Hells and damnation, it was far worse than she’d feared. His taut muscles gleamed in the dying light that glinted through the cave’s crystals and flickered upon the pool. She ran her fingers across those broad shoulders she’d so admired in deLacy’s ballroom, then along the line of his collarbones. She planed her palms down over his firm chest, precisely over the route she’d taken during the weapons check. Except now there was no uniform in the way and no battle of who could turn the other on more without succumbing.

This was exactly about succumbing and damn well enjoying it.

He watched her, breathing hard, as her touch lowered, and she finally let her thumbs and the heels of her hands explore the rippling muscles of his stomach.

She bit her lip. With him looking like this, it was more a surprise this had taken so long to happen.

Smiling, she lifted her hands to his face, tracing her fingers over the high cheekbones. “You are gorgeous, you know that, right?”

His eyebrows shot up, and he blinked. “I—I—thank you?”

She chuckled and pulled his mouth back to hers. Clearly, not enough women had said that. A travesty. Men told women they were beautiful all the time and yet women so seldom repaid the compliment.

There was the dim sense of movement, then her bottom landed on something cold and hard, such a stark contrast with the pounding heat surging through their paired bodies it made her gasp.

With a grin, he palmed her thighs and pulled away just far enough to slide his hands to the hem of her shirt. His eyebrows rose in question.

“Bloody get on with it, Knigh.”

A low chuckle rumbled from his throat, and he tugged her shirt off, then dropped it to the floor.

She looked down, touching the place she’d been injured in this morning’s fight. “Not even a scar.”

He scoffed and pulled her hand away. “That wasn’t where I was looking.” One eyebrow raised, his lust-darkened gaze raked over her exposed flesh.

Shoulders back, she lifted her chin and watched his survey. Some felt ashamed of their bodies or hid them or compared them to others—too big, too small, too fleshy, too muscular for a woman, not enough curves. Not her. Just like the reef, bodies came in hundreds, thousands of different forms, and she’d never seen one that wasn’t beautiful. Her body, like his, was not something for modesty.

The pad of his thumb circled the silver scar on her shoulder, and he nodded with a frown of understanding—he could tell it was a pistol wound. Dipping his head, he kissed it, confirming what she already knew.

It wasn’t a flaw, an imperfection on her tanned, smooth skin.

It was something she’d survived. It said she was tough—she wouldn’t break.