He looked equal parts dangerous and sweet, kneeling at my feet with the cockiest grin imaginable. He looked down at my toes, painted bubble-gum pink with teeny red polka dots, my left foot still resting on his knee.

His gaze followed his hands as he ran them slowly back up my leg, wrapping his long, tanned fingers around my calf, kneading the muscle there. Coaxing my leg to butterfly out slightly, he slid his hands higher up my leg, one holding on to my knee while the other spanned across my thigh, my fair Irish skin a strong contrast to his darker hands. Some of his knuckles looked like they’d been broken before. Imperfectly perfect, and I let out the softest sigh when I saw how incredible they looked on my leg.

He leaned down, dropped a wet kiss on the top of my kneecap, his finger tracing the edge of a scar there. “A brawl?”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “With my brother. I was seven; he was nine. I’d stolen Darth Vader. He had every right to try and retake it with his lightsaber.” He smiled into my skin as I continued, dropping kisses all around. “Scars are like a map, you know? They’re little clues, hints about the person who wears them.”

“Maybe I’ll learn something about this gorgeous girl with the great”—he paused for effect—“big ass.”

For someone who didn’t talk much, when he did, he chose his words well. But before I could ask him anything else, the kisses he’d been languishing across my knee began to move farther up my thigh. His breath was warm on my skin, making it pebble, and that same low sound came from the back of his throat, making me shiver once more. He gripped my leg harder, seeming to ground himself in the touch.

He looked up at me, and now I was the one sweeping his hair back from his face.

“Are we really doing this?” he asked, his voice the slightest bit shaky. Was he thinking the same things I was a moment before? Too fast, too soon, too perfect, too yes exactly we are doing this?

As I looked into his eyes, I knew I wanted this, right now.

“Some girls would say no, it’s too soon, will he respect me tomorrow, what will he think of me . . . all thoughts that should be going through my head right now.”

“What is going through your head right now?” he asked, grasping my bottom in his hands. He tugged me closer to him, one hand spread across the small of my back. I moved my foot to the ground, feeling the hay slipping between my toes. He planted two kisses at the tops of my thighs, high up where any thigh gap had bid bye-bye a million years ago.

“Honestly?”

“I think now would be the perfect time for honesty, don’t you?” he asked, nudging me closer, his nose tickling at my lace.

“So honesty means I’ve got to admit that I’ve daydreamed about exactly this—with you on your knees in front of me.”

His deep chuckle signaled that I was right on track.

“And I’m thinking that in that daydream, you’re telling me that I’m beautiful.”

He bit me, hard, on the inside of my left thigh.

“You are beautiful.” He pushed my legs apart with his broad shoulders. “Especially now, with your hair all messed and you in your panties and that turtleneck, looking all fifties pinup girl.”

“That was the last time a girl with curves had it so good.” I sighed, throwing my arms over my head and arching my back, stretching and feeling my body beginning to go all gooey and boneless.

“You better tell me the rest of that daydream,” he said into my skin.

I closed my eyes, overwhelmed with the sensations running wild. A sharp smack to my behind brought me back.

“Ah-ah, Pinup Girl, don’t go getting lazy on me.” My head snapped back to look at him in surprise. He reached up and brought my hands down to my hips. “Take your panties off.”

Oh.

Chapter 11

Covering my hands with his, we both slipped them down down down until they were at my feet, and once more he gently lifted each foot in turn, sliding my panties off and laying them carefully to the side. A gentleman. His eyes following the action, only now did he look at me. And I watched as his eyes took on an even deeper tone, narrowing, lids heavy. His mouth parted, and his tongue snuck out to dab carefully at his lower lip, literally licking his lips as he watched me standing there, bare. The slowest of grins appeared, breaking across his face like a sunrise, the happiest, lustiest sunrise I’d ever seen.

And then his gaze found mine once more, and he rose, slowly standing until he was positively towering over me. My back to the stall, I stared up at him, his frame crowding me against the slats, and I could feel my turtleneck snag on the rough wood. He tugged me against him, all strong hands and entangling arms and then his lips were on mine again, and I had to hold my breath, it was so fiery, so fierce, so fantastically frantic.

A switch had been thrown, and now we both scrambled at each other, my hands digging in, trying to find purchase on his ridiculous shoulders. As he kissed me, he explored, his fingertips dancing up and under my sweater, then back down again, knees pushing my own wide.

I tugged my head back, my lips leaving his in a wrench that made him growl, but I wanted to see his face as he touched me for the first time and . . . oh, there it was.

He growled again as I groaned, his fingers finding me already slippery and wet and ready for him. I tugged at his shirt, needing to see him, needing to see more of him, but his hands, his hands! Those rough, callused fingers were gentle and strong at the same time, swirling and twirling and finding the spot that would spiral me out of my head.

But if I was going out of my head, I needed to see him first. I pulled at his shirt, and he finally left me long enough to tug it over his head, and my eyes widened as I took him in.

Those tattoos—the ones I’d been staring at for weeks at the farmers’ market, the ones that peeked out from under his T-shirts and trailed down his arms—were just the tip of the iceberg. Because underneath it all, where it was just Oscar and skin, was a world of paint. Bright, angry colors bloomed across his chest, each pectoral its own canvas for the art that had been exquisitely inked onto his skin. Bold lines, panels of images and symbols and here and there a word. A moon. The stars. An enormous oak tree stretched across his abdomen and curled upward over his heart, the branches curving in, surrounding a bloodred sun.

Beautiful. But before I could admire him properly, he picked me up, wrapped my legs around his waist, and pressed me up against the stall once more. Holding my weight entirely in one hand, he slipped the other down in between us again and began to circle my clit, low and slow and maddeningly perfect. I slapped at the slats, he circled faster. I cried out, he dipped lower. One finger, then two, slid inside me, driving me, my hips beginning to thrust, riding his hand as his thumb pressed down . . .