I look up at him, feeling the warmth in my cheeks. “I’ve been told I have the grace of a baby deer on ice.”
“I’ve noticed.” He’s got this expression, the one that isn’t quite a smile but lives in the same neighborhood. The corner of his mouth doing the thing it does. But his eyes are warm in a way that makes my chest do something complicated.
That mesmerizing blue gaze of his drags over me like a slow, possessive touch. It lingers on my breasts, then slides down my stomach, over the curve of my hips, and finally settles between my spread thighs.
“You’re the first woman I’ve ever wanted like this.”
The warmth in my cheeks turns to a blazing flush.
“The more I watched you, the more I tried not to want you.” Reaching behind his neck, he pulls his shirt over his head in one smooth motion.
My breath catches.
He’s broad and powerful, every muscle carved from years of survival, but it’s not the strength that captivates me. It’s the map of it.
A tattoo covers his chest and sternum like a wound that never quite healed. Takada Castle and the Eiffel Tower have been violently merged into one impossible image. The castle’s towers are cracked and leaning, cherry blossom branches growing through the fractures like thorns trying to hold the ruins together. On the right, the Eiffel Tower rises in sharp, skeletal black lines, iron lace twisted and broken in places.
Where the two landmarks collide, a jagged crack runs straight down the center of his sternum, raw and uneven, as if the skin itself split open when the two worlds slammed together.
It’s beautiful ruin. Just like him.
I don’t even care that I’m naked, getting on my knees, shuffling over the sheets until I’m right in front of him. I meet his eyes, fingers hovering.
He doesn’t stop me. Just watches me, letting me touch the ink he put there. Two places. My words. His skin.
My fingertips drift lower, following the inked crack down his sternum and onto the hard planes of his abdomen. Raised, uneven ridges are scattered across his lower stomach and obliques, some scars thin and silvery, others thicker and puckered like they were never properly stitched. They’reviolence remembered in flesh. Like they never wanted him to forget where every piece of him was earned or taken or lost.
My throat tightens, and he gently takes my hand in his, keeping it there against his chest. “Please don’t ask me.”
I swallow.
“I’ll never be able to give you all the answers you need, and I hate that.”
My hand is still splayed over his heart, the throb against my palm surprisingly fragile for a man who looks carved out of war. His skin is hot, alive, full of everything he’s determined to carry alone.And I hate that.
I don’t speak. Just slide my hand slowly down his chest, over the scarred and inked plane, until my fingers reach the waistband of his jeans.
His breath catches as I hook two fingers behind the button and pop it open with a quiet snap, the zipper next. I drag it down slowly, his cock straining against the fabric, and when I tug the denim down his hips, it springs free. Heavy, flushed dark, the swollen head already glistening at the tip.
There’s a soft groan that catches in his throat when I wrap my fingers around him, feeling the velvet heat and the way he throbs in my grip. I stroke him once, slowly, from base to tip, spreading the slick bead of precum down his length.
“Today, I don’t need answers,” I whisper, thumb circling the sensitive head. “I just need you.”
I let go and scoot back onto the mattress, laying my head on the pillow, and I spread my legs for him. Knees soft, feet plantedapart, I let him look at me, like he needs to memorize the way my body wants him.
I watch as he steps out of his jeans, my greedy eyes dragging down his body, landing on his cock. Veins stand out along the shaft, thick and heavy with a promise to drive me mindless, and I bite my bottom lip, pussy clenching around nothing.
The mattress dips and he stalks toward me, gaze etched on my pussy. “You’re soaked. I like it.” A thick finger glides through my folds, spreading my slickness, circling my clit with slow, maddening pressure.
“You can tell me to stop at any time. Say the word, and I stop. Understand?”
I nod, already breathless, already knowing there’s not a bone in my body that’ll let me say no to anything.
On his knees, towering over me, he takes both my wrists in one big hand and slowly lifts them above my head, pinning them to the pillow.
“Keep them here,” he says. “Don’t move them. Promise me.”
The scar lines on his arms move with the flex of muscle, and my breath snags because they’re not just on his inner arms. They’re on the outside too. Identical. Equal spacing. Four new ones, red and neat and ugly, marring the stretch of skin.
