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It’s insane. It breaks my heart.

I can’t believe he was about to leave, that he was going to walk out, without me knowing. That he blames himself for being sick and he thinks I’m here out of pity, and...

His lips on my neck distract me, leaving behind a trail of fire. Sparks of pleasure travel straight to my core, making me clench and moan, my thoughts unraveling.

He has managed to get my sweater and thin T-shirt off and now he’s working on my bra, his big fingers struggling to unhook the clasp at my back.

God, it’s happening. He’s kissing me, and touching me, and trying to get me naked. For so long I wasn’t sure he wanted me, and now he seems unable to stop even for a breath, his lips moving over my skin, then returning to my mouth, crushing our lips together, his tongue licking inside.

He tastes of coffee and bitterness, of the pills he’s taking and of Griffin, spice and salt and sorrow. His scruff scrapes over my cheek, over my neck, and then my bra falls away and he inhales sharply, leaning back to look at my breasts.

Insecurity hits me out of nowhere—probably because this went down so fast I didn’t have time to think beyond him walking out on me, and all the memories I dredged up and all he confessed—and I lift my hands off him to cover myself.

He catches them in a strong grip, stopping me, his eyes going black with arousal, the pupils swallowing the coffee and amber of his gaze. “Don’t. You’re so fucking beautiful, you know that, right?”

My gaze darts away. Heat seeps into my cheeks.

“Look at me, Soph. You’re perfect.”

He’s the one who’s perfect, with all his flaws and wounds, on his body, in his soul. He’s always been a show-stopper, a total hunk with those intense eyes and luscious lips, that square jaw and wild hair, that sinewy, powerful body.

And now that the blinders are off, I can see that he’s beautiful inside and out.

But my mouth doesn’t form any words, and he leans in before I can fix that, kissing me lightly, stealing my breath.

In a sudden move, he flips me on my back on the couch and leans over me, dark hair tumbling on his forehead, muscular arms on either side of my head. A faint smile tugs at his full mouth.

Then he reaches down and yanks my pants and panties off me. Everything, including my low boots and socks drop to the floor with small thumps, leaving me naked under his dark gaze.

I shiver. “Griff—”

“Shh. Look at you. Fuck, look at you, girl. You’re so damn hot.”

The heat flows from my face to my neck, and lower, curling in my belly. I’m on fire. “Uh, thanks,” I squeak. “I just—”

His strong hand comes to rest between my breasts, and I still. “Yeah?”

“You... you’re still dressed,” I manage. I was trying to get his thermal off him a moment ago, but then he played unfair, kissing my neck, touching me and distracting me.

Something shutters in his gaze. But he doesn’t reply or move to undress.

Instead he lowers himself over me, supporting his weight on his elbows on either side of me, and starts kissing and licking every inch of me. My shoulders, my arms, the inside of my elbows, my belly, the sensitive skin under my breasts, my sides, my hips. Every part of me, except where I need him most.

Avoiding my hard, aching nipples, and the throbbing need between my legs.

Griffin Alexander Lambert is a tease. A cruel tease.

Who would have thought it?

His gaze flicks up at me from where he’s crouched between my legs, his lips parted, warm breath ghosting over my stomach, sending shivers through me. What is he thinking? What is he planning? What...?

His hand lifts to his chest, pressing there, and I see the moment a wince twists his handsome features.

Oh crap. Cold washes through me. How could I forget? He’s hurt, I think dizzily and try to sit up. I could hurt him worse. His chest, his leg...

But he doesn’t allow me to move away, planting his hand again between my breasts, keeping me down. “I’m fine.”

“Griff. Please. What if you’re not up to this yet? What if you—?”

“Do you want me?” He all but growls the words—and then he pulls back and drags a finger between my legs, through my wetness, startling a cry out of me, because it sparks such pleasure, so deep in my core, that I’m suddenly close to coming. “Want me inside you?”

“Griff...” I’m panting, writhing. “Yes. Yes!”

His finger slips into me, stroking, and my hips lift up, another cry building in my throat. “Or I could get you off like this.” He’s panting, too, and I can feel where he’s hard and hot, pressed to my bent leg. “God, you’re so wet. So tight.”

I can’t... can’t hold back. My body is arching up, pressure coiling too tight in my belly. It’s not just his skilled fingers, or the kisses he left all over my body, but the fact that it’s him, Griffin, the boy I’ve wanted since I was a silly teenager, watching him from the window.

The man I’ve wanted since he came back from war.

The man I’ve loved ever since I began to understand how his mind works and all he’s done for me.

Bringing my hands up, I cup his jaw, relishing the roughness of his stubble, the clean lines of his beautiful face. “Kiss me.”

