When he had told me to go, walked to the door like he was really ending it all, my breath had been sucked out of my lungs and my blood had frozen still in my veins. I couldn’t give him everything he wanted, that left me far too vulnerable, but I had to make him see this was just as important to me as it was to him. The only way I could do that without getting stuck on words was with my body. Sure, I wanted him and he knew it, but I don’t think he knew it was so much more than that. I just couldn’t figure out a way to explain it all to him without sounding like a nut job or an uncertain and immature child.

I made a startled noise when he pressed me back fully into the door and tangled his fingers in my hair. His eyes burned down at me in endless rivers of purple and blue.

“This is a conversation we are going to have to finish at some point, Saint.”

I put my hands under the hem of his shirt so that my palms could skate up the divots and hollows of his rib cage. His skin was always so warm. He always felt so strong and vital, so resilient and secure. That he let me call the shots, let me set the pace when we were together, made me feel like the most powerful and most desirable woman in the world. It was intoxicating. I couldn’t just walk away from it even if that was ultimately what was best for both of us.

“But it can wait, Nash.” I brushed my lips across the base of his throat and felt him swallow. I hated that he felt like he had to deal with me and all my issues on top of everything he was struggling with in regard to his dad.

He kissed my temple and then used his tongue to trace the shell of my ear. It made me shiver all over even when he whispered, “No, not now. But soon.”

He pressed even more fully into me, making me spread my legs. He let his hands fall to the round curve of my ass and I gasped when he shifted, hefted me up, and urged me to wrap my legs around his waist. I was tall and not a petite girl. There wasn’t much about me that I would ever consider dainty, but he was a monster in comparison, so he didn’t even seem like he noticed my weight when he moved away from the door and headed down the hallway that led to his bedroom. I curled my arms around his shoulders and sealed my mouth over his while he walked. I loved the way the motion rubbed our bodies together. Even through my work scrubs and the layers underneath, I felt my nipples pebble, felt his body respond through the thick denim of his jeans. I twisted my tongue around his, twirled them in a sucking, breathless kiss that had both of us needing to come up for air by the time he got to the bedroom.

He leaned forward and dropped me on the center of the bed while pulling back and pulling his shirt up and off over his head. Now, that was a sight that would never get old. The muscles and golden skin stretched so tautly over them was always mouthwatering and made my fingers tingle and itch to stroke all over, but the designs, the markings that defined him, decorated him, and made him his own walking art gallery were just as alluring. The ink that curled and twisted up and down his arms was brilliant and eye-catching, but it was that dragon, that other part of him, that I always wanted to touch. The wings, the fire, the scales that covered so much of his big body … it was like he had a second skin and only a few got to see it in all its grandeur and I was one of the lucky ones.

He popped open the tab on his belt and lifted an eyebrow at me. I sat up and pulled my top off. Hospital work clothes were not the most flattering thing a person could wear but he didn’t seem to mind them. His gaze did that thing where it went almost all the way black when I was left in front of him on the bed in nothing but my underwear. He reached out a single finger and trailed it down the valley between my breasts.

“I love your freckles.”

It made me shiver, but the look in his eyes, and the expression on his face, had my body going liquid and warm all over. I went to reach for him, to pull him over me, but he bent down and used the same finger to pull the cup of my bra down off of one of my breasts. The tip eagerly surged up to meet his descending tongue. I squirmed and wiggled under him as he licked at it, circled it, sucked it into the warm center of his mouth. I was pawing at his nonexistent hair, tossing my head back and forth across the comforter because he was being so meticulous, so thorough with his attention to what he was doing to me. I lifted my head to tell him to stop, to get his pants off and get the show on the road, when he moved on to the other breast and that one was the other end of his pleasurable torture.

By the time he was done, I was panting and ready to explode just from his attention to my breasts. He pulled my bra all the way off and pushed me back farther on the bed. I thought he was going to just pull my panties off and get on with the sexy time. I wanted him desperately, felt my body weeping in welcome and anticipation, but Nash seemed like he was in no hurry and he wasn’t letting me call the shots tonight. He let his jeans drop, and I took a minute to really appreciate the bulge that was in the front of his boxers. There wasn’t anything I would change about him, and the wings inked all along his sides seemed to flutter when he took a deep breath and let it out slowly while working the last of my clothing out of the way.

His eyes were indigo and there was a flush under his burnished skin. Something was going on in his head, something I wasn’t privy to, but when he crawled on the bed between my legs and put a biting kiss on the inside of one thigh before lifting it up and over his shoulder, I knew.

We had had plenty of sex over the last several months, plenty probably being an understatement. Nash using his mouth on me was no longer foreign or scary and new. He was good at it, I always enjoyed it, but this was different, all of it was different. He wasn’t just making love to me, he wasn’t just trying to turn me on or wind me up. He was worshipping me. He was trying to show me in yet another way just how beautiful and perfect he saw me as being.

“Nash?” I said his name … well, more like choked it out, because his mouth and his hands were doing things that were making me come undone. I felt my hands twist into tight knots in the sheets as he stroked the flat of his tongue over a particularly sensitive bundle of nerves.

“Hmm?” He hmmed back at me and it made me cry out because when he did it he trapped my clit between his teeth and the vibration made my eyes roll back in my head.

His hands were on either side of my hips, both my legs were dropped over his wide shoulders, and his dark head was buried quite thoroughly at the heart of me. It felt wanton and decadent because of how intent he was on proving his point. I tensed, felt small tremors start in the base of my spine, and when his mouth was replaced with exploring and stroking fingers, all it took was a gentle shove and I dropped over the edge. I vaguely felt him kiss along my quaking stomach, felt his fingers moving, playing with me to draw out the response, but it was his eyes, so dark, so focused on me, that had my heart surrendering and all the noise rattling in my head finally going quiet.

He let my legs slither to either side of him and traced a pattern on the soft skin right below my breasts.

“You are so sweet. Inside and out.” His voice was gruff, so I reached down so that I could pull him up and over me.

He always said stuff like that to me. Told me I was beautiful, told me I was nice and fun to be around. He often told me I was his favorite in bed. I never replied to any of it, but there was no getting past what he had just given to me.

“Thank you.” It sounded rusty and underused to my own ears. Taking a compliment shouldn’t be that hard. The way Nash saw me, the reflection of myself in those endlessly purple eyes, was the most beautiful thing in the world, and I was having a much harder time pretending like I didn’t see exactly what he saw in me.