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"Reina?"

"You have three healing ribs and a face that's still half bruised." I climbed over him carefully and settled with my knees on either side of his hips, keeping my weight off him. "So this is what we're going to do. You're going to lie there, you're not going to move, and I'm going to take care of everything."

His good eye widened. Then the familiar grin slowly returned.

"Dios," he breathed. "Yes. Absolutely. Doctor's orders."

"Put your hands on the headboard."

He obeyed immediately, stretching both arms over his head and wrapping his hands around the iron rails. He moved cautiously at first, testing his ribs, and when nothing worse than soreness answered him, he relaxed.

Then I began undoing the buttons of his shirt, and the grin disappeared again.

"Hold on to that," I said. "If you let go, I stop."

"Reina," he said, suddenly much less confident, "I am never letting go of this headboard. I'm going to be buried with this headboard."

I laughed, but the sound died when I opened his shirt.

I had always known he was beautiful, but knowing it and seeing him like this were different things. He was stretched beneath me in the warm lamplight, his skin golden against the sheets, his body lean and hard even under the fading bruises along his ribs. Four pale lines crossed his side.

The claw marks from the night of the Baths had healed into scars.

I lowered my head and kissed them one by one.

He had once kissed the silver scars across my stomach with that same slow attention, following each one from beginning to end as though he had all the time in the world.

Jax went completely still beneath me.

"Tiger stripes," I murmured against his skin. "Look at you. You've had them all along."

A rough sound escaped him before he could stop it. His hands tightened around the rails until his knuckles whitened, and when I lifted my head, his good eye was wet.

"That's not fair," he said hoarsely. "You can't use my own lines against me. I'm trying to be seductive and you're making me cry."

"You can cry," I said. "You're still not allowed to move."

I took my time. Jax was beneath me with both hands locked around my headboard, his entire body tense with the effort of staying still, and no one was rushing me.

I kissed his throat and felt his pulse quicken beneath my lips. Then I moved to his collarbone, his shoulder, and the hollow at the base of his neck, where his skin tasted faintly of salt and cinnamon.

My palms were still too tender to use properly, so I touched him with my fingertips instead, barely brushing them over his chest and down his stomach. Every small movement drew a response from him. His muscles tightened beneath my touch, his breathing became less controlled, and his grip on the headboard grew harder.

I unfastened his belt slowly and without any urgency. By the time I eased his pants down and wrapped my fingers lightly around his cock, Jax let his head fall back against the pillow and muttered a long, desperate string of Spanish that sounded very much like prayer.

"Wren," he gasped. "Reina. Please."

"Please what?"

"I don't know. Anything. Everything. Please."

"You told me you liked the wait." I stroked him once, slowly, from base to tip, and watched his hips rise instinctively from the mattress. "You said you liked having something to look forward to."

"I've changed my mind," Jax said with enormous conviction. "I've changed my entire personality."

I laughed so hard that I had to lower my forehead against his chest, carefully avoiding his ribs. He laughed too, breathless and aching, still gripping the headboard while the old iron frame creaked beneath us.

For a few seconds, nothing existed beyond the two of us laughing in that little round room at the top of the tower.