He didn’t answer, but his gaze slid away from hers and said what he couldn’t. She shifted to her side, propping herself up on one elbow as she placed her hand on his chest. Even through the layers of his jacket and linen shirt, she could feel his heart pounding.
“Has no one seen them since your injury?” she asked.
His jaw flexed. “None but my doctors,” he said. “If you’re asking about lovers, I have been with no one since the war.”
Her eyes went wide. It had been over two years since his injuries. He had been celibate that long? That made his pleasure even more paramount to her. Almost like he was an innocent and she the one to pleasure him. Perhaps it wasn’t for the first time, but the first time in a long time.
“I want to see you, Nicholas,” she whispered as she slowly rolled, pushing him onto his back, straddling him. “I want to seeallof you. Please.”
She leaned down as she spoke, her hair coming around them like a curtain. She kissed him and he let out a ragged sigh against her lips as his fingers dug into her hair once more. The slide of them against her scalp made her already wet sex even slicker with need. And she knew if she just wrested his cock free, she could have what she wanted in an instant.
But that wasn’t how this was going to end. If this could possibly be their only night together, and she knew full well that it could be…it was going to be everything. She was going to make sure of it.
He struggled to sit up, their mouths still merged, and tugged at his jacket. He freed himself and it fell back beneath them. His arms came around her, tucking her closer as their kiss deepened. She ground down on him, feeling the hard length of him under all those awful clothes. She wanted it, she wanted him, she wanted everything.
With effort, she broke the kiss and scooted from his arms. He said something under his breath as she did it, she thought a curse. She laughed as she pushed to her knees next to him.
“May I help you remove all this?” she asked.
He let out a low sigh. “Maybe with the boots.”
“I can do that.”
She slid downward and went to work on the boots. Above her, he pulled the shirt free and tugged it over his head. Her fingers fumbled at the sight of him, half naked.
He was…spectacular. A visual feast of hard muscle peppered with light chest hair. She pulled his first boot off and tossed it on to the floor, then the other. Now that he was free, she pivoted and licked her lips.
“I don’t even know where to start,” she whispered.
He didn’t smile. He just pushed his hands behind himself so he could support his weight by leaning back. “It’s worse below the waist,” he said.
She wrinkled her brow, and then she realized he was talking about the scars. She’d been so mesmerized by the man as a whole, she hadn’t noticed them. But there they were. A scar along the front of his shoulder, bright against his skin. Another on his ribcage, set amongst the most fascinating lines of muscle.
A third on his stomach. A burn scar this time, red and rough. She reached out and then hesitated as his mouth tightened.
“If you don’t want to touch me, I understand,” he said softly.
Her eyes went wide. “I want to touch you so much I can hardly breathe,” she promised. “I just don’t want to hurt you.”
He was silent a moment, studying her face. Then he said, “There’s pain, but not from the scars. If you touch me, you won’t hurt me.”
“Good,” she whispered, and placed a hand flat on his shoulder. She pushed, urging him back to settle on the pillows. When he was propped back on them, watching her every move, she leaned in and kissed him. She felt him relax beneath her lips, felt his body shift from warning to wanting. She wanted to keep him there. She wanted him to never feel warning again, at least not with her.
And she wanted to see him, all of him, and show him that the damage to his skin made no difference in how she viewed him. She slid her lips down, his beard tickling her as she traced his throat, down across the wings of his collarbone, and then she rested her lips on the scar on his shoulder. She licked the length of it, this proof of what he’d gone through.
He shuddered beneath her lips and she could feel the tension in him. This desire to both have more and to stop her, to keep her from seeing what he thought made him weak. Or less.
The fact that she could never see him that way wasn’t something he knew or trusted. Time had done that. Pain had done it. And she wanted so desperately to repair all that damage since she couldn’t fix the physical. She edged her mouth lower, kissing the scar on his ribs. Lower to the one on his stomach, just above the waistline of his trousers.
She unbuttoned the placard there, loosened the buttons at the waist. She looked up at him. “Take them off?”
It was a question, not an order. If he didn’t want to show her what had happened to him, she wouldn’t press. He held her stare for a long moment, what felt like forever. Then he hooked his thumbs into the waist and pushed them away, kicking them from his feet.
He was naked then and she stared, first at the hard cock thrusting toward her. One that made her mouth water. But she shifted her gaze, and for a moment her ardor was not the most important thing.
The damage that had been done to him was undeniable. It was written in his skin. More burn scars crossed his right hip and down the same leg. Deeper scars crisscrossed along the flesh. They were the story of bravery, of pain, of Death coming so close that she realized now Nicholas must have felt the brush of the robes.
“Nicholas,” she breathed, reaching to touch them and then pulling away. If she touched them, she’d have to feel how real it was. How close she’d been to losing him.
