At the foot of the bed, I break the kiss. She sways toward me, her eyes glazed like she’s drunk but expecting.
I find the straps of her sundress and slide them off her shoulders, watching her face as the fabric begins to fall. She doesn’t stop me. In fact, her breathing quickens as I unwrap her.
The dress catches at her breasts, then slides down and bunches at her waist. No bra, just like I suspected when I saw her come out of the bookstore. Her tits are perfect. Just like her. And the sight of her like this—half naked, backlit by the sun—makes the muscles in my chest so tight I can barely breathe.
This gorgeous girl comes from a different world than mine. A world where trust is offered, not weaponized.
She is the light, and I am the darkness. I should let her go. But I know I can’t.
Reaching in, I push the dress the rest of the way down her hips. It falls to the floor, leaving her standing before me in nothing but pair of white bikini panties.
I nearly smile when I see the wet spot. Yes, shedoeswant this.
She makes a small sound, and her arms twitch at her sides, as if she’s about to cover herself. But she doesn’t. She stands still and lets me look. Admire.
And goddamn do I ever.
Her body is perfection. Her breasts are full enough to fill my hands, with light pink nipples that stand out straight, beggingfor my mouth. She has faint tan lines from her bathing suit, and the contrast between her sun-kissed skin and the paler flesh beneath has my mouth watering.
Her stomach is flat and her waist is thin, but her hips curve out with such femininity.
“You’re an angel.”
She blushes hard, like no one has ever given her this kind of compliment. And the thought that Avery doesn’t fully understand the devastating effect of her own body causes something feral to rise within me.
Possessive thoughts take over. A dark voice snarls in the back of my skull.
Mine.
I move forward and cup her breasts with both hands, my palms full, feeling the warm weight of her perky flesh. Her breath stutters and her head falls back as a whimper escapes her parted lips.
A sound she didn’t mean to make goes straight to my cock and turns it to steel.
I gently roll her nipples between my fingers. She gasps and grips my forearms with both hands. Hard. Her nails bite into my skin. Her thighs press together on my bulge, and her hips rock forward in an involuntary thrust.
Her body is begging for it, searching for a touch she doesn’t know how to ask for.
“I’m going to give you what you want,” I murmur against her cheek, squeezing her breasts harder. So shapely. So supple. “Do you trust me, Avery?”
“Yes,” she replies without hesitation. It’s a word you hear often, but it means nothing from most people. Yet from her, it’s everything.
I hook my thumb into the waistband of her panties and pull them down, over her hips and the curve of her ass, until they fall to her ankles. She steps out of them and is fully naked before me.
I’m still fully clothed, and she stands in front of me, a slight tremble in her stomach, fingers curling and uncurling at her sides. Such courage to simply be naked in front of a man she barely knows.
Only shedoesknow me. She’s been watching me for weeks, filing away details. She sees things in me that no one else does. The man beneath the discipline.
And she’s not afraid of him.
I strip off my T-shirt and toss it aside. Her doe-eyes travel across my chest, my arms, my abs, then back to the tattoo that wraps my bicep. Her gaze catches on the scar below my ribs.
A knife wound from a job in Detroit that I couldn’t go to the hospital for. It healed ugly, and her expression does something I don’t expect. It softens with such tenderness and such concern that I almost can’t process it.
She reaches out delicately and traces the scar with her fingertip, gently, like she’s touching something sacred.
“What happened?” she whispers.
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “It’s not important.”