He does, a groan leaving his lips as he works me faster, deeper with his fingers, two now, opening me up and stroking me until I come apart. The pleasure rushes through me like a storm, taking everything down in its path.

I’m struggling for breath, coming down from the high, my body thrumming, my blood singing in my veins.

He lifts his head, and grimaces. “Oh fuck...”

“What? What is it?” Through the pleasure-induced fog, I remember again the wound in his chest, and his leg.

But he only says, his voice rough, “I need you.”

I reach down between us, and find his hard-on, trapped in his pants, thick and long. “What are you waiting for?”

One corner of his mouth curls up in a half-smile, and relief flickers over his features. Pulling out his wallet from his back pocket, he takes out a condom. He hands it to me, then settles back on his knees and lowers his zipper, and I watch, breathless, as he shoves down the fabric just enough to free his cock.

Leaving his thermal on. I do notice that, but I’m too focused on his cock to care, this piece of his anatomy I’d only fantasized about.

There’s something so frigging sexy about a man’s cock. It’s so crude, so big, so swollen it looks painful, but also beautiful. Such an honest evidence of arousal, impossible to fake or hide. So vulnerable, and so aggressive.

It takes my breath away.

Maybe it’s the knowledge that having it inside me can give us both so much pleasure. And I want to give him pleasure, I want to take away all his pain and give him all the good things in the world.

But then he shifts away, sitting back. “Ah fuck.” His leg is giving him trouble, I realize as he stretches it out with a low groan. “Shit.”

Slipping down to the carpet, on my knees, I settle between his legs. Worried, I notice that his face has gone a bit pale.

“What are you doing?” he mutters, his voice a puff of air. His forehead is creased with lines of pain. “Soph?”

“What do you need? Shall I bring your painkillers?”

He grunts, shifts against the cushions, some of the tension leaving his face. “Is that what you’re doing down there?”

That makes me smile, in spite of my worry. I put my hand on his cock and he moans. The sound sends a bolt of heat straight through me. “No, but... I can go get your pills. I don’t want you to be in pain.”

“Fuck the pills.” His hand closes over mine. A fire enters his gaze and his mouth tilts in a crooked grin. “Fuck the pain. I’m not out of commission yet.”

“Of course not.” And I don’t want to read the undercurrent of his words, his conviction that he doesn’t have much time left.

He will live. He can’t leave me.

I swallow back tears.

And he wants this. He very much wants this, despite his discomfort, judging from the sizable hard-on he’s rocking, and that gives me the courage to go on with my original intention.

That of giving him pleasure, just like he gave it to me, even if I’m not as skilled as he is. Of taking care of him just like he took care of me.

When I rise up a bit and put my mouth on the head of his cock, he groans and jerks, a low, rumbling sound.

God, I love this, I love how he reacts, how much he seems to enjoy it. How his head falls back and his mouth drops open, how his legs tense, muscles clenching and bunching, his abs tightening deliciously as he struggles not to fuck my mouth. His hand lands on my hair, moving restlessly, long fingers tangling in the long strands.

Salt and bitterness explode on my tongue. I take him in deeper, gagging a little, and turned on at the same time by his size, and how hard he is. A new throb starts deep inside me, a new flare of desire. I drag my tongue on the underside of his cock, suck on the head, curl one hand around the thick base and work him faster.

“Soph, fuck.” His fingers tighten in my hair. A strangled moan escapes him when I suck harder. “Fuck, oh fuck...”

He’s going to come. I feel it, I sense it in the tension radiating off him, the way his cock stiffens more, sliding like hot steel over my tongue, his taste intensifying, like burning metal and sugar.

His hold on my hair changes, as he tries to push me away, his back arching, legs trembling, but I don’t budge. I want to taste him, drink him down, take the whole of him.

A ragged cry falls from his lips as he loses control and spills down my throat. I choke, but don’t pull back until he’s almost done. Tremors are coursing through him, his head thrown back, the knot in his throat moving as he swallows convulsively. More cum trickles from the small slit on the head of his cock.

I’m still holding his half-hard cock as I sit back on my heels, fascinated as it twitches and leaks over his taut belly. Fascinated by everything about him—from the soft curls of his crotch, the dark trail leading there from his navel, the heavy sack of his balls, his lightly furred, strong legs.

The scars on his left thigh, raised and still dark red.

The beginning of the incision on his chest, peeking under his thermal.

Everything, everything about him calls to me, makes my heart twist and bleed and leap like a wounded animal. I don’t know what it is that has always caught my attention and held it, caused me to dream of him, of being with him, of sharing a future.

And nothing has changed. If anything, now I crave him more than ever.

***

His suitcase is stashed back inside the guestroom. He still hasn’t told me what spurred him to try and leave, about that bout of panic about me acting as his nurse, and about the past.

