Her hands slid along his hips and down his butt. He felt her light touch all the way through his body as if she were using a branding iron on him. Branding her name into his skin. Into his bones. He could have told her, her name was already there, inside of him. It had been for a number of years. He held his breath as she pressed her fingers into him, over him, her palm sliding over firm muscle to slide along the crease between thigh and buttocks.

Lifting the soft weight of her breast, thumb stroking caresses over her nipple, he trailed more kisses over the creamy slopes of her breasts and between, in the deep valley where he felt her pulse. Soft. Gentle. Taking his time because he felt every shiver of her body. She was sensitive to his touch. To his mouth and hands.

He wanted her to hear him when he said she was safe with him. He was better at showing her than telling her. He couldn’t resist the lure of her breast and he pulled her nipple deep into his mouth, tugging and rolling, using the flat of his tongue to stroke, the edge of his teeth to send flames dancing and the hard pull of his mouth to ignite a fire.

She was very responsive to him. A gift. Her soft, breathy moans set his pulse pounding, the blood roaring in his ears. His hand moved down her belly where she cradled his child while it grew. The child they’d made together. She didn’t know it, but that child had been conceived in love. He had known the moment he had first laid eyes on her, sitting across from him at her grandfather’s table, her eyes downcast, her hair everywhere, her soft voice doing things to him that shouldn’t have been done, not when she was so young, that she was his other half, the woman who would make him a better man. The woman who could live with the man he was, the man his harsh life had shaped him to be.

“I knew,” he whispered. “I should have given you that. I knew you were mine.” He made the confession, his lips against that soft, perfect place where his child nestled.

Her fingers caught in his hair, sifted, then fisted. He felt the bite in his scalp and it transmitted straight through his body to his cock. Hunger grew. The burn became scorching. Searing him with urgent need. He pressed kisses over her belly, wanting them to go deep, deep enough for his child to feel loved. To know he or she was wanted by him.

He kissed his way down her injured leg, tongue moving over the raw ridges as gently as possible, and then back up the inside of her thigh. He lifted her leg and put it over his shoulder so his head was cradled on her good thigh.