Burning Up

her response, his head swimming, his control slipping.
    Her arms came around him, stroking under his shirt, tickling his ribs. Her fingers danced along the ridges of his scars, making him shiver like a horse tormented by flies.
    “Take it off,” she commanded.
    He shook his head, used his mouth on her. She gasped, she quivered, but she would not be distracted.
    She tugged again at the shirt. “Now.”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    Reluctantly, he raised his head. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes great pools of black rimmed with gold. He had never seen anyone or anything more beautiful. And he . . .
    “I am scarred,” he said bluntly. “Not just my leg, but my back. My side.”
    She found his face with her hands, touched his mouth, his cheek. “I want you. All of you.” Her palms stroked down his belly and thighs, cupped his big, square knees, slid up under his shirt. “Naked.”
    His heart pounded. “It is not pretty,” he warned.
    “I want to see you.” Her voice was a Siren’s voice, lilting, irresistible. She reached him with her hands and with her words, her fingers circling, squeezing, moving higher. Her knuckles brushed his sac. “Let me see you.”
    He had never been a vain man. Or a coward. She deserved to see, to know who she lay with. That didn’t stop his mouth from drying as he dragged his shirt over his head. He knelt over her on the bed, braced for her rejection, dreading her pity.
    He did not close his eyes.
    Neither did she. In the warm light that spilled from the windows, in the clean air that blew from the sea, she studied the damage to his body.
    He had been lucky. The Ninety-Fifth had been caught in the breach, trapped between trenches laid with pikes and sword blades and the two big guns filled with canister shot. He had been fighting his way to the guns when the French fired the mines beneath the slope. The earth had vomited rocks and flame. The sky rained dirt and body parts. His world had exploded in death, in darkness and in pain.
    But he had survived.
    With one finger, she traced the jagged gouge high on his arm. She brushed the red pucker at his hip. She laid her palm against the twisted mass of purple scars where the surgeon had probed for shrapnel.
    “This is what you men do to each other in war,” she said.
    He could not read her tone.
    “Sometimes,” he said stiffly. He fought an absurd inclination to apologize. For his gender? His profession?
    She met his gaze, her eyes like tarnished gold. “You do not wish to talk about it.”
    He had left his shirt on to shield himself as much as to protect her. He did not want to go down into the pit again, into the pain, into the bloody surgeon’s tent and the long, agonizing time before and after. “A gentleman does not discuss such subjects with ladies.”
    He sounded like a prig.
    “Even a lady he is naked and in bed with?”
    “Especially not a lady he is in bed with,” Jack said firmly.
    He did not want to bring those memories here, into this room, into this moment. He didn’t want that ugliness to touch her.
    Yet she continued to touch him, her fingers at once soothing and inflaming. She rubbed small circles against his chest, scraped her nails gently across his abdomen. His cock swelled, hard and eager, shameless at her approach. Her hands wandered over his torso, laying claim to him, to all of him, making no distinction between his damaged flesh and the rest.
    He swallowed against the constriction in his throat. “You don’t have to touch them.”
    Touch me , he thought.
    Her smooth shoulders shrugged against the pillows. “Why not? Your scars are part of you. As my feet are part of me. Not the most interesting part,” she added. Her teasing look set him on fire. She circled his erection with both hands, cupping him lightly. He gritted his teeth against the exquisite pleasure of it. “I am sorry you were hurt. But if we want each other, we must accept each other as we are, with all our scars and all our parts.”
    He wanted her. He ached for her, with his body and in his soul. He craved her joy, her acceptance, her unabashed appreciation of life.
    “I want you,” he said, his voice as raw as his need.
    She smiled up at him. “Now.”
    Forever , he thought.
    He lowered himself to her. They came together in comfort and in lust, her arms lifting around him, her hands sliding down his scarred back to grip his buttocks. Her legs twined with his. Holding him. Touching him. She felt so good, soft, warm, wet. He