“Please,” I whispered, dizzy with desire.
He lifted his head then became captivated by the flicker of flame too. His tongue chased the shadows across my neck, my collarbone, my shoulder. The dampness left by his mouth cooled despite the heat, and I shivered.
He scooped me into his arms, rose to his knees, tilted, and laid me on the fur. It was warm and soft. I shimmied against it, and he cursed, stood, and lost his pants.
“Wait.” He was so beautiful—naked and rippling and damn near perfect. Even the scar that marred his leg was smooth and sleek.
He clenched his hands, released them, and clenched them again. “You’re killing me.”
I beckoned, and he dropped to the ground and reached for my jeans. I’d forgotten I still had them on.
He drew them down my legs, removed my socks, then kissed and stroked his way back up. A peck on my toes, his thumbs against the arch of my foot, tongue behind each knee, teeth on the inside of my thigh.
His breath brushed my core, and my hips lifted from the fur. His mouth pushed me back down. With fingers and tongue he made me come, gasping, biting back the scream. I didn’t want to wake the animals. Though the animal in me, in him, had awoken shrieking.
He slid into me while I was still quaking. Stroked once, twice, a third time—harder, deeper, better. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but what the hell? I came again.
I saw the storm in his eyes, felt the pulse radiating from him, through me. My fingers chased the firelight across his face. He turned his head and kissed my palm. My eyes prickled. I tightened my lips so I wouldn’t beg him not to go.
He kissed me until we were both shaking, spent, a little cold. He moved to the couch, snatched up an afghan, strode back. Instead of covering us both, he draped it around my shoulders then added wood to the fire. I reached for my clothes.
“No,” he said, not even turning around. “I’m not done.”
I pulled the afghan tighter and enjoyed the play of muscles in his back as he fed the flames. The room brightened, warmed. He straightened, turned, and the wide, jagged scar running the length of his right thigh captured my gaze.
I rose onto my knees, ran my thumb down the mark. When I reached the middle, where the scar seemed the deepest, a spark sprang, so bright it looked like a shooting star in the night.
He hissed, took a step back, and rubbed the place I’d touched. “I think I’m done,” he said, in direct contrast to his last sentence.
“I can wait.”
He shoved the same hand through his hair. “Done in the service. I can’t go back like this.”
“You’re getting better,” I protested.
Why? I had no idea. I certainly didn’t want him to leave.
“Not better enough. I can’t run like I used to, like I need to. Can’t jump out of a plane on my own, let alone with Reggie strapped to me. When I hit the ground on this leg, it’ll give out and we’ll both wind up dead.”
“You jumped out of a plane with a seventy-pound dog strapped to you?”
“How else do you think we got on the ground?”
I hadn’t thought. Hadn’t wanted to. But I certainly wouldn’t have imagined that.
“Reggie’s almost full strength.”
I curled my fingers in on themselves. Was that my fault? I hadn’t meant to heal him; at the time I hadn’t even known that I was. I couldn’t take it back. I wouldn’t. I shouldn’t.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” he said. “All I’ve ever had was that.”
“You had me.”
Same argument, different year.
“Don’t,” he began.
“I love you,” I said. “I never stopped.”
“I hurt you.”
“You didn’t mean to.”
“Of course I did. I had to make you forget me.”
“Did you forget me?”
“No.”
“Then how could you think I would ever forget you?” I laid my lips on his scar, and his hand fell to my hair. I licked the length of it, and he shuddered. “Did that hurt?”
“Yes. No.” He rubbed it again. “It’s better since I’ve been here.”
Of course it was. If I touched him enough, he would heal, just like Reggie, like Pru, like my human mother, like any number of people and animals I’d made as good as new.
And then he would go.
Chapter 22
They’d made love again as the fire danced. Becca avoided touching Owen’s scar, when before she’d done a lot more than touch it.
Had he flinched? Probably.
She’d seemed sad, and he wasn’t sure why. Owen did his best to make that sadness go away, kissing her as he moved inside of her. “Smile for me,” he whispered.
She did, but there was still something wrong. Of course, someone had tried to kill her. But he didn’t think that was it.
He led her to the bed, but it was occupied. “Beat it.”
Reggie lifted his head, then his lip. Grenade lay draped across his paws, dead to the world.
“It’s all right,” Becca said. “We can fit.”