She did as she was told, reclining dead center on the mattress. He watched her as he undressed. Pulling his shirt off over his head. He balanced on his good leg and slid his boxer briefs down.

Her gasp. Her earthy, lusty, glazed-eye delight kindled a desire in him so powerful that he didn’t care if he didn’t survive it. He would do whatever was in his power to please her. To heal her the way she was healing him.

“Oh my God. You’re perfection,” she murmured.

He shook his head. “You look at me like…like I’m something incredible,” he said, sliding onto the mattress. He lifted her feet in his hands, kissed her ankles. “You look at me like I’m a hero.”

“You are, Aldo. You’re my hero.”

He slid the straps of her sexy as fuck shoes off and gently removed them, brushing kisses over the arches of her feet. She moaned, and it was a symphony to his ears.

Aldo started on her pants next. He unhooked the clasp, slid the zipper down, and gently tugged them from her body one leg at a time. Dear God. The peekaboo black lace under her shirt matched what was under her pants. Scraps barely obscuring the skin beneath. He’d hardly touched her, and already he was certain she’d taken him to heaven.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, Gloria. So fucking everything to me.”

He let his fingers, big, blunt instruments, stroke over the flat of her stomach, the gentle curves of her hips, enjoying the tease of lace that acted as speedbumps. Warning him to slow down and savor what was beneath.

Her breath was shallow. “I can’t catch my breath, Aldo.”

He paused, thumbs resting under her belly button while his palms splayed out over her stomach and waist. His cock hung heavily, dipping toward that black lace between her spread legs.

She had scars, too. Tiny ones, silvered with age. Symbols of trauma survived. Adversity conquered. And a tattoo that marked her victory. She was his hero.

“Don’t you dare stop,” Gloria gasped. “I don’t care if I have oxygen. I just want you. All of you. Every piece, every scar, every millimeter of flawed perfection. You’re mine, Aldo. Please make me yours.”

He went a little blind and a little deaf. His hands shook as they moved up her torso to the last three buttons that kept her hidden from him. One. Two. Three. He worked them open, and the sound that rose from his throat when she was bared to him was like a desperate man’s plea.

He was desperate. He’d told himself he could wait. Could find a way to make it perfect. But perfect wasn’t what Gloria wanted. She wanted him, flaws and all.

Lowering down slowly, his cock brushing the inside of one silky thigh, Aldo pressed his lips to her heart.