I should be nervous.

No, I should be scared as hell.

I haven’t been with a man since Trenton, and I’ve been mourning the loss of that love—that first, pure love—since I lost it.

Instead of being nervous, although there’s definitely a butterfly or two dancing its way around my stomach, I feel ready.

Like every moment since literally running into Flash Jackson that day in the park has led to this.

This man.

Despite his challenges, he’s shown me nothing but strength and a soft and solid place to land. He’s been there for me in the most unlikely of times, and he’s listened and cared for me in a way that no one has in so long.

I never thought—not once—that moving on after the tragedy that struck me that day on the highway was an option. In fact, I rebelled against the very idea of it.

But Flash? He makes me want to grab hold of his hand so tight and let him lead me through the darkness.

Back into the light.

Back to the place where I can breathe again.

Splashing water on my face, I dry it with a towel from the rack in Flash’s bathroom and face my reflection in the large mirror overlooking one of the sinks in his master bathroom.

Staring, reflecting, judging myself based on the way that I look. And then, the corners of my mouth draw up in a secret smile.

Because, for once in my life, none of this matters. I’m with a man who wants me, regardless of the fact that he’s never laid eyes on me. And every single time Flash touches me, regards me with that assessing tilt of his head, holds me in his strong arms…he makes me feel wanted. Needed, even.

Glancing down at myself clad only in my simple black bra and panties, I hope that I’m enough for him.

Expelling a puff of air, I open the bathroom door and step over the threshold into his bedroom. Nitro lies in the doorway leading to the hallway. He looks up at me once, but then rests his head back on his paws, as if he knows I belong there.

Do I? Could I have possibly found a place I belong, after everything?

Closing my eyes, I place a hand on my chest and tell my heart to beat again.

Flash sits in the middle of his king-sized bed dressed in black boxer-briefs and a gray t-shirt. His knees are drawn up before him, arms wrapped around them. But his focus? That’s aimed right at me.

I know, in my head and in my heart, that he can’t see me. But it seems like his eyes—such a beautiful, dark, and stormy gray—are staring directly at me.

“Never,” he murmurs softly from the bed, without moving an inch, “have I wished I could see something more than I wish I could see you right now. C’mere.”

He holds out a hand, beckoning me, calling me, and I place one foot in front of the other. Even if I tried to resist him, I wouldn’t be able to. Something inside of me has called out to him before I really even knew it was happening.

The mattress dents below my knees as I crawl toward him. When I’m only a few feet away, he reaches out, grabs my arm, and tows me forward until my body is cradled against his. He inhales, sweeping my long hair away from my neck, and his eyes, rarely free of the sunglasses he usually wears, close in what looks like bliss.

“Everything I feel around you is magnified,” he whispers in my ear. “The smell of you, the feel of you in my arms.”

My breath hitches as he suddenly flips us so that my back is flat on the mattress and he’s above me, caging me with his arms on either side. His voice lowers, the gravelly rasp making me limp with want. “The taste of you.”

He bends, capturing my lips with his in the sweetest of kisses before he catches my bottom lip between his and sucks. I moan, my arms tracing a path along his muscular shoulders. Cords ripple beneath my fingers, and my fingers are greedy as I reach for the hem of his shirt. Sitting back, he pulls the garment over his head and tosses it, and then I take a moment to just feast my eyes on him. He lowers himself over me once again, this time, his palms cradling my face. His thumbs trace my cheeks, my brow bones, my nose.  

His whisper is ragged as his eyes rove my face, staring at nothing but somehow seeing everything. “This is how,” he rasps, voice rough, “I have to see you. I need to touch you, feel you, commit you to memory. That okay with you?”

Turning my head slightly, I take his thumb into my mouth, sucking. He groans, his hips reflexively jerking to meet the hot center between my thighs, the ache there building in a way that makes me burn.

“So fucking perfect,” he murmurs, as his hands trace the line of my neck, and his index fingers draw a path along my collarbone. One big hand tangles in my hair while the other runs down the length of my side. I shiver as he palms my breast, his thumb tugging down the cup of my bra and running over the tip, until it pebbles beneath his touch.

I writhe beneath him, my body catching fire one inch at a time. It feels like if I don’t get more of him soon, I’ll burst into flames.

