She pushes the shirt off and spreads her hands flat against my chest. Her palms are cool against my skin. She traces the lines of muscle across my stomach, the edge of a scar along my ribs from a knife in Dublin I never told anyone about.
"How long have you been awake?" she asks quietly.
"Doesn't matter," I say, almost surprised at how hoarse my voice sounds.
"It matters to me." She traces a line over the tattoo that starts on my left pec and travels down my ribs.
"Since yesterday morning."
Her fingers move up to my jaw, touching the bruise there lightly. "Did he do this?"
"I let him get one hit in."
Something like wonder flickers across her face. Like she can't quite process that someone took a punch for her and came back to tell her she's beautiful.
She undoes the button of her jeans and pushes them down her hips, then steps out of them. She's in plain cotton underwear and nothing else and she's looking at me with an expression that'shalf vulnerable and half fierce, like she's daring me to find her anything less than perfect.
I undo my belt. She watches my hands. Watches me strip down to nothing with the same focused attention she's given everything since she opened that front door. When I step toward her, she takes a breath and holds it.
"Breathe," I tell her.
She exhales. A shaky, fractured sound that turns into something close to a laugh. "I haven't done this before."
I stop. "Ever?"
"Ever." She meets my eyes. "I told you. He was my only boyfriend. And I never... we never..." She swallows. "I was going to. That night. My birthday. But I walked in and he was..."
I understand. The night she planned to give someone everything, he'd already thrown her away. And she shut down after that. Four years of nothing. No one. Just fear and shame and survival.
"We don't have to," I say. I mean it. Every cell in my body is screaming at me to ravish her in the best way for both of us, but I mean it.
"I want to." She takes my hand and puts it on her waist. Her skin is warm beneath my fingers. "I feel like I can breathe again. And now the threat is gone, all I want is this. Something new and real and alive with the man I am going to marry."
I guide her back toward the bed. She sits on the edge and I kneel in front of her, my hands on her thighs, looking up at her. From here, with the sun pouring through the window, she looks like something sacred.
"You're in charge," I say. "Every second of this. You say stop, we stop. You say slow down, we slow down."
"And if I say more?"
The corner of my mouth pulls up. "Then you get more."
I hook my fingers into the waistband of her underwear and pull them down slowly, she lifts her hips to help. I press my lips to the inside of her knee, then higher, following the line of her inner thigh while her breathing fractures above me.
She tastes like warmth and salt and something sweet underneath that makes my head spin. Her thigh tenses under my hand when my mouth finds her, and the sound she makes is quiet and startled, like she didn't know her body could feel something other than weight and tension and threat. I take my time. She's earned someone taking their time with her. Her fingers find my hair and grip hard. I let her hold on while I learn every sound she makes and what makes her make each one.
When she comes, it's with a gasp that she tries to smother with her hand. I reach up and pull her hand away.
"Don't hide yourself," I say against her skin. "Not any part of you. Not from me."
She pulls me up toward her. I follow, climbing over her as she scoots back on the bed, her dark hair fanning across the white pillow. She's flushed and breathing hard. Her eyes are bright and glassy, and she's looking at me like I've just handed her back a part of herself she thought was gone.
"I don't have anything with me," I say. "Protection."
"I'm on the pill." She pulls my face down to hers. "Please, Rafferty."
I sink into her slowly. Carefully. Stopping when she tenses, holding myself still above her, giving her time. Her hands grip my shoulders. Her nails dig in. She breathes through it, her body adjusting, and I watch her face for any sign of pain.
"Okay?" I ask.
