‘I want you to see me, Brianna. Feel what you do to me and know that I appreciate you more than you know.’
Her mouth dropped open in wordless wonder. Unable to help himself, he kissed her again. Then all too soon the climax that had been building inexorably surged with brutal force. He spread her thighs wider and pumped hard and fast inside her.
Her cry of ecstasy echoed his own minutes later as he came in a torrent of dizzying pleasure.
He waited until their breaths had returned to normal before he brushed aside her hair and looked closely at the tattoo. Slowly, he let his finger drift over it, telling himself he’d imagined it, when she stiffened.
‘This is interesting...’
The invitation to confess was blatant.
But Brianna couldn’t open that can of worms. Not after she’d already opened so much of herself that she was sure Sakis could see straight through her by now. God, how had she imagined that she could just live in this moment, satisfy the clawing need then walk away?
With just a handful of words, Sakis had split her heart wide open.
I want you to see me... You’re my anchor, Brianna... I appreciate you more than you know.
‘Brianna?’ The demand was more powerful.
She scrambled to find a reasonable explanation. ‘I got it after I left my...my last job...’ She stopped, her heart hammering as she realised that she was highly emotional from their love-making and really shouldn’t be talking.
‘Most people take a holiday between jobs. But you got a tattoo?’ Scarily, his curiosity had deepened. ‘And a symbolic one, at that. Did you feel as if you were sinking?’ His fingers drifted over the words again, and despite her roiling emotions she shivered with fresh need.
She forced a laugh. ‘I guess I’m not most people.’ Stop talking now. Stop. Stop. Stop! ‘And yes, I felt like I was sinking. For a while I lost my way.’ God, no...
His fingers touched the phoenix then he brushed it with his mouth. ‘But then you triumphed.’
She let out a shaky breath. ‘Y-yes.’
‘Hmm, we’re agreed on one thing—you’re not most people. You’re exquisitely unique.’ His hand drifted down, paused over her breast then trailed lower to touch the scar on her hip. ‘And this?’
Her breath caught anew. How had she thought he wouldn’t notice? He’d spent an inordinate amount of time exploring every inch of her body, much to her shameless delight. Of course Sakis’s astute gaze would’ve caught the slightly puckered flesh where the sharp, white-hot lance of the inmate’s blade had stabbed deep and ruptured her spleen.
‘I...I was attacked. It was a mugging.’ That at least was the truth. What she couldn’t confess was where she’d been when it had happened.
His fingers stilled then he swore hard. ‘When?’
‘Two years ago.’
He cupped her jaw. ‘Was your attacker caught?’
Brianna shut her eyes against the probing of his. ‘Yes, they were caught. And there was even some semblance of justice.’ If you could call six months’ solitary confinement for a prisoner already serving life ‘justice’.