The strength of him was overbearing. Foreboding.
And I was sure I’d never seen a more brutally beautiful man.
But just like his face, scars were etched into his skin, lanced across his chest, one slashed in a long gash across his side. Some deep. Others shallow.
All significant.
Both of his arms were completely covered in ink—colors and swirls and more beauty that spoke of…pain. Bleeding crosses, indecipherable words, and hidden innuendo. One arm depicted a darkened sky, the night infinite. Eternal.
My attention was drawn to the mermaid on his left upper arm. Her face was fierce and evil and somehow angelic. She sat on a rock next to a raging sea swishing her tail. A pocket watch was held gingerly in the scoop of her hands. The watch appeared to be disintegrating, slipping through her fingers, like sands of an hourglass falling through the cracks.
But his torso was bare, except for one tattoo that ran down his side. It was a monkey. A green monkey clearly supposed to be some sort of stuffed animal. A child’s toy. The artwork was crafted to appear fluffy, the arms and legs long and lanky. The face was white with plain black dots for the eyes and nose, the smiling mouth a black seam.
But it was turned upside down, bent backward, the arms and legs flailing, as if it were tumbling in a free fall.
It left no illusion of a chance to be saved.
The childlike simplicity of it was gut-wrenching.
And I knew. And I knew. And I knew.
“You see me, Shea?” he asked again, fisted hands at his sides, his voice tight. There was no missing the sharp edge of vulnerability.
“Yes,” I whispered, stepping closer, letting my fingertips trail across his collarbone, down the strength of his chest that jumped beneath my touch, to the monkey falling at his side.
Where there’s beauty, there’s also pain.
A big, callused hand came up to cup the side of my neck, to steal my breath, because it was sweet and completely unexpected. He tilted my chin back with his thumb, his fingernail scratching up and down the hollow of my neck as he stared at me, the brush of it stirring me up more.
Falling.
Falling.
Falling.
“Tried to stay away from you,” he murmured, the song of that velvety voice wrapping around me like a full-body embrace. “Tried. But there wasn’t one goddamned thing I could do to get you out of my head.”
Remorse flashed through his eyes. “Don’t wanna hurt you.”
We both knew it was already too late.
My face was turned up to his, and he leaned in, slowly, his full, full lips parting just enough to catch my bottom lip between them, tugging softly, letting go.
“Shea,” he whispered.
The skin tingled, and a rash of chills skated down my spine. Keeping hold of my neck, Baz followed them with his opposite hand, his palm running flat as it pressed firm into the small of my back, all the way down to my ass where he gripped me tightly, pulled me up close against his cock where it urged against my belly.
A short gasp escaped me.
Like the sound was fuel, heavy hands found my hips, and he spun me fast and pushed me up against the wall next to my door. I hit it with a desirous grunt, and I clung to his shoulders as my knees went weak.
He captured my mouth with a blinding assault of lips and tongue and teeth. His tongue was wet and warm. Demanding. Just as demanding as his fingers that kneaded into my hips, palms sliding down the back of my thighs, trailing back up. As he did, he dragged one of my legs up and then the other until I was tacked against the wall beneath his weight, my legs begging around his waist.
And God, I begged.
He smiled against my mouth as he threaded his fingers with mine and pinned my hands above my head. Rocking against me, he leveled me with darkened eyes. “Say it again.”
“Please,” I whispered madly, my back arching from the wall, all coherent thoughts slipping away and every kind of irrational, foolish idea rushing in to take their place—all supplied by the euphoric feel of his cock rubbing at the denim between my thighs.
It’d been too, too long. Yet somehow just the right amount of time. This moment for him. This moment for me. For us.
Even though it would crush me, I knew it had to be.
A groan rumbled deep in his chest, and he lifted me from the wall, hiking me farther up his chest. He began to carry me across the room. One hand was tangled in the mass of my hair, bunching it up, the other an iron band around my waist.
He laid me in the center of my bed. My chest took a stuttered heave when he stepped back and looked down at me, my knees rocking with unsettled nerves, my booted feet propped flat on the bed.
Staring down over me, he just stood there, an impenetrable expression hardening his face. Unreadable, yet anything but blank. Like he was processing a million thoughts, while I didn’t know much of anything except how I was aching, how each second he wasn’t touching me he was driving me closer to going mad.