The most important thing is that he’s still here, and that we’re talking.

Well, among other things—like having hot bunny sex, as my sister would say—but that’s not the point. The point is... I’m not sure what it is.

Is talking more important than sex? Than knowing he wants me, something I hadn’t been sure about all this time? Or making him see why I left and why I came back? Why I was wrong, but also why I didn’t get it until now?

That I’d been blind, and wrong, that back then my imagination had failed me, my desire for him making me lash out before I could sit down and think. Knowing he’d been in the army would have helped. It makes sense that he’d suffer from some PTSD. Many soldiers do.

Not knowing anything about him had thrown me in for a loop. But I can also understand why he never said a word about it.

We’d been circling each other, unaware of each other’s thoughts, fears and needs. And now, we still have a whole lot more talking to do, to untangle everything that went down before and tackle what comes next.

If he’ll allow it.

He looks like he might allow it, I think, gazing at him sprawled on the sofa. He’s pulled his pants back up, but hasn’t bothered to zip up his fly. His head is still thrown back, eyes closed, one arm slung over the back of the sofa, looking more relaxed than I’ve seen him in ages.

Looking cute, and rugged, and sexy, and like the man I love.

I’ve gotten dressed, too, quickly throwing on my nightie and a robe, and now I’m standing at the living room door, barefoot, my toes curling on the cold floor, staring at him.

I want... more. I want to sit down with him, hold him, be with him.

What does he want? Has our talk, and the sex, changed something between us? I’m scared to find out.

But fear has never helped anyone. What if...?

What if I made the first move?

Padding softly across the room, I stand by the sofa. “Watch a movie with me?” I’ve never asked him to stay and watch with me before, but he’s right here, when normally he’s already ensconced in his room. “My sister’s boyfriend is a sci-fi buff and he passed me this movie he says I need to watch. A cult film, he said.”

His head comes up and he blinks, looking adorably confused and sleepy. Guess he’d dozed off, after all. “What? Who?”

I laugh and fold my arms over my breasts. “Movie. Metropolis, it’s called. It’s an oldie, apparently. Science fiction, recommended by my brother-in-law.”

He blinks again, those feathery dark lashes. “Your sister got married?”

“No, not yet.” I shrug. “But she loves her guy, and I’m guessing it will happen, sooner or later.”

His expression softens. His mouth twists a little. “Good.”

“What is it?” I wonder what’s going through his mind. Then I remember him saying he isn’t made for love.

Oh Griff...

I shake the sadness off. “So what about that movie...?”

He shrugs, sits up. He doesn’t say no, doesn’t even stop to think about it. “Sure.”

It makes me smile.

“Scoot over,” I whisper.

“Take that robe off first.” His dark eyes find me, pinning me like a butterfly to a velvet wall of need, and a wave of heat washes over me. “It covers you up too much.”

“I’m cold.”

“I’ll warm you up.”

Something has changed, I feel it, I see it in his intense gaze, hear it in his gruff voice. Now he knows I want him, he knows I care, and a wall has come down, letting me see what he feels.

And what he feels is complicated—fitting, as Griffin is a complicated guy—but I see desire and need, doubt and worry, affection... and maybe hope.

I shed my robe.

Is it a metaphor, like letting down my guard? I tried that since I came back to him: let him sense I’m not lying, I’m not hiding. Guess I failed.

Why do I feel more naked standing in front of him in my slinky nightie than when I was buck-naked just earlier?

Maybe it’s the way he’s looking at me, gaze roaming over my breasts and hips, returning to my face over and over, like he’s never seen me before, like he can’t get enough of me.

When we’d reconnected, that year when we were sort of friends, we’d watched a couple of movies, so I know it’s an activity he enjoys, but since I came back, we never sat down together in the evening in front of the TV, or to have dinner together.

I missed it. Missed him.

And when he opens his arms for me and I sit down and snuggle into his side, I realize we actually have never done anything like this before, this...couple thing. Bodies pressed together, his hand curled around me, his hand toying with the ends of my long hair.

He’s warm and solid, his scent both familiar and exciting, and I’m caught between his sinewy arm and muscular chest, his nose buried in my hair. Pinned again.

But also safe. Held close, pressed against his ribcage that’s expanding and retracting with every breath, my ear pressed to the beat of his heart.

I should grab the remote and hit play, start the movie, but I don’t want to move. I shift slightly, getting more comfortable, and he growls. His arm is warm and heavy around me, his chest hot through the thermal. My eyes are closing, and his breathing is evening out, lulling me to sleep. I sneak a glance up at his face, and his eyes have fallen closed again, long lashes fanning over his cheekbones.

How can I love him so much? How is it even possible? He’ll break my heart if I’m not careful.

Though it’s probably already too late.