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“Now?”

He nodded.

So many times, I lost myself to fantasies of him gazing upon my body with an amorous ogle and a slackened jaw. But I knew his request wasn’t about sex. So I pictured my annual doctor’s exam. Latex gloves. Cold stirrups. It was just a health inspection.

I shrugged out of my shirt and lay back on the bed, propped up on my elbows. The chill in the room hardened my nipples, pointing them to the ceiling.

He sucked in a breath, his brogue thick. “Aw love, you’re a vixen.”

Doctor’s office. Acrid disinfectant hospital smell. Stiff exam table.

He stood over me. “Ye meant wha’ ye said? Ye trust me fully?”

“Yes.” That word was so much bolder than the voice that imparted it.

He removed his robe. His bare chest tapered to the slim waistline of his jeans, which hung low on his hips. My heart hammered.

The muscles in his arms twitched in the candlelight as he crawled over me. Sweat lined my palms.

When he straddled my thighs, my teeth sank into my lip. He moved my turquoise stone to the side and bent his mouth over my scar. His eyes held mine.

“Does he live?” he rasped. “The sodding bastard who did this?”

I shook my head. His gaze lowered to my marred chest. My lungs labored under his examination. His head dipped. I held my breath.

Warm lips stroked my collarbone, lingering on the widest stretch of scar tissue, the gouge where the knife plunged. He followed the welt around my breast. I balled the bedding in my fists. His tongue caressed the raised tissue. Each time I shuddered, a sultry exhale escaped his mouth. His tongue never strayed from the gash. When he arrived at my collarbone a third time, he raised his head.

We exchanged reverent looks. It felt so fucking good to feel a man’s adoration again. I felt alive. Joy even.

Our foreheads touched. His lips lowered. Closer. Closer. Then they found mine.

He brushed them sweetly back and forth. His tongue reached out, begging invitation. Oh, sweet God, I wanted to. I wanted to push him on his back and ride him until his voice was hoarse and his balls empty. I couldn’t. I shouldn’t. He drew my bottom lip into his mouth, sucking, nursing. Our breaths united.

He took over my mouth, his tongue moving in and out, his lips massaging. The richness of oak and whiskey and Roark seeped into my taste buds. His lips flowed against mine, his breath a velvet stroke. My veins thrummed in song, tingling the crown of my head, the soles of my feet and everywhere in between.

His fingers dug into the mattress on either side of us. I echoed his moan with my own. The kiss deepened, impatient and hungry.

When he caught his breath, his eyes slammed into mine. His lips were swollen and wet. His pupils widened, flickered, then his expression fell.

He ducked his head and groaned into my shoulder. “Jaysus, Mary and Joseph.” He pushed off me and slumped at my side.

I gritted my teeth against the sudden loss. Every sensitive zone on my body pulsated for attention. The hollow between my shoulder and neck. The dark peaks of my breasts. The dip in my waist. The folds between my legs. The more I thought about him touching me, the hotter I burned. So I marshaled my breathing by counting the knots in the wood beams above. One, two, three, four—

“Evie, I’m so sorry.”

I rubbed my thighs together. My chest heaved. Beside me, his breathing wasn’t any better. He rolled away to his prayer bench and I restarted my counting. One, two, three…

…twenty-eight, twenty-nine. I took a deep breath. The itch was still there, but my frenzied pulse had ebbed.

His silhouette flickered in the candlelight, bent over his bench. His mouth moved soundlessly, fingers sliding along rosary beads in rheumatic strokes. When he reached the rosary’s length, he made the sign of the cross and clutched the dangling crucifix to begin again.

“Stop this. Come back to bed.”

His eyes widened under drawn eyebrows.

“It was only a month ago you told me you could handle this.”

He set down the beads. “I can.”

I raised the blanket.

He dove at the invitation, slipping under it and reaching across to pull me to him. He mantled my body with a heavy thigh and bicep. His voice was soft at my ear, “Evie, I’m—”

“Don’t. We’ll talk in the morning.” I wrapped my hands around the arm across my chest and closed my eyes.

“Right. It’ll be a brilliant segue into the lecture I’ll be giving on the risks involved with offering up a voodoo vagina.”

Heat flushed my face. I bit down on my cheek to trap my groan.

I woke later that night, my skin still exposed from the waist up. Whiskers tickled my back. Fingers trailed over the bumps of my spine. A kiss grazed my shoulder. And another. Then lips peppered my nape. He was hugging my back, a knee tucked between my thighs.