She sat up as Caine undressed down to his badly ruined birthday suit, revealing another layer of what was so fucking ugly about him. His dick went soft in anticipation of her revulsion. He’d seen it on others’ faces before, despite that his profile on the boards was brutally, graphically honest about everything he was and wasn’t.
Finally he met her wide eyes. “You can change your mind.”
Emma shifted to her knees as her gaze ran over him, no doubt taking in everything. On his front, the scars, the cigarette burns, the tattoos, the piercings. And then he turned and gave her his back. Where fire had ravaged the right side with second- and third-degree burns from the bottom of his ribs to the lower part of his scalp. He’d inked parts of that skin, which was whiter and stretched tighter from the skin grafts and surgeries, but not all of it.
“Come closer.” Warily, he stood in front of where she now knelt. And then she wrapped her arms around his ass and laid the side of her face against his lower belly. “I want you inside me.”
The words hit him like a shock wave, nearly taking him right off his feet. His heart tripped over itself. His cock grew. The backs of his eyes stung. Blinking up at the ceiling, his hand fell to Emma’s hair, the strokes against the silky blond the only thing he could manage for a long moment.
And then, Jesus, her tongue bathed his erection. Caine nearly doubled over from the unexpected goodness of it, especially since his reaction apparently fueled her on. She gave another, wetter, lick along his whole length and then took him inside her mouth.
“Em,” he rasped, peering down at the sight of her on her knees, at his feet, with his cock in her mouth. Both of his hands fell to her head. She peered up at him, so much emotion in those blue eyes. But he couldn’t guess at it. He could only feel. It was a sweet, sweet torture, especially as his hips wanted to take over, wanted to swing free.
How is this happening?
Her arms smoothed up his back, her left hand lightly caressing his burn scar before she pulled away, her hand and her mouth. “Can I touch your scars? I mean, will it hurt if I do? I want to touch you everywhere, but I don’t want to hurt you.”
He did go to his knees then. Caine took her face in his hands and kissed her like she was water and he’d been thirsting to death all his life. Occasionally, someone asked him if his back still hurt him. Usually after sex as he dressed to leave. He always said no, even though the phantom pain caused by destroyed nerves sometimes hurt so much he couldn’t sleep. But no one had ever asked his permission or sought his guidance the way Emma just had. “You can touch me,” he said around the edge of the kiss, “but I know how fucking ugly it is.”
She gasped. “Caine, no, I think you’re—”
“I wish I had so much more to offer you,” he went on.
“You’re amazing, Caine. I want to explore every inch of you.”
He growled. “Don’t lie to me.”
Emma reared back. “I’m not. You need to hear me. Believe me.” She pulled off her sweatshirt and the little cotton T-shirt beneath it. And then pushed down the thin sleep shorts and yellow satin panties until she was naked too.
And God. Goddamn. She was so pretty and perfect that Caine could hardly look at her. But he did look. At the tumble of her blond waves against her fair skin. At the erect nipples on her small breasts. At how the indent of her waist flared out at her hips. At the dark-blond triangle he’d seen before. He didn’t deserve her, but Christ help him, he wanted her. His cock jutted out between them, arousal coating the tip.
She laid herself out in front of him, knees bent, legs parted. “Let me show you that you’re enough just as you are, Caine. Be with me.”
Chapter 12
Emma’s heart felt like it might explode right out of her chest. From the ache of the way Caine had revealed himself to her and the injuries he’d endured. From the anticipation of being with him and the hope that he might believe her body even more than her words. From the expansive warmth of realizing that she was in deeper with this man than she’d admitted to herself.
Way deeper. How had that happened so fast?
“I want you,” she said, refusing to analyze it in that moment. It just was, and for now, that was all that mattered. “I have condoms upstairs in the bathroom medicine cabinet unless you have some?”
“I got it,” he said, reaching for his jeans. He withdrew his wallet and then a condom packet from within. Watching him roll it on sent a shot of electricity through her belly. His cock was long and curved with a thick head. He took himself in hand, stretched out over her, and looked her in the eye. “I want you, too, but it would kill me if you regretted this.”