“Me first.” I pressed on his chest, and he protested with his eyes but took the hint and rolled so he was on his back with his head on my pillow. My breath hitched, and my pulse kicked up another notch as I looked my fill. “I don’t have words for you,” I admitted, trailing my fingers from the strong line of his neck to his chest and down his abs to pause at the tattoos of latitude and longitude that ran the length of his right side. “What are these?”

“They mark places.” He put one hand behind his head and ran the other down my back, but his muscles were tight with restraint. He wasn’t nearly as relaxed as he tried to let on.

I lowered my lips and kissed the marks. “Where do they lead?”

He sucked in a breath, so I did it again, picking the first line of ink. His skin was warm and firm, and he had that faint tang of metal in his scent that marked hours spent in a helicopter.

“That one is my hometown. Where I was born.” His fingers drifted up my neck and into my hair.

“And this one?” I kissed the next tattoo. His abs jumped and flexed.

“Just off the coast of Maine.”

Where his parents died.

I turned my attention to the last coordinates. “And this one?”

“Mobile, Alabama. Flight school. Where Fin was born.”

I nodded and shifted so I could get to my original destination, selfishly glad that none of those places involved another woman.

“Kitty, you’re driving me—” His fingers tightened in my hair, and he let out a groan as I licked down the V of his abs.

“These have had me distracted since day one.” I got to know those two lines intimately with my mouth, inhaling his ocean and copper scent with the taste of his skin until I was drunk on him. When I reached the waistband of his boxer briefs, I found the head of his erection rising above the elastic and then swiped my tongue right over the bead of moisture that had gathered there.

“Fuck!” His cry was guttural, and I felt it like a caress.

I was going to find every single spot on him that earned me the same response and—

The world spun, and I landed on my back under Jackson. I would have asked him if he was against oral sex, but the way he looked at me was anything but angry. He reminded me of a jungle cat, a predator that had his prey exactly where he wanted her.

“That’s not how this first time is going down.” His voice dropped as he settled between my spread thighs.

Mercy. He was right. There. “It’s not?” I asked, all breathy as he shook his head slowly.