Her eyebrow lifted.
“Do not make nurse jokes right now.”
“Yes, Nurse Rourke.”
She shoved my shoulder lightly.
I caught her hand and pulled her down with me.
She came willingly, laughing against my mouth, and the sound opened something in the room brighter than sunset.
Then laughter faded.
She settled beside me, her hair falling around us like a curtain. My hands moved along her back, learning her without hurry. Her skin was warm. Real. Covered in goose bumps wherever my fingers passed.
For years, wanting her had been a wound.
Now it was a language.
I learned it slowly.
The places that made her breath catch. The way her eyes closed when my mouth found her shoulder. The tiny sound she made when my hand slid over her hip. The way she trembled not from fear, but from holding back.
“You don’t have to hold back,” I whispered.
Her eyes opened.
Neither of us missed what that meant.
Not just tonight.
All of it.
The years.
The longing.
The terror of wanting too much.
She touched my face. “Neither do you.”
The last of my restraint went quiet.
Not gone.
Quiet.
There was still care. Still tenderness. Still the awareness of my healing body and her brave, scarred heart. But under it, finally allowed to breathe, was heat. Deep and steady. Ash blown off coals that had never gone cold.
I shifted with her slowly, taking my weight carefully, my side protesting enough that she noticed immediately.
“Dylan.”
“I’m good.”
Her look said lying would result in consequences.
I adjusted, pulling her against me instead, finding a way that did not make pain the center of anything. She helped. Of course she did. Nurse hands. Woman hands. Destiny hands. Touching me now without gloves, without fear, without another woman’s shadow standing at the door.
