I broke off then with a gasp. The sensation was more intense than I’d expected, echoing through me.
He went still, his fingers just under the edge of my shirt where I could feel them warm against my waist, almost teasing with the lightness of his touch. And then he started to pull away.
“Don’t…” I said, breathless.
Zane immediately froze. “What’s wrong?”
“No, don’t stop,” I clarified, impatient and pushing the words out, all muddied with desire and half-garbled, before pressing my mouth to his again.
With his help, I wrestled his arms out of the hoodie sleeves and let the garment drop immediately to the bed and started tugging his T-shirt over his head.
He lifted his arms to help me before his hands returned to my hips, hitching me closer, which drew sharp breaths from both of us. Resting my hands on his shoulders, I took in the sight before me. This intimacy, seeing this side of him for this reason, it changed everything.
His skin was smooth under my hands and darker than mine; it would be difficult for it not to be. His chest and arms had curves of muscle from years of lacrosse that sent a shiver through the very human part of me. The gunshot wound that he’d survived only through Emerson St. John’s intervention had left a faint, puckered pink circle on his abdomen, barely visible above the line of his pants.
Color rose in his cheeks at my scrutiny, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d seen him without his shirt before, or rather, with his shirt unbuttoned. But this was different. It felt different. We weren’t in a grungy bathroom, fumbling for a few minutes before someone or something interrupted.
It was like being invited into this new world that I’d only caught glimpses of before.
“This looks painful.” I touched his chest just below his collarbone, carefully outlining the triangle-shaped patch of raw skin where the vitals monitor had been attached, staying clear of angry redness.
He grimaced. “Yeah.” His gaze flicked to the same spot on my chest, hidden by my shirt. “Bet yours isn’t much better.”
I recognized the unspoken question for what it was, and my heartbeat sped up. A flare of anxiety went off in me. He’d seen me without my shirt before as well, but it had been in the context of bandaging an injury to my arm. Taking off my shirt in front of him now meant more. Intention was everything.
I pushed my worry down and reached for the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head quickly before my self-doubt could get the better of me. He’d found me plenty human enough before, there was no reason for that to have changed just because everything else had.
The heat in his expression sent a ripple of relief through me. His eyes were dark in the dim room, but it was more than that. I’d put that look on his face—my body, my skin, my not-entirely-human self.
Zane reached up, slipping a fingertip beneath the strap of my bra and sliding it down my arm, away from the similar triangle-shaped injury on my chest. That light touch made me tremble and catch fire at the same time. I wanted to close my eyes to focus on it, but I didn’t want to miss anything.
“Yours doesn’t seem as bad,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Fast healer,” I reminded him, the words half-catching in my throat.
He leaned forward, slowly, as though he feared I might stop him, and placed his mouth on the edge of it, his breath skating over the skin between my breasts.
And that broke something in me, my fear or my willpower, I didn’t know which.
I fumbled for his hand on my hip, dragging it up and beneath the stretchy fabric of my bra. The warmth of his skin against mine, the all-too-pleasant friction of his slightly rough hands against sensitive flesh, shattered the last of my functioning synapses and stole my breath.
Zane inhaled sharply and then reached with his free hand to release the catch in the back of the garment.
And then there was nothing between his skin and mine, and it was everything that I’d wanted. But long before I was ready to give up that sensation, he turned, carefully shifting me off his lap and onto the bed.
I started to protest until he moved with me, crawling up next to me, his knee between mine.
His mouth covered mine as he settled over me. The weight of him, which could have been suffocating or heavy or frightening, just felt right. It was Zane.
Instinct surfaced in me again, and I pushed up against him with my hips.
“Jesus, Ariane,” he gasped. “You’re killing me.” But from the way his mouth continued to wander over my collarbone and breasts, he meant that in a good way, I was fairly sure.