“Flash,” I plead. “Please.”

With a dark chuckle, he reaches behind me and unclasps my bra. He dips his head and captures that same nipple with his mouth, sucking, teasing, nibbling with his teeth until I cry out. His torture is steady, patient, as he offers the same attention to my other breast.

My nails dig into his skin, but it only seems to fuel him. His hands plant themselves on my hips, pulling him down my body.

This man. I shouldn’t be feeling this way, not now. Maybe not ever. But the sensations he creates in my body, the emotions crashing through the wall around my heart…I can’t fight it.

I don’t want to.

All I want is this. This feeling between us; the electricity lining the air, just before lightning strikes.

“This body,” he murmurs, his lips whispering against my hipbones. “I’ve been dreaming about this tight little body, Arden…all wrapped around me. Like a goddamned present.”

I hold my breath as he pulls my underwear from me in one smooth motion. I gasp as the air hits me where I’m wet and needy, and he glances up at me with a knowing smirk on his full, full lips. One big hand on my chest pushes me back into the bed, and the sheets beneath me twist in my fists as he hooks first one leg, then the other, over his capable shoulders.

Strength. That’s what pours from Flash Jackson, eyesight or no. This man is strong enough to carry me through miles of rough water. He’s been my life raft without even realizing it.

He kisses me, so feather-light and gentle it’s almost reverent, on my inner thigh. Then he repeats the motion on the other side, and my soft sigh disappears into the darkness of his bedroom.

The first swipe of Flash’s tongue on my heated, soaked center makes me moan as my head rolls to the side. “God, oh God. Flash…”

Everything inside of me clenches tight as his mouth finds parts of me I thought were hidden forever. I suck in a breath and hold it, but I can’t control the slow, steady thrusting of my hips as I rise to meet his licks. When he inserts a finger inside me, like the only thing he’s ever wanted is to see me break, I clench my teeth around a scream.

He pauses, looking up. “Don’t hold back from me, baby. I want all of you tonight. You hear me, Arden?”

I almost sob with the effort it takes to heed his words, to let him have my body the way he’s stealthily stolen my heart. “I can’t…”

He plunges a second finger inside me and I quake. His voice is insistent. “Yes, you can. You can give me this. You can give me you, dammit.”

I quiver around his fingers, and when he sucks the tight bud of my clit into his mouth and growls, I splinter.

I break.

I’ve broken before, but this split feels like a coming together rather than a tragic fracture.

Tears stream down my face as I bite my lip and clutch the sheets. My head whirls with too many thoughts to contain, and I register the barest hint of a moment where Flash is gone before he’s back again, kneeling above me. I hear the distant rustle of something being torn open and then he’s there, settling between my legs.

His fingers, gentle but sure, stroke my face and when he feels the wetness there, he whispers in my ear.

“You’re so damn beautiful, it hurts. You know that? Doesn’t matter that I can’t see you. I can feel you…and I know you feel me too.”

I reach down and grip his thick, strong length where it rests on my belly, and stroke him. He hisses, and I cup his face with my other hand.

“I can see you.” My whisper is fierce and potent. “And you’re the beautiful man lighting up a very dark world.”

He groans, his head dropping to my shoulder as I guide him to my entrance. His gruff whisper in my ear makes me smile.

“You ready?”

I nod.

He enters me with one swift thrust to the hilt, and I cry out as he goes completely still. He fills me, stretching me in a way that makes me squirm anxiously, wanting him to move.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “Perfect, baby.”

His thrusts are slow at first, steady, as he touches my face, my shoulders, my breasts, leaving nothing but tingling electricity in his wake. When I wrap my legs around his waist and start to tremble around him, a growl rumbles deep in his chest, and I feel the exact moment that he lets go. When he gives himself to me fully.

He’s no longer the put-together, in-control pilot who keeps things in order. No, when he releases himself from that role, he’s the Ace who took enemy planes down, the fighter who can’t be beat, the hero strong enough to make a comeback after losing his eyesight.

And that man? That man brings me to my knees.

I can feel myself falling, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop it; no branches to catch myself on the way down.

When the roar of his release overpowers my own cry of ecstasy, I realize the truth: I wouldn’t stop this free fall even if I could.