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“What?” He looked up at me.

“Being able to shiftone fingernail.”

He looked at his hands, then shrugged. “It is for me,” he replied, not taking offense at what I’d said. It was one of my favorite things about him. I could be a complete asshole, and he wasn’t bothered in the least.

“It’s fairly impressive,” I told him.

“It’s really not,” he replied, although there were faint spots of color in his cheeks—well, in the one that wasn’t still covered in bruises.

He gently eased the tape and gauze off my arm, and I held my breath as he looked down at the stylized paw-print with the tinyook—the Maya dog glyph—inside it.

“Can I touch it?” he whispered, and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“Yeah. I just didn’t want it to get battered by luggage, so I covered it up.”

His thumb gently—so gently I could barely feel it, even on the still hypersensitive skin under the tattoo—brushed over the design. Then he looked up at me, and I could see tears hanging in his mismatched eyes.

“Taavi—”

“You got this for me?” He didn’t sound either sad or upset.

I blinked. “I got it for me—because of you,” I answered. “You’re—”

I didn’t get to tell him what he was—everything—because his lips were on mine, his tongue sliding into my mouth, his hands on the sides of my face. I recovered quickly, holding onto his hips where he was now kneeling on the couch, letting him plunder my mouth and giving back as good as I got.

Then he pulled away and climbed off the couch. “Take me to bed.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I took his hand and led him down the hall, leaving half my clothes on the couch. Pet could sleep on them if she wanted.

I pulled him into the bedroom, then sat on the end of the bed. In this position, he was taller, and he bent, his hands once more on my face, to kiss me. Maybekisswas the wrong word. Claim. Possess. Consume. It didn’t really matter what I wanted to call it in my head, the end result was that I was drunk on Taavi, his lips, his tongue, the feeling of his warm hands holding me in place so that I had to take what he wanted to give.

Then he broke away.

“On the bed.”

I opened my mouth to point out that Iwason the bed.

“All the way,” he ordered.

I carefully scooted myself back, trying to avoid letting him see me wince when I accidentally used too many ab muscles. Fortunately for me, he was stripping off his shirt and missed it.

He shucked off his jeans, as well, then came after me, his hands already tugging at the fly of mine. I pushed up a little, suppressing a wince so that he could tug them and my boxer briefs down, then off. He threw them somewhere. I’d worry about finding them in the morning.

Because right at that moment I was enormously distracted by a naked Taavi crawling his way up my body, the heat of his thighs burning against mine. I ran my hands up his sides, loving the feeling of his skin under my palms, the faintly pebbled sensation of his tattoo under my fingertips, and the warmth of his body.

He leaned up and over me, grabbing lube and a condom from the bedside drawer, then tossing them on the blankets beside us. Then he settled himself, straddling my hips, slowly palming his erection, his eyes on me. I slid my hands up the outside of his legs, needing to touch more of him.

With his free hand, he took mine, then closed my fingers around my cock, urging me to stroke myself. While my own hand felt good enough, it was the heat in his eyes and the flush creeping up his neck as he watched me that made me let out a soft groan.

Taavi picked up the lube, and I expected him to take my hand back, but he didn’t, instead spreading the clear liquid on his own fingers.

I sucked in a sharp breath as he leaned back, putting his weight on my thighs and spreading his legs so that he could push one finger into himself.

“Fuck,” I breathed, the sight of him slowly pressing in and out of his body with a finger making me rock hard. I deliberately slowed the pace of my hand on my cock, knowing that if I didn’t, I wasn’t going to last long.

The muscles of Taavi’s thighs bunched as he reacted to his own fingers, and the hand I still had on his leg could feel the ripple of muscle and the slight rocking as he thrust against his own finger. I drew in a shuddering breath, watching as he worked a second finger into himself, his other hand braced for balance.

I let go of myself, my erection too sensitive, and grasped both legs just above the knee, needing to watch him, knowing what the inside of his body felt like against my own fingers, what it felt like around my now-aching cock.