“How can you tell?”

“They’re in places no one can see but you. They aren’t flash designs off the wall, and even though they are all pretty tiny they have a lot of detail.” A tiny smile flirted with her mouth. “The owl is for wisdom, I bet; the saint, your name?”

She shook her head, and the way we pressed against each other I could feel her body start to soften and melt into the pressure of my much bigger frame. I liked the way my dark skin contrasted so vividly against her much paler skin tone.

“Saint Agnes, patron saint of nurses. My sister is Faith, so that’s the cross, and the owl …” She ran her finger over the tip of my nose. “You got it. They don’t have anything on the stuff you’ve got, but I’ve always been happy with them.”

I worked a hand between the two of us and started to untie the knot at her waist. The lights were still on, so I wasn’t sure how far she was going to let me go before getting shy on me again. Hell, I was counting my blessings she hadn’t kicked me out the front door after the first ten minutes were up.

“Body art isn’t a contest. The only person that has to like it is the person stuck with it for the rest of their life. As long as you love it when you see it, that’s all that matters.”

I rubbed my thumb over the cross when her robe slid open.

“I had a girl artist do it. She was nice and made me feel really comfortable. You are the only other person who has ever seen it.”

I was kissing her on the side of the neck, drawing a lazy pattern on her hip with the tips of my fingers, but her words made me still. She told me I was the only guy to ever get her off, but I didn’t really think about that translating into the fact that she hadn’t been with very many men. It made the world tilt back on that parallel axis again. I loved the idea of being the only guy who got to see her special markings, the only guy who got to make her feel special and good in a way only great sex could.

“Thank you. That matters, Saint, I hope you know that.”

I ran my tongue along her collarbone and down the center of her chest. I was surprised she hadn’t asked me to stop or at least hit the lights. But she was rolling with it and I had another condom somewhere in my wallet, so why not see how far she would let me go? She was so soft and lush, not at all stick-figure skinny but a handful of curves and warm flesh. She did indeed have a very light dusting of freckles that crossed the top of both breasts and I wasn’t surprised at all when I pulled her turgid nipple into my mouth that she tasted like velvet and candy on my tongue. I rolled one and then the other pink tip across my tongue, leaving them both shiny and pointy while her eyes had gotten darker and heavy-lidded.

“Whaddaya say, Saint? Wanna give me another ten minutes?”

She gazed up at me like she was trying to figure something out. There was confusion, but more than that, on her face and her eyes had darkened to a cool shade of slate.

“Who are you, Nash Donovan?”

I gave her the most honest answer I could to that question. “Sometimes I don’t know, but most of the time what you see is what you get, Saint. I know you think I was once someone else, but I’m telling you I was never that guy. I’m not saying I was great or even likable back then, but I wasn’t whatever it is you think I was.”

She didn’t say anything for a long minute and we just watched each other. I thought she was going to ask me to get dressed and leave, but to my surprise she wrapped her legs up around me and whispered in my ear.

“Ten minutes was your idea, Nash, I’m willing to give you all night.”

Well, with permission like that, I was going to see exactly what I could cook up before she either passed out from exhaustion or asked me to go.

I had never looked forward to a challenge more and I refused to wonder if one night or any number of minutes would be enough with this girl. She was something different. It radiated out of her, and I wasn’t sure I was anything special or a guy lucky enough to be the one to grab on to it.

I didn’t have time to get weirded out that Nash spent the night, or to sit back and evaluate all the things I let him do to me, or all things I had been bold enough to do to him. I don’t know where any of those typical fears and uncertainties that normally strangled me when it came to sex had gone, but when my phone went off before six in the morning on New Year’s Day, I was still very much naked and very much wrapped deliciously around a very large and naked man. There was no time to freak out, because the hospital was the number calling, and when it came to work, that was my first priority, and not all the tattooed and toned skin that stretched across Nash’s back, even as tempting and alluring as it might be.

Sunny was upset. Two different staff members had called off, and not only did she have to go in and cover one of the shifts but she needed me to go in as well. I was scheduled to work that night, so it meant being at the hospital all day, which sounded awful considering Nash had kept me up well into the early hours of the morning, but it offered me an easy way out of dealing with the day-after awkwardness, so I readily agreed.

When I got off the phone he lumbered sleepily to his feet, got dressed without giving me any kind of guilt trip or hassle, gave me a quick kiss on the mouth, and told me to give him a call when I got a chance. He left without any kind of interrogation, any kind of uncomfortable dance around the topic of are-we-or-are-we-not-doing-this-again. He left the ball firmly in my court and made it clear that it was entirely up to me if I wanted to keep it in play or not. He put me in charge, which wasn’t something I was used to outside of my career, and I had to admit the power of it, the choice being mine, made the entire situation with him easier to get my head around. It also made the fact that I was well on my way to admitting I had to forgive him for past sins the only option if I was going to move forward with whatever it was we were now doing with each other.

When I got to work it was chaos. Injured partyers from the night before abounded. There was a horrific home-construction accident involving a chain saw and a missing hand; a cop rushed in that had been involved in a domestic dispute with a couple and got a knife in the gut for his effort; a toddler had gotten into the bathroom cleaner under the sink; and two women in labor: one was breech, the other was having premature contractions. I didn’t have time to think about anything else or worry about the curious looks Sunny was giving me whenever we were in the same room or passed each other in the hall. I was dragging majorly by the time my actual shift in the late afternoon started and was in the break room guzzling coffee like it was lifeblood when my tiny little boss finally cornered me.

“Soooo?”

I jolted and sloshed the hot liquid over my fingers. I gave her a dirty look and found a paper towel to clean up the mess.

“So what?”

She rolled her eyes at me and poked me in the arm. “So how was the date with the doctor? You sounded exhausted this morning when I called, so I assume it went well. I bet you made a beautiful pair.”

I tried to keep my face impassive but I couldn’t keep looking her in the eye. Not when I had ditched the awful doctor and spent the rest of the night being thoroughly debauched by Nash.

“I ended the date early.”

Her eyes got big and she wrinkled her nose up at me. “You had him take you home early?”

I sighed and tossed my paper cup of now-lukewarm coffee into the trash.

“He was a jerk and so full of himself. His friends were appalling and the party was really just a group of people standing around trying to outdo each other. I was uncomfortable and bored, so I called a friend and left early. Dr. Bennet and I are really not compatible.”