperature climbed with each pass of his fingers. Slick arousal gathered between her thighs, wet heat gathering as her sex clenched around emptiness in silent demand.
But he seemed in no hurry. His fingers traced patterns on her skin. Slowly. Devastatingly.
Her head cocked as she realized he was writing words. Lush drifted across her thigh. Cage across her ribs. Warm between her breasts. Hunger in the dip of her belly.
His face was transfixed. Lost. The expression of a man who might have never touched a woman intimately before. But how was that possible?
Daisy studied his face in the firelight. The sharp angles of his jaw, shadowed with stubble. The fullness of his lower lip, the grey eyes that held equal parts desire and devastation.
She lifted a hand to his face, traced the hard line of his cheekbone. He turned into the touch like a flower seeking sun.
