I drifted into consciousness—groggy, disoriented, and sore in places long unused—to find a muscled arm draped heavily across my torso. Slowly, I came fully awake, and that’s when everything that had happened the previous night came floating back. After weeks of flirting with each other and dancing around our attraction, I’d brought Donal back to my apartment and slept with him. Three times—three amazingly glorious, transcendent times.

With an inward chuckle, I acknowledged there was something to be said for youthful exuberance. Last night, Donal had seemed to want to make up for lost time. And I’d wanted … well, I’d wanted to get my fill of him before our time together was nothing more than a pleasant memory.

Hoping not to disturb his sleep, I tried rolling away, but my movement stirred him awake. “Where are you going?” He pulled me backward, into the cradle of his chest, and kissed the spot where my neck met my shoulder.

I shuddered and pushed him away. “I was going to grab some water. Do you want anything?”

He stretched his big body and sucked in a pained breath. “Fuck.” He sat up gingerly and leaned back against the headboard. “Can you bring me a glass of water and one of those pills Crawford gave me for the pain?”

Immediately, I felt an immense sense of guilt. I hadn’t thought once about Donal's injury while we’d been fucking. Except for when he’d first climbed awkwardly onto my bed, it’d been the furthest thing from my mind.

I reached for my robe hanging on the wall across from my bed, but Donal stopped me. “No, stay naked.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the young, muscled god sprawled across in my bed. Everything about him was sheer perfection while everything about me was … maybe not so perfect. I wasn’t fat, but I was somewhat out of shape, and things were a little more jiggly and wiggly than they’d been even a couple of years before.

Sensing my hesitancy, he shook his head. “You’re perfect. I love your curves. You look like a woman, not a little girl.”

With as much confidence as I could muster, I dropped my hand from the hook and pushed my shoulders back to stand taller as I turned to leave the room. Alas, I was a woman with a lifetime’s worth of insecurities weighing me down, so I also sucked in my rounded belly and hoped it didn’t look too rotund. I loved that Donal loved my body, but marching around in front of someone without a stitch of clothing to protect me from scrutiny would definitely take some getting used to.

Returning with a bottle of cold water and his pill, I passed them his way and slid between the sheets. “Thanks,” he said, with a gulp before setting the bottle on my bedside table. Wrapping his arm around my shoulder, Donal tucked me in the crook of his shoulder.

I snuggled against his hard body and dropped a kiss to his pectoral. “I’m sorry about your foot,” I told him, my voice sounding loud in the dark, quiet room. I shared a wall with a guy who usually stayed up until dawn playing video games, but he’d been blessedly silent tonight.

Donal chuckled. “It sucks, I won’t lie to you.” He traced his fingers down my side, and I giggled and squirmed.

“What are you going to do?”

He sighed, his chest rising and falling under my cheek. “I have no fucking clue.” He grew quiet, and I let the silence hang between us. He’d been dealt a massive blow only a handful of hours ago and hadn’t had a chance to process what the doctor’s dire news would mean for his future. “I’ll figure something out though. You can’t keep a Casey down for long.”

The determined optimism I heard in his voice made me happy. This wasn’t what he’d envisioned for his life, but he wouldn’t let it break him either. In that regard, he reminded me of myself at nearly the same age. If I could take the ashes of my former life and build a new one on top of them, I had no doubt Donal would be able to as well. He just needed to find a new passion; much the way cooking had become mine.

He tugged me closer and rolled me on top of him. I braced my elbow next to his head.

“Hi,” I whispered, looking down into his impossibly green eyes.

He flexed his stomach and propelled himself up to kiss me. Dropping his head back to my pillow, he smiled up at me. “Hi.”

My eyes flicked between his, searching for some sign of sadness, but all I saw was satisfaction. And that felt damn good. I enjoyed that I’d put that look on his face, that in the face of uncertainty and upheaval he’d found contentedness in my arms.

In a blink, he flipped our positions so that he loomed over me. He dropped a kiss to the tip of my nose, and when he pulled away, his eyes had turned speculative. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“What are those small scars on your belly? They look kind of like …” His eyes flashed with … something I couldn’t name—fear? anger?—and he looked away with a tightening of his jaw.

Shit. I hadn’t anticipated having this conversation with Donal since he wasn’t going to be in my life long enough for it to matter. Everything was fine now, but these scars were another reminder that an actual relationship with him was out of the question.

I scooted out from under him and pressed my back to the headboard as I pulled the sheet up to cover my naked breasts. Donal maneuvered his big body to join me. He surprised me by lacing our fingers together on the mattress between us.

