she took his hand, he had to ignore the feel of the scars on her palm. He didn’t want to be reminded of everything she had been through—at least not at this moment. If he thought about her situation too much, he was liable to stop, and he knew if he did, he was never going to have another chance with her. She would pull away. Disappear.
Or maybe that was his fear talking.
Whatever it was, now was not the time for the mind. This was about their bodies.
The bedroom she took him into was painfully simple. Nothing on the walls, nothing much on the bed but a single pillow and a handmade quilt. When she closed the door, the light from the other room was cut off, and in the utter darkness, he lost his bearings.
Yet as she stepped into him once again, he didn’t care where they were. All he needed—all he wanted—was her. She was the gravity that kept him on the earth and the oxygen in his lungs and the blood that filled his veins.
“Just so you know,” she said in a husky voice, “I don’t usually do this. I’m not exactly sure what’s gotten into me, but what I know for sure is that . . . I don’t want to stop with you.”
Boone had to close his eyes as an electric shot bolted through his body. But it was easy to gather himself back so he could reassure her of something she evidently wasn’t worried about: “And just so you know, I will stop if you want. At any time, and no matter how far we’ve gone.”
When she pulled him back down to her mouth again, Boone shuffled them to the side until the mattress hit his leg, and then he picked her up by the waist, moving her off her feet and onto that quilt. As he stretched out beside her on the small bed, he scented her everywhere on the pillow and the covers.
As they kept kissing, his hand traveled up from where he’d held on to her, skating the side of her breast, moving onto her shoulder. Their noses bumped as they repositioned the mouth-to-mouth, but then they found each other properly once more. Going slowly, he eased part of his weight onto her, feeling her body sink into the mattress. He kept his hips back, though.
For godsakes, he didn’t want to come too soon, and he was on the verge already.
With his eyes unable to see, every other sense of his was cranked up, and he wanted the clothes off their bodies so he could feel even more of her—and she must have read his mind. Her hands went to his cashmere sweater and pulled the hem up his torso. Backing off from her lips, he sat up and swept the fine weave over his head.
“Your shirt, too,” she said roughly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Freeing his cuffs, Boone ripped that button-down over his head without bothering with the buttons—and when something tore in the process, he didn’t care in the slightest. He tossed away the pressed and starched cotton with the same concern he had the sweater: none.
As he lowered himself down her again, her hands drifted over his ribs and he froze as his cock throbbed behind his fly.
“Is this okay?” she whispered into the dark.
“Touch me anywhere.”
Rolling to the side, he let himself fall back on the mattress and extended his arms up and over his head, the sense that he was giving himself, his body, to her both exciting and a little frightening. He preferred control, but for her? He was more than willing to give some of it up.
Give all of it up.
The first thing that hit his bare chest was the ends of her hair, the soft brushes a tickle that went right to the thick head of his erection. Biting his lower lip, he hissed through his front teeth and arched until his spine cracked. And then her fingertips found his skin, traveling over the pads of muscle on his chest and going onto his abs. As she explored his torso, his breath got tighter and faster, and a separate heartbeat started up in his arousal, hardening him even further.
Goddamn . . . the more she touched him, the more he wanted to be doing the same to her, hovering over her naked breasts—only in his case, it would be his mouth on her skin, not his hair or his hands. As the urge to get all over