Page 24

I put both hands flat on his chest. His skin is so hot it nearly burns. “You weren’t kidding about running hot.”

“I don’t kid.”

“Liar. You just do it with a straight face.” I run my palms down his stomach, and every muscle jumps. “I notice.”

He makes a rough sound and pulls me into his lap. I straddle his thighs, my injured leg stretched out to the side, and he kisses me again, slower this time. His hands slide up my bare back. His thumb finds the clasp of my bra and stops. He doesn’t take it off.

“Can I?” he asks.

Nobody has ever asked me so reverently. “Yes. Please.”

He kisses down my throat, over my collarbone, and to the edge of the black lace. Then he closes his mouth over my breast right through the fabric. His tongue is hot against the damp lace. I gasp and arch into him.

Then his tongue finds the little steel barbell, and he lifts his head. His eyes snap to mine.

“Surprise,” I say breathlessly.

“Both?”

“Both.”

A growl rolls out of him, low and dark, and he unhooks my bra with a flick of his fingers. He peels it down my arms, his eyes traveling over every inch of me, slow and hungry.

“You are,” he says, then stops. He tries again. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

I’ve been told I’m a lot of things: loud, too much, alarming. Not once has anyone looked at me like this, as if I’m the moths in the glade.

“Show me,” I whisper.

“Look at you.” His voice is gravelly. He cups my breast in one huge hand, and his thumb brushes over the barbell, back and forth, so slowly I shiver. “All this time, under that uniform. Steel, right here, and I never knew.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“Disappointed?” He makes a sound that’s half laugh, half growl. “Wren, I’m going to be thinking about this every time you zip up your jacket for the rest of my life.”

Then he bends his head. He takes one nipple into his mouth and flicks the barbell with his tongue.

“So pretty,” he murmurs against my skin. “So soft. And so damn brave, little bird, letting me have you like this.”

I melt. There’s no other word for it. My bones turn to warm syrup, and I sag against him.

He moves back and forth, telling me in that low, rough voice exactly how good I taste, until I’m squirming in his lap, grabbing his hair with both hands.

“Holt. Holt, the pants. Mine. Please.”

He lifts me off his lap like I weigh nothing and lays me back on the cot. He unbuttons my ruined pants and eases them down my legs, careful of my bandaged shin, making my chest ache. Then he takes my underwear with them.

High on my left thigh is a spray of tattooed wildflowers. He traces them with one fingertip.

“Forget-me-nots,” I say. “I got them the week the band broke up.”

“Why?”

“So I’d remember I was still me.”

He bends his head and presses a kiss right in the middle of the flowers. Then another, a little higher. Then another, higher still.

Oh. Oh, he’s going to…