I took a deep breath and reminded myself there was nothing to be ashamed of. My operation didn’t make me less of a woman. It did, however, mean I’d never be a mother. With my heart pounding in my chest, I said, “I had a hysterectomy three years ago.”

He let out a relieved sigh, squeezed my hand, and brought it to his mouth.

That was not the reaction I’d expected.

My eyes bounced from my lap to his face to find him gazing down at me with sympathy. “I’m sorry, that must have been hard.”

I shrugged noncommittally and dropped my eyes. The truth was, I’d never really thought about being a mom. Being a chef was hard enough, but being a female chef left no time to raise a family and I’d worked too long and too hard to get where I was to give it all up for something I’d always been ambivalent about. Unfortunately, Javier hadn’t been ambivalent about it. He’d stood by my side while I’d recovered but afterward is when our relationship had turned south. In his eyes, my surgery made me less of a woman. My ambition and my success went from being things he’d admired about me, to “masculine traits” he’d tried—and failed—to accept. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised he’d gotten his ex-girlfriend pregnant for the second time, but his betrayal still stung.

“I thought,” he said, clearing his throat. “They look like cigarette burns. I thought someone had hurt you. Or you’d hurt yourself.”

My head shot up. “What?”

“One of my mates’ little sisters does it. Or she used to.”

He unclasped our hands and pinched the sheet between his thumb and his forefinger, waiting for my permission to draw it away. When I nodded, he pushed the fabric down until it pooled in my lap, exposing my belly—and my scars. With a feather light touch, he circled the pad of his index finger over the larger of the three. The entrance point in my belly button was virtually indistinguishable, but I had two pale round scars—roughly the size of a cigarette cherry—on either side of my stomach. The one he traced now was the most prominent because my skin was still visibly puckered where the doctor had made the incision.

“Did it hurt?” he asked, raising his eyes to mine.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“And this means you can’t have kids, right?” His eyes searched mine as he asked, and the question hung between us.

We’d never seriously discussed what was growing between us because we both knew it was temporary. We got along surprisingly well, and in the last few weeks, I’d realized there was more to Donal Casey than he let on. We’d truly become friends, and I cared about him—more than I’d ever expected to. But I was leaving soon, and even if I wasn’t, he was 22 and I was 32. My scars shouldn’t have mattered, and yet as the silence continued, I couldn’t help but feel like they did. Like my answer to his question was the loaded gun that could kill everything good that was between us.

“That’s right,” I answered. “But it’s okay; I never wanted them.”

Which was apparently not the answer he’d expected. A few rapid blinks giving away his surprise, he asked, “You didn’t?”

I let out a sardonic laugh. Why did every man on the planet assume that’s all women wanted from life? I might not be on the path I’d envisioned for myself, but I wasn’t any less fulfilled because I was childless. “No, I didn’t.”

He nodded thoughtfully and looked away again.

“Donal?” I asked, after a few tense moments passed in charged silence.

Eventually, he turned back to me. “Yeah?”

“Does this … are my …” I blew out a frustrated breath and clenched my hands at my sides, digging my fingernails into my skin. I’d barely cried when Javier had told me about Marcella, but sitting here now with my … lover? … I felt tears prickling the back of my eyeballs and my throat grow tight.

“Ah Lauren,” he said, gathering me to his chest and holding me tight. “Didn’t you hear me before when I said you are perfect?”

I nodded into his chest, my tears leaking out and making his skin slick. I had heard him, but I still had a hard time believing my good fortune. What had I done to deserve Donal Casey? How in the world had I traveled halfway across the world to find him? I didn’t want to admit that my feelings toward him had blossomed beyond friendship—that when I’d taken him into my body, I’d felt a spark that warmed my heart and called to a part of me I thought long dead—but I had.

Against all reason and logic, I was falling for a man whom I’d once thought was nothing more than an overgrown boy. Twenty-two to my 32, on paper we didn't make sense, but in the quiet dark of my bedroom, nothing had ever been more clear.

We stayed huddled together like that for several moments, just basking in each other’s warmth and nearness. Eventually, Donal's breathing grew steady and melodic in my ear and I thought he might have fallen back asleep. But then he rasped, “I don’t want kids either.”

My heart seized and my belly clenched. Other parts of me had seized up too. I was stiff as stone in his embrace, the drumbeat of my heart echoing loudly in my head. I tried to think of an answer to his assertion, but my brain could only focus on a question: why was he telling me this?

