But making love in the darkness of a small church alcove was a far different thing than doing it face-to-face, body to body, in the bright yellow light and mirrored expanse of where they were now. In here, he had nowhere to hide. Dylan would see him - all of him, all of the scars she may not have noticed when they were making love in the dark several hours ago.
Shame made him want to douse the dozen recessed lights overhead. He flicked an irritated glance upward, but Dylan's voice distracted him from the thought.
"Rio...join me."
Madre de Dios, but the sound of that husky invitation was almost enough to distract him from all thought completely...except for the one that urged him to take his clothes off and do as she was asking him to.
He met her eyes through the glass of the shower door, his own heavy-lidded and sharp with the flood of swamping amber that was surely turning his pupils into thinnest slivers of black.
"I want you in here with me," Dylan said. She held his stare as she ran her palms up her flat belly and over the buoyant swells of her breasts. "Come in here with me...I want to feel your hands on me. All over me."
Holy...fuck.
Rio's jaw was clamped so tightly his molars should have shattered. It was damn hard to wallow in self-doubt or shame when the only woman he wanted - a woman he wanted more than anything ever before in his entire existence - was looking at him like she intended to devour him whole.
He got rid of his boots and socks, then stripped out of his shirt and pants and boxers. He stood there, naked, fully erect, his dermaglyphs pulsing with all the colors of his desire. Hands fisted at his sides, he let Dylan take a good long look at him. It was excruciating - those first few seconds as her darkening eyes lowered and her gaze swept slowly over him.
He knew what she was seeing. Hell, he could see it well enough for himself: his battered torso, the skin of which was glossy and tight in some places, rough in others, where he still carried tiny pieces of shrapnel embedded several layers down into his flesh. And farther down was the thick red scar that ran down the length of his left thigh, the gash that had almost cost him the limb entirely.
Dylan was seeing all of that ugliness now.
He waited for her eyes to lift.
He waited to see pity in her face, dreaded that he might see revulsion.
"Rio," she murmured thickly.
Her head came up slowly and her eyes met his. Her peridot gaze was the color of a night-dark forest now, her pupils large beneath the heavy fall of her lashes. There was no pity there, nothing but dusky, feminine desire.
Rio wanted to throw his head back and shout his relief, but the sight of Dylan's parted lips, her hungry eyes drinking him in so wantonly, robbed him of his voice.
She opened the glass door of the shower. "Get in here," she demanded, her mouth curling into the most incredibly sexy smile. "Get in here...right now."
He grinned and stepped inside, joining her under the warm spray.
"That's better," Dylan purred as she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down into a deep, wet kiss.
She felt so good against him, all that slick, hot skin, all those exquisite curves. Rio held her close, burrowing his fingers into her wet hair, feeling the warm beat of her pulse against his wrist where it rested at the side of her neck.
"I want to taste you," she said, already breaking away from his mouth to kiss a slow trail down his throat, to the hollow at its base, then along the line of his shoulder. She sank lower still, playing her tongue over the muscled slabs of his chest, teasing his male nipples into tight little buds. "You taste good, Rio. I could eat you up."
He groaned as she let her mouth travel down his sternum, nipping at him as she went along. Her kiss got less playful as she moved toward his scarred left side.
Rio sucked in his breath. "Don't," he rasped, awkward panic seizing him when he thought of her getting anywhere near those hideous marks. She glanced up at him in question and he wanted to die from shame. "It's all right. You don't have to..."
"Will it hurt you if I touch you there?" she asked