“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says.

I nod, look away. “Yeah. Me too.” And right now I really am, even if I sometimes forget it.

Z curves a hand around my neck, pulls me down until my lips meet his. And he kisses me like he wants me. Like the scars don’t matter. Like I’m the most desirable woman in the world to him.

We kiss for what feels like hours, until I forget about everything but him and the way it feels to be held and touched and kissed by him.

When I’m panting and trembling and no longer care about anything but being with him, Z finally reaches for my bra, his skilled fingers unhooking it and peeling it off in the space from one breath to the next. I freak out for a second, slap my hands over my breasts. No one’s seen me like this since Remi, and suddenly it scares me. In making love to Z, I’m taking an irrevocable step away from my past, from who I used to be and whom I used to love. It’s harder than I thought it’d be.

Especially since Z seems totally inclined not to rush me or push me into anything. I can feel him pressed up against my sex—all hard and hot and even bigger than I remembered—and I know that he must want to get this show on the road, especially after how I left him last time. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t try to take my hands away. Doesn’t do anything but lie there and watch me out of eyes turned almost black with desire and something else I don’t recognize.

Slowly, so slowly it almost feels like a dream, I lower my hands. Rest them on his chest. And then I wait. Just wait.

“You sure you want to do this?” Z asks finally, his eyes locked on mine as his hands slide up my arms to cup my jaw.

I start to speak, to say yes, but my voice breaks, so I just nod instead, praying it’s enough for him.

It must be, because after long moments of silence, of stillness, his fingers slide into my hair. Then he’s pulling out the pins I use to keep it out of my face while I’m at work, tossing them onto the floor, one by one, until my curls tumble down around my shoulders and onto my back and breasts.

“You’re so beautiful,” he tells me as his hands follow the same path as my hair, stroking, soothing, gentling me in a way I never would have expected from him.

“So are you,” I answer, gliding my hands up and down his long, lean torso. “Your tattoos are the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve wanted to lick them pretty much from the first second I saw them.”

“Really? You could have fooled me. You seemed singularly unimpressed that first night at the coffee bar.”

“What was I supposed to do?” I ask, leaning down to press openmouthed kisses over the ink on his shoulder, down his pec. “Fall on the floor and beg you to do me right there?”

“It would have saved a lot of time,” he answers, arching beneath my attentions. “We could have been doing this days ago.”

“In front of the entire lodge.”

“I would have taken you into the changing room,” he jokes, right before sliding his thumbs over my nipples.

My breath hisses out of me and it’s my turn to arch, to press my breasts into this hands. “Wow. You’re a real class act,” I tease.

He smiles, that wicked, wild grin of his that turns my blood to lava and my willpower to mush. “I do what I can.”

“Oh, yeah?” I move against him, rocking my pelvis against his cock until we’re both covered in a light sheen of sweat. “Because I think you can do more.”

“You might be right.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and another around my hips and then he’s flipping us yet again. Only this time I’m on the bed and he’s on the floor between my knees. “I should probably start by getting these jeans off you.”

He starts with the button, then peels the zipper down. As he does, he presses soft kisses to my stomach, following the line of the zipper until he runs into the top of my bikini underpants.

“Lift up,” he tells me, and when I do, he tugs my jeans off with one strong pull.

And then he’s sitting back on his heels and looking at me. Just looking at me. At first it doesn’t bother me, but then it goes on so long that I start to worry that something’s wrong. That the scars bother him more than he let on. That he doesn’t like what he sees.

I fumble for a blanket, try to cover myself, but he strips them all from the bed. Drops them on the floor. “What’d you do that for?” I ask, shivering a little. It’s been almost a year since I’ve done this and I’m anxious, nervous, horny … and determined to actually do it this time.

“You keep trying to hide yourself from me. I don’t like it.”

For some reason, it strikes me that he’s talking about a lot more than the blankets. But that doesn’t make sense, not when this is just a one-night thing. And not when Z himself is the master of disguises.

“Well, you should probably stop staring at me, then. It freaks me out.”

He grins, strews hot, wet, openmouthed kisses across my abdomen. “I like staring at you. You should probably get used to it—I’m planning on doing it a lot.”

