Rescuing the Bad Boy (Second Chance #2)(48)

Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them back. She refused to cry. She would not go to him and treat him like a kicked puppy. He would never stand for it.

Straight through.

Stomping from the dining room to the kitchen, she followed the direction he’d disappeared. In the utility room, she found him bent, shirtless, half in the shower, scrubbing paint from