Don’t read too much into it, I scolded myself. But it was too late. My mind had already gone there. If I couldn’t have kids, and he didn’t want them, there was one less reason why we shouldn’t be together.

Don’t get your hopes up, my conscience further cautioned me. He’s young, and he might not know what he wants.

But at 22, I’d known. Hell, I’d known well before then. When I’d been six years old, I’d asked my first grade teacher if I could stay inside and read at recess instead of going outside to play with the other kids. She’d looked at me with sadness and asked if I was being picked on. “Nope,” I’d answered, wandering toward the bookshelf. “I just don’t like kids.”

But Donal wasn’t me.

I eased out of his arms and clutched the sheet to my naked body. “I …” I bit my lip and tried to form a coherent thought, but everything was coming at me in a jumble. While the rational, realistic part of me was telling me to hold my horses, the emotional, excitable part of me was hooting, hollering, and throwing a celebratory party—complete with a happy dance, confetti, and balloons.

Did you hear that?

He doesn’t want kids.

He’s even more perfect than we thought.

But no. I couldn’t get ahead of myself. I needed to understand the impetus for his confession.

“You’re not just saying that to make me feel better, are you?”

Donal's lips twitched but he fought his smirk. “No, I’m not just saying that.” He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. “You know about my dad.”

I nodded. “I do, but just because he has more kids than Abraham, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have some of your own. Not if you truly want them.”

“I don’t,” he rushed to assure me, and then his cheeks turned pink. “Would you believe me if I told you I asked my doctor about getting a vasectomy.”

My jaw fell open. “You did?”

He scratched his stubble. “Yeah, he told me I was an idiot, so I made an online appointment for one of those in-and-out same day clinics. They took one look at me when I showed up for my appointment and flat out refused to do it.”

“When was this?”

Donal scrunched up his nose and raised his eyes to the ceiling while he mentally calculated. “Six months ago? No, seven. It turns out doctors don’t like cutting off the swimmers for a healthy young male in his physical prime. They told me to use condoms and come back when I was older and in a healthy, committed relationship where I’d discussed it with my partner first.”

We stared at each other for a long moment, our faces going from serious to silly.

“You know what these means, don’t you?” he asked and I shook my head because I couldn’t even begin to guess what it meant from where he was sitting.

Donal tugged the sheet from my naked body and pulled me into his lap. When he swiped his thumb over my nipple, it furled for him and he chuckled and blew on it. Then, with a wicked glint in his eye, he took it his mouth and sucked, his cheeks hollowing out as he tongue swirled over me. When an involuntary moan escaped from between my lips, he let go with a loud pop.

“It means,” he growled, his eyes going feral and his cock growing impossibly large between my thighs, “that I can fuck you bare.”

Donal reached between us and zeroed in on my pussy, well used from his earlier ministrations. And even though I was tender, within a matter of moments, I was ready to go again too.

“Are you sure?” I asked, wrapping my thighs around his waist to anchor me to him, my wet pussy rubbing over his steel shaft as I rocked my hips along his length.

Donal smiled victoriously and then sheathed himself to the hilt with one strong thrust. “I’ve never been surer of anything in my life,” he answered, spearing his fist in my hair and pulling me forward for a wet, open-mouthed kiss. It was raw and messy … our fucking the same. He clasped me to him, his arms banding tight around my middle as he licked and laved my bouncing tits.

With his grunts and my keening wail filling my bedroom, I’d never been more turned on in my life. All of my nerve endings were firing at once and for the first time, I let go of all of my worries and inhibitions and just let myself feel. I wasn’t sucking in my stomach, or obsessing about the stretch marks on my tits. I wasn’t worried about whether it was good for him too because the noises he made and the enthusiasm with which he was pounding my pussy told me he was having the time of his life.

And so was I. Sex had never been this fun, this unbridled—this wanton and free. I didn’t know how I’d ever go back to how it’d been before.

Before I could let that sour thought corrode my enjoyment, I kissed him hard. As I pulled away, he bit my lip, the sharp sting tugging at something dark and primitive in my core. I kissed him again, stars dancing behind my closed eyes as my orgasm crashed over me.

“Holy shit,” he whispered into my neck as his hips surged forward. “Holy fucking Christ.”

And then he followed me over the edge.

When his orgasm had pulled the last tremor from his body, Donal laughed and rested back on his palms as I rolled off him and onto my back. Leaning over to stare down into my eyes, he said, “This is the best fucking day of my life.”

And it occurred to me that it ranked right up there for me too.