“Perhaps.” He caught her hand with his. “What else? What else did you want to do?”

Her eyes widened even as they went hot, the caramel depths now like molten gold. He saw her throat work as she tried to find words.

“Don’t tell me,” he murmured. “Show me.”

Her lips parted, and her eyes dropped to his mouth. Her hand slid from his, and now she was tracing the edge of his lower lip with the pads of her fingers. He closed his eyes, every muscle in his body fighting the need to simply take her right there.

He felt her shift, felt the butterfly-light pressure of her fingers vanish. In the next instant, her lips brushed his, soft and unhurried, and that simple touch sent a primal desire crashing through him with enough force to leave him shaking.

“When I first saw you,” she whispered, “I thought you looked how an angel ought to. Fierce. Strong.”

His eyes opened. “I’m not an angel.”

“No,” she agreed. “You’re real. Fierce and strong and real.”

“Charlotte…”

“I imagined how it would feel to be kissed by a man like that. Like you.” Her color had risen again, though her voice didn’t waver.

Flynn didn’t remember moving, but in a heartbeat, he had caught her head with his hands and covered her mouth with his. In an instant, all the hunger and want that he’d been trying to keep banked roared to life. He pushed her back a step, until her back was against the wall, and leaned into her, kissing her as though his life depended on it. And maybe it did. Maybe this woman beneath his hands and his lips, who had given him back what he had feared lost, really was his savior.

All he knew was that in this moment she was his. And that he was hers.

And that she was real and beautiful and perfect.

He felt her melt against him, one of her hands sliding around the back of his neck, her fingers threading through his hair. The other, the one hampered by the stitches on her shoulder, was tucked between them, her fingers splayed over his heart. Flynn tried to pace himself, tried to explore sweetly and softly, but she was opening beneath him, demanding more. He followed the outlines of her lips with his, every erotic fantasy he’d had pounding through his veins and making him groan. He slid his hands down the sides of her neck, taking care to avoid her shoulder, instead letting them trail along the sides of her bound breasts, to her waist and then to her hips. Forget silks and satins. These damn clothes that made every part of her body so touchable and yet so inaccessible would kill him.

He dropped his hands to the back of her buttocks, every glorious curve beneath her shapeless trousers fitting perfectly into his palms.