“As you wish,” he said with a laugh, coming around to lie beside me. We reached for each other at the same time, our noses colliding in our haste to kiss each other again. We both leaned back, laughing.

I rubbed my nose. “Och. It’s just a flesh wound,” I quoted from one of our favorites, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

“She turned me into a newt,” he said in his best imitation of John Cleese, the actor from that same movie.

“A newt?”

He smiled. “I got better.”

I laughed. “Come here, you hot geek god, you.”

He kissed me and pulled back. “Mm. Yep, you really are a witch. And you’ve completely beguiled me. Toad curse and all.”

“Did you turn into a toad while I was gone?”

“I was as miserable as a toad without you.”

I stared for a moment and then started laughing so hard I snorted. “That is so completely nonsexy.”

“Unlike that snort. That snort right there is utterly sexy.”

I stuck my tongue out at him and he wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me up against him. I put my hand on his chest, splayed out my fingers across the solid muscle. “Speaking of utterly sexy…” I said, and my hand flew up and quickly unbuttoned half the buttons. “Oops. Your shirt fell open.”

He leaned down and captured my lips with his, his mouth sealing over mine with more insistence, more hunger than before. My heartbeat was a footrace inside my chest, galloping in turns and stumbling in others.

“Oops,” he murmured in between urgent follow-ups. “My mouth fell on yours.”

“Wow, we are so clumsy,” I breathed against his lips.

He continued to kiss me, pressing my head back against the pillow. His hand cupped my jaw before his finger traced its way back to my ear and then down along the side of my throat. He drew the chain of my necklace aside, the compass flopping on the bed beside my neck. His touch was scalding hot and ice cold at the same time. I sucked in a breath.

His finger trailed across my collarbone and landed on the top button of my dress. Slowly, our mouths separated and he stared into my eyes. My breath faltered as he slipped the button through the buttonhole. I was at once mesmerized by his touch and utterly afraid for him to see what was underneath. And he clearly knew that. Pulling back and propping on one elbow, he didn’t stop. His finger slid down slowly across my skin to the second button. Before I could react or protest, that one slipped open as well.

But he wasn’t looking at what he was doing. Instead, his eyes were fixed on mine. In minutes, the dress was unbuttoned past my waist. Adam pressed his finger against the notch at the base of my neck and slowly trailed it down across my chest, over my bra, between my breasts and down my stomach, until it landed at my navel. There, he traced a circle around it and a fire ignited in my belly, my body burning for his. A long breath of air hissed between my teeth as I concentrated on that one, simple touch.

His hand came up again to my shoulder. And in spite of the burning arousal, cold fear gripped my throat as he slowly slipped the strap of my sundress, and my bra, off of my shoulder. My breathing froze and I put my hand over his, stopping him before he brought the straps low enough to expose my scars.

He froze and our gazes held for endless minutes. I was sure he could see the fear, the uncertainty in mine. I saw the determined passion in his. Slowly, gently, he slipped his hand out from under mine, took my wrist and pulled my hand away from where I had stopped him. I didn’t resist as he brought my hand down to my side, slipping it under my hips and pinning it there so I wouldn’t be tempted to use it again to stop him.

My heartbeat was icy in my throat as his hand returned to what it had been doing. His other hand, as a precaution, gripped my free hand inside of it. All I could do was stare into those dark eyes, my breath coming faster as he succeeded in slipping the straps over my left arm. He pulled that side of my bra down and I was completely exposed to him. Hot shame bathed my face but Adam still hadn’t looked there. He was still studying my face, pinning my eyes with his dark ones. Then he shifted so that his leg pinned mine down and with another tug on the other half of my bra, I was naked from the waist up.

Then he lowered his eyes and looked at me, and part of me wanted to curl up and die. Despite having gained back a bit of the weight I’d lost during chemo, I was still too thin. My breasts, as a result, were smaller than before and the left one was still maimed and ugly, the angry red scars jagging over the skin, black dots tattooed across it. Slowly, as if afraid I might bolt even though I was pinned down, he raised his hand and with a butterfly-light touch, he traced his fingers over the raised scar. I shivered under him.