Her face fell. “Or not. If it makes you uncomfortable, or . . .”

And what could he do? He reached out before she could turn away from him, putting a hand on her face and holding her steady as he leaned in for a kiss. Her lips were so sweet, made all the more so by the foreign warmth inside of him he couldn’t seem to tamp down. And why should he?

Pulling back from the kiss, he touched his brow to hers. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.” When she scoffed, he insisted, “It is.”

Sure, he’d gotten compliments before. He’d had people—women—tell him he looked good. But this was something else altogether.

So he tried to treat it with the respect it deserved. “I’d be honored.”

It wasn’t a line and it wasn’t a lie. He pressed his lips to hers once more, then backed away.

“You want to do this now?” he asked.

“Sure. I mean, I’ve got all my things.”

They had a couple of hours before they typically wandered off in search of dinner. He couldn’t think of any reasons to delay.

“Okay.” He nodded and stood, setting his fingers to the collar of his shirt.

And it was strange, wasn’t it? The still-racing beating of his heart and the desert of his throat. He’d gotten naked in front of more women than he cared to count. He wasn’t shy about his body. He’d worked hard for it and kept it in the best possible condition. It wasn’t as if he’d ever been shy in front of Kate. Hell, just this morning, he’d been wheedling to try to get his clothes off in front of her. So why was this giving him pause?

Behind him, she was fussing with something or other. He snuck a glance over his shoulder and spied a neat little row of materials arranged across the desk. Turning around again, he took a deep breath.

Tucking his thumb into the placket of his shirt, he slipped each button through its hole, then shrugged the fabric off. He actually took the time to hang it up, and cursed at himself in his head. Stalling. It was ridiculous—why was he stalling? He tore off his undershirt and dropped it to the ground. Took off shoes and socks, and unfastened his belt. Biting the bullet, he shoved his jeans and his boxers down as one and stepped out of them.

He turned to Kate with as much bravado as he could muster. All he had to do was make a dickhead comment about his—well, his dick, and everything would be fine. Normal.

But he met her gaze, and fuck. There was a warmth to it that was more than simple aesthetic appreciation.

Alarm bells sounded off like klaxons in his mind. He slept with tourists, with women passing through. He’d disappointed enough people, and he didn’t have anything to offer a nice girl. It was better to stay unattached. Free.

But in a few short days, this girl had wound herself around him, and there wasn’t any point denying it. He’d sunk his teeth in, too.

When it was over, it was going to bleed.

Right now, though, she was still looking at him like that. Any pervy joke he would have made died in his throat.

“Where do you want me?” he asked.

“Lie down.” She gestured to where she had turned down the bed.

He let her direct him until he was positioned how she wanted him, with a handful of pillows propping him up. One arm extended toward her and the other bent under his head. Legs splayed out across the sheets.

“Perfect,” she said after a moment, and she sounded as hoarse as he felt. “Do you think you can hold that for a while?”

He shifted in minute ways, but the discomfort he felt wasn’t physical. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Let me know when you need a break.”

“Sure.”

He lay there in silence for a long minute as she arranged herself in the chair, getting her sketchbook settled in her lap and selecting an instrument to draw with. And then, as far as he could tell, she just stared at him.

He had to turn his gaze away.

The skritch-skritch of pencil on paper told him she’d started working, and he had to fight the instinct to fidget all over again. Relax. Calm. He sank into the bed the best he could.

But no matter how deeply he breathed or how hard he focused on letting his mind drift, the simple truth was there.

He’d been naked a thousand times before. But he’d never felt it.

Not like this.

chapter SEVENTEEN

There was a certain kind of focused, aware calm that settled over Kate when she was really in the zone. Staring at the excess of riches laid out in front of her right now, though, she wasn’t focused. She wasn’t calm.

But she was aware.

Incredibly, brilliantly aware of Rylan’s lips and eyes, the tousled mess of his hair and the stubble on his cheeks. He had the most gorgeous shoulders, taut with muscle without being bulky, and his biceps and forearms were sleek and strong. She’d always loved the feeling of his hands on her body, but she’d never truly taken in the shape of them before. Long fingers and blunt nails. The lines of tendons flexing underneath his skin.

And then there was the rest of him. With the subtle twist she’d made of his body, the crest of his hip stood out sharply, shadowing the hollow beneath it, pointing to the dips and curves of his abdominals. Solid thighs and well-formed calves. Hell, even his ankles and his feet were pretty, and she could scarcely catch her breath when she let her vision encompass the whole of him.

He wasn’t hard, which was possibly the weirdest thing. She’d seen him in various stages of erectness, even seen him gently deflating in the aftermath of orgasm, but completely soft like this was new. She couldn’t help the way her gaze kept being drawn back to it.

She’d touched that part of him. Had him on her tongue and in her hands and pressed up against her spine as he moaned into her ear.

And now it was hers to look at. As much as she wanted to.

With less than steady hands, she adjusted her book in her lap. She’d already done a quick couple of gesture sketches of him, waiting for him to settle. Tension lingered in his limbs, though, and she frowned. He wouldn’t be able to stay still for long if he didn’t relax.

“Do you want to stretch or anything?” she asked. “Get a drink?”

He blinked a couple of times, chest rising and sinking more rapidly. “Yeah, actually.” He sat up in slow increments, rolling his shoulders and flexing his feet.

Just for something to do, she stood and grabbed him a bottle of water.

“Thanks.” He took it from her and twisted off the top, lifting it to his mouth and taking a couple of careful, measured sips before setting it aside.

In the time she hadn’t been looking, he’d pulled the sheet up to his waist. Part of her wanted to tease. He’d seemed so confident in his own skin before, but now there was a self-consciousness to him.

It was just so . . . unlike him.

She picked at her thumb, unable to stop staring at the drape of the cloth across his groin. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”

“I know.” He looked down. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“All right.” She returned to her chair and picked up her pencil again.

After another minute of twisting and stretching, he shoved the sheet away and settled back against the pillows. The pose wasn’t quite the same as the one she’d directed him into earlier, but that was almost better, honestly. What it lacked in drama it made up for in the way he eased into it, some of the stiffness from before bleeding away.

It was even more beautiful, and something in her heart stuttered.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

She looked up to find him gazing straight at her. It took a couple of tries to get the words to form. “It’s perfect.”

Flawed and perfect. Just like you.

She swallowed, forcing herself to relax her grip. She traced all the lines of his body in her mind one last time.