"Yeah." His voice had dropped. "I have."
"I told you I wasn't ready."
"You did."
My fingers curled into the fabric. "I'm telling you something different now."
He moved. Not fast. Milo was never fast when it mattered, he was deliberate, and the difference was something I'd learned to feel in my pulse before he even closed the distance. His hand came up and found my jaw, tilting my face up, his thumb pressing just below the corner of my mouth where a bruise had been and wasn't anymore.
"You're sure," he said. Not a question. A check. "Because I wouldn't blame you if you hated me forever for what I did. Or at the very least didn't trust me not to do it again."
"I'm sure," I told him. "And I trust you."
He kissed me then.
Not the way he'd kissed me before the warehouse, all controlled hunger and careful restraint. There was nothing careful about this. It was the kiss of a man who'd been counting days and had run out of patience for gentleness, thorough and deep and faintly rough at the edges.
I made a sound against his mouth that I couldn't contain, because I'd been hungry too, and felt his grip tighten.
"Come here," he gritted out, and pulled me off the bench.
I went with him willingly. My hands found his chest, his shoulders, the back of his neck, relearning the geography of him the way I relearned every space. By touch. By building the map in my head until it felt like mine. He walked me backward through the apartment and I let him, trusting the count of steps, trusting him. It was either the most rational thing I'd ever done or the most dangerous.
Maybe both. With Milo, those had always been the same fucking thing.
My back met the bedroom wall and he pressed in close, caging me there. One forearm rested above my head, the other hand sliding under the hem of my shirt to find the curve of my waist. He buried his face against my throat and inhaled deep, the scent of him filling my senses until I was dizzy with it.
"Hi," he said, the word vibrating against my jaw.
"Hi," I breathed.
His hand spread flat against my ribs, right where the worst of the bruising had been. His palm was warm and the pressure was light—achingly careful—and it shouldn't have undone me, but it did.
"I'm fine," I told him, my voice trembling. "I'm all healed."
"I know." His mouth dragged down my throat, lips skimming the pulse that fluttered there like a trapped bird. "I just need to see."
A second later, he pulled my shirt over my head. The air in the room was cool, and my nipples hardened, but his gaze was hot, burning tracks over my bare skin. His breath left him in a ragged, controlled exhale that told me more than words ever would have. His hands moved over me, unhurried and thorough,mapping the healed skin as I stood with my palms flat against the solid wall of his chest and let him look with his hands the way I looked with mine.
"Milo," I said.
"Mm." His thumbs brushed the sensitive underside of my breasts, teasing the lace of my bra but not removing it. Not yet.
"Stop checking for damage," I whispered. "And touch me."
He paused, his fingers tightening around my ribcage. "Yes, ma'am."
Then he touched me.
His hands slid down my stomach, heavy and possessive, popping the button of my jeans with a rough flick of his wrist. He shoved the denim down, his hand seeking the heat between my thighs through the thin cotton of my panties. When he found the dampness there, his forehead dropped to rest against mine.
"So fucking wet," he gritted out, the words dark and rough.
Another pulse of desire went through me and I couldn't stop the small whimper that left my throat at his words.
It'd been so long since he touched me.
And those hands knew exactly what they were doing, rubbing circles against me through the fabric until my spine went liquid and my head fell back against the wall. Every thought I had dissolved into the sensation of him learning me all over again from the beginning. He wasn't gentle about it. He was starving for me as I was for him. And god help me, I wanted to feed him.
