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He’s huge. Charcoal skin over a chest twice the width of mine, and the ember lines run everywhere, not just his arms. They branch across his chest and down his ribs and over his stomach in long, forking paths, like lava finding its way downhill, and they’re all glowing, gold and brighter gold, so that the room is lit by him. There’s no lamp on. I don’t need one.

“Okay,” I say. “You’ve been hiding this under a work shirt?”

“Health code,” he says.

I get up on my knees on the bed and put both hands flat on his stomach. The lines jump under my palms, flaring. He hisses through his teeth.

“Does that hurt?”

“No.” His voice has dropped. “It’s the opposite of hurt.”

I trace one of the lines up with a fingertip, over his ribs, to his chest, and watch it brighten ahead of my finger like I’m lighting a fuse. He lets me. His hands are in fists at his sides.

“You’re allowed to touch me,” I tell him.

“I know. I’m letting you look first.” He tips his head. “I’ve been trying to get you to look at me all week.”

I pull my sweater off over my head. There’s a black camisole under it, and I pull that off too. I reach behind me for my bra and he says, “Wait,” and I wait, and he reaches around me with one hand and unhooks it like he’s done it a hundred times, and when it falls he just looks.

“There she is,” he says softly.

“Corny.”

“I’ve tended bar for ninety-one years. I’m allowed one.” He puts his hands on my ribs, both of them, and I arch into them without deciding to. “You were standing behind my bar on your first night, and you swapped out all twelve pour spouts on station three without asking anybody. I watched you do it. You had a bar towel in your back pocket and your braid kept swinging every time you bent down.” His thumbs move along the undersides of my breasts. “I went in the walk-in to cool off. That’s how bad it was. A demon. In the walk-in.”

“You did not.”

“Ask Kit.” His thumb drags over my nipple and I make a sound. “She asked me if I was all right. I said I was checking the purée.”

“That’s my line.”

“I know. I’ve been waiting a week to steal it.”

He lays me back on his gray sheets and unbuttons my jeans. He works them down my legs, and my socks and underwear with them, and then he folds the jeans once and lays them over the chair by the window like they’re a cashmere coat.

“Seriously?”

“They’re the good jeans,” he says.

Then he gets on the bed, and the whole mattress tilts toward him, and I roll right into him.

He starts at my throat. He kisses the side of it, and then lower, and he talks while he does it, into my skin, like he’s been saving all of it up.

“This,” he says, at my collarbone. “You do this thing when a drunk gets loud at the bar. You lift your chin about an inch. Like you’re daring him.” He moves lower. “Gorrin’s three times your size. You lifted your chin at a troll, Trouble.”

“He was being an asshole.”

“He was. You were magnificent.” His mouth finds the scar on my knee, a pale crooked line. “What’s this?”

“Patio at Lucky’s. I tripped over a guy who’d passed out on the steps.”

“Did you drop the tray?”

“No.”

“Of course you didn’t.” He kisses the scar. “Hold on to the sheets.”

“Why would I need to hold on to the sh...”