I freeze at the words, which sound so much more than casual. Almost like he’s planning on doing this again. Which I might be okay with—if I can get through the next hour without humiliating myself, that is.

If Z notices my sudden stillness, he ignores it. Instead, he trails his tongue along the edge of my panties, licking across my mons slowly, slowly, slowly, until I feel like I might actually lose my mind.

My hands leave his chest and tangle in the cool silk of his hair as I hold him to me. I’m on fire, my body arching for his—aching for his—in a way I’ve never before experienced.

My sex life with Remi was good. I mean, he was a considerate lover who from the very first always took care of me as well as himself. And since he was the one who took my virginity, I never had anyone to compare him to. Which was fine. I was happy with him. Totally satisfied.

Being with Z isn’t like that, though. It isn’t about being happy or satisfied or any of those other words. No, being with Z is like being in the center of a lightning storm. Powerful, overwhelming, electric. And dangerous, so dangerous, without the proper precautions.

I want to take those precautions—thought I did take them, to be honest. But nothing could have prepared me for what it feels like to be loved by Z. To have his hands and mouth and body all over mine.

All. Over. Mine.

“Hey.” He pauses, lifts his head. “Where did you go?”

“I’m right here.”

Somehow, impossibly, his eyes grow even darker. “No, you’re not.”

I think he’s going to say something else, or maybe even leave. I clutch at his shoulders in desperation, knowing that if he leaves me—again—there’s no way I’ll be able to try this a third time.

But I’m wrong. This time Z isn’t going anywhere. Instead of getting up or suggesting we stop, he takes the opposite approach. He strips my panties down my legs in one swift move, then buries his face between my thighs.

I come off the bed at the first touch of his tongue against my clit, and seconds later my legs are over his shoulders and I’m in the throes of my first orgasm in eleven long, terrible months. I clutch at him, hold him to me as it goes on and on and on, thanks to Z and his oh-so-talented tongue.

When it’s finally over—and I once again have control over my brain and my limbs—I sit up with some vague idea of returning the favor. But Z just puts one big hand on my stomach and presses me back down.

“What—” I’m so dazed, so sated, that the words still aren’t forming right in my head.

He just laughs, a low, warm, delicious sound that sends new shivers up my back. And then his mouth is right back on me, his tongue tracing the folds of my sex and dipping inside once, twice, then again and again.

“Z!” I call his name as the maelstrom starts to build again, and he reaches up, twines his fingers with mine. He anchors me, gives me something to hold on to as he takes me right up to the edge of my control and then flings me over a second time.

And a third.

By now, my body isn’t even my own anymore. Z has laid claim to it and he’s determined to do what he promised. To make me feel good as he wrings every ounce of sensation—of pleasure—that he can from me.

“Please,” I whimper, my hands clutching at him as his tongue delves inside me for another long, leisurely lick. “No more. Please no more. I need—”

I cut myself off before I finish the sentence, before I scare us both off with an admission of just how much I need him.

But Z won’t let me hide. He strips away my last barriers—and every ounce of self-protection I have left—as surely as he stripped my clothes away. “What, baby?” he asks, his voice all sex-drugged black magic. “What do you need?”

I don’t want to answer him, don’t want to give him this last piece of myself when I’ve already given him so many. But when he brushes tender kisses across my shoulder and down my breast—kisses that tell me he wants so much more from me than just the good time we agreed to—I can’t stop myself from blurting out the truth.

“You,” I whisper, my body arching against his as he slips two fingers inside me and strokes my G-spot. “I need you, Z.”

“You’ve got me, Ophelia.” He murmurs the words against my breast, in between long, languid licks around my nipple. “I’m not going anywhere.”

For the first time, I wish that that was true. That we could stay right here, hiding from the outside world forever. Or at least until our bodies give out from the pleasure.

Except Z hasn’t taken any pleasure yet. He’s made me come three times and is giving every indication that he wants to go for a fourth, but I’m not having it. Not right now, when I am drowning in the need he created and my own determination to make him feel as good as he’s made me feel.