Her attention moved over my chest, my shoulders, the scar on my forearm. She touched the old mark with two fingers, then pressed her palm flat over my heartbeat.
I reached for the top button of her cream blouse. “Tell me if you want slower.”
Sunny put her hand over mine. “Take your time. Also get naked. Please balance those priorities.”
A laugh pushed out of me, rough and helpless. “I love you.”
“I love you too. Now prove you’re good at multitasking.”
I opened the first button, then the second, then the third.
With every inch of skin I uncovered, Sunny’s breathing changed. Her freckles trailed over the tops of her breasts. A dusting of flour clung near her collarbone. Her skin held the day’s smoke and sugar, not enough to taste like a recipe, just enough to remind me she’d fought beside a fire and chosen me after it.
I kissed the hollow beneath her throat.
She trembled.
“Flint,” she whispered.
“I’m here.”
Her eyes met mine.
The heat in them deepened.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re here.”
I slid the blouse off her shoulders and dropped it over the chair near the bed. Her bra was pale cream, pretty and practical at once, with one strap twisted from the day. I fixed it with two fingers before unclasping it.
Sunny smiled faintly. “You would straighten a strap right now.”
“I like things where they belong.”
Her smile faded into heat. “Where do I belong?”
That question went through me clean.
I cupped her face. “With me. Only where you choose to be, but I hope it’s with me.”
Her eyes shone again.
“It is,” she said.
I kissed her before my chest could split open from the sound of it.
She pushed my hands to the button of her jeans, and I opened them. She stepped out of denim and underwear, then stood in front of me bare and flushed and watching my face like my reaction mattered.
It did.
I sat on the edge of the bed, pulled her between my knees, and set my hands at her hips.
“You’re beautiful,” I said.
Sunny’s lips parted.
I kissed the soft curve of her belly, then the inside of one hip. Her fingers slid into my hair.
“Flint.”
