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Loren, however, frowned. “It’s not funny.”

Darien looked like he didn’t agree, and she swore he was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

“What about this one?” She slid her hand across his left forearm, dragging her thumb across the jagged silver line. It was hardly visible through his ink.

“Barbed wire.”

“What about…” Slowly, she moved her hand down toward his waistband, tracing the contours of his muscled stomach. Her heart picked up speed, so swiftly she knew he could hear it.

Indeed, his steel-blue eyes flashed up to meet hers. Desire simmered in his stare, and when his gaze went to the sheets hugging her body, her firm nipples pressing against the soft fabric, she knew they wouldn’t be able to keep their hands off each other for much longer. Even if she had a million years with this man, she would never get tired of him.

She cleared her throat. “This one?” she finished, dragging her fingertips along the waistband of his jeans, her thumb catchingon his belt buckle as she indicated to the scar peeking out above it.

He answered her by forming a claw with his left hand, the monster’s-head rings on two of his fingers winking in the lamplight.

“What breed?”

“A Hound.”

She took that hand into hers and ran her thumb across the ridges on his knuckles. “And these?”

“Hitting. Most of them.” While his body was a work of art, it was also a story. Each of these scars had a story, and she longed to read them all.

Most of the few scars on her own body had arrivedaftershe’d met Darien. The worst of those scars were from shards of glass—the day they’d fallen through a window of a skyscraper together.

“What are you thinking about?” he murmured. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then lovingly skimmed the curve of her jaw with a knuckle.

She started to shake her head—then said, “Just memories.”

“What sort of memories?”

She didn’t answer him right away. She just looked at him for awhile, admiring how the soft, rosy light from the candles kissed his handsome features. Finally, she told him, “Good memories.”

“Darien!” Ivy’s voice floated up from downstairs. “Loren! Come on down—dinner’s almost ready!”

“Be right there!” Darien shouted back. “You hungry?” he asked Loren.

“A little.”

But instead of getting up, he put her on her back and rolled on top of her.

“Darien!” she gasped—not in protest, no. In no world would she ever object to this man putting her on her back.

But shedidlet out a squeak of alarm as he ripped the sheets aside, exposing her naked body to the crisp evening air.

“Yes, Miss Calla?” he breathed against the side of her neck, his hair tickling her skin as he settled heavily between her thighs, pinning her to the mattress with his hips. She didn’t feel cold, though—not for long. Not with Darien on top of her, kissing the side of her neck, her jaw, then pulling back just far enough to marvel at her—as if she were a dream he couldn’t believe he was living.

He washerdream, too.

“How about a quickie, first?” he asked, his words—spoken in a low, husky voice—coasting across her mouth. She didn’t miss how, even as he said it, and even as desire was making a clear attempt at pushing him over the edge, he checked on her tattoos. He was trying to be subtle about it, but she noticed.

And now that he knew she could go without eating for a little while longer, he bent and kissed her, parting her lips with his tongue. She brushed her hands across his back and inhaled his shaving cream, his cologne—justhim.Just Darien Cassel. The most delicious, irresistible smell in the world.

Sometimes it scared her, how intense things were between them.

Sometimes it scared her, how much she loved him.

But she refused to think of that now. Of the future and all its uncertainties, the goodbyes she might one day have to make. Right now, Darien Cassel was hers. And it was the right now that mattered.