His eyes on hers in the mirror, he bent his head and brushed a kiss over the puncture marks on her shoulder. Her heart stuttered and her breasts tingled. She moistened her lower lip. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. His unruly, dark hair brushed her back, a sweep of silken strands that caused a flutter deep in her core. His mouth, featherlight, moved down the first rake mark. Small butterfly kisses, so soft and barely there that she held her breath, afraid of missing the sensation.

His hands moved under her arms on either side of her, slowly sliding down the sides of her breasts, so gently over her rib cage to her narrow waist where his fingers bit in possessively. All the while his mouth continued to distribute soft kisses down each terrible rake mark. Wherever his mouth went, the pain seemed to subside just a little.

He was so tender she felt the burn of tears. How could he touch her like that? How could he stand to put his lips on those rigid puckers of red, mottled flesh complete with stitch marks? She stood frozen, unable to move, mesmerized by the sight of his darker skin against hers. By the way his fingers at her waist made the statement that she belonged to him.

Her heart pounded, hurting her chest. Her breasts heaved, drawing her eye. He murmured softly in Spanish against her painful skin, the touch of his lips drawing out the fire, the language beautiful, even hypnotizing.

Elijah took his time, even when her body trembled and she drew in ragged breaths. He kissed his way down to the small of her back, crouching low, and then, in the mirror, she saw him moving around to her side. His head was level with her panties, the little boy shorts that cupped her rounded cheeks and rode low on her hips.

His fingers curled in the stretchy band. “You shouldn’t be wearing these, mi corazon. They’ll aggravate that wound. The doctor told you he wanted you to expose these stitches to the air. No more covering up like this.”

She cleared her throat. “I can’t go around naked.” She had no choice but to drop her hand to his shoulder to steady herself or she would have fallen face-first right into the mirror.

“Of course you can. No one is going to see you.” There was a growl to his voice, as if having someone else see her was a sin. Not him, she realized, he expected to see her. He took it for granted that she was going to move in with him and stay with him because his child might be growing inside her.