“This is ridiculous,” I whispered, because it was either that or burst into flames. “You’re offensively hot.”
A startled laugh punched out of him, some of the tension leaching from his shoulders.
I slid my fingers to his waistband, popping the button, easing the zipper down. The thick bulge straining against the fabric made my pulse spike. I worked the denim over his hips, careful of the liner at his thigh, careful not to tug anything that would yank him out of his head and back into fear.
He caught my wrists.
For a beat, we froze there—him half out of his jeans, me bent close enough to feel his breath on the top of my head, the room holding its air.
His hand felt tight around my wrist, not harsh, just ... hesitant.
I straightened, following the tension up his arm until our eyes met. There it was. The line. Not the sexy one we’d been toeing all night. The real one. The moment where he either let me see all of himself or put the mask back on.
“I wantallof you, Wes,” I said quietly. “Not just the parts you think are easy to look at.”
Something flickered—pain, disbelief, a little bit of anger at whatever part of his brain insisted that couldn’t be true. It all moved behind his eyes, then slowly, finally, his grip loosened.
He let go.
“Okay,” he said, voice hoarse. “All of it, then.”
We pushed his jeans down together, working them over his prosthetic with a weird chorus of grunts and laughter when they caught on the edge.
I took in his leg and the rest of him. My fingertips skimmed the socket and the skin around it without flinching. I took my time cataloging all of him with open desire. Wes was tense, but his breathing relaxed when he realized I wasn’t pitying him—I was turned on.
When he finally stepped free of the denim, he was just ... Wes. All broad shoulders and corded muscle and long lines, the familiar and the new knitted into something that made my chest ache. His prosthetic caught the lamplight, metal and carbon and proof that his body had broken and healed in new ways ... and he still sat down in that chair like a king.
He scooted back, legs spread, bare feet solid on the floor. The condom box waited on the nightstand, an unspoken promise.
Wes’s hand stilled at his prosthetic. The room seemed to hold its breath with me as he loosened the liner, fingers working the familiar catches. I stepped back to give him room.
When he finally eased the prosthetic off, setting it carefully beside the chair, something in my chest cracked wide open. The stump of his thigh was pale and scarred, tender in a way he never let anyone see, and for a heartbeat I was terrified he’d mistake my silence for pity instead of what it was—pure, aching desire.
It was an honor to see him so vulnerable.
I stepped closer and slid my palm over his bare thigh, above the place where bone and skin ended. “There you are,” I murmured, because it felt wrong to pretend this wasn’t partof him. His shoulders dropped a fraction, some tight, invisible thing unspooling as he let me look, really look, at all of him.
I picked up his prosthetic and walked it to rest safely beside the bed.
“I’m good,” he said, more to himself than to me as I turned to him.
He leaned back, hands braced on the arms of the chair, his gaze raking over me from toes to throat. When his eyes met mine again, something darker had settled there.
Old Wes. New Wes. All layered into one man who looked like he’d happily devour me whole.
“Now get on your knees and crawl,” he said quietly.
Heat flashed through me so fast my breath hitched.
There was no cruelty in it, no edge of mockery. Just a low, thick want and a trust that I understood the difference.
“Yes,” I whispered, my knees softening as I sank to the floor.
I started forward, slow on purpose. Each movement rolled through my hips, a lazy sway I could feel in the looseness of my spine and the drag of my hair over my shoulders. My palms slid across the hardwood, then the edge of the rug, then the last strip of floor between us. Every few crawled inches, I glanced up through my lashes just to watch what it did to him.
His breathing went rough almost immediately. The muscles in his forearms stood out, tendons tight as his hands flexed on the arms of the chair like he was fighting the urge to reach for me. His gaze burned over every inch of skin like I was something he’d been starving for.
By the time I reached him, his knuckles were white on the chair arms. I slid my hands up his shin, over his knee, and along the thick muscles of his thighs. His breath hissed out when I skimmed higher, the sound punching straight between my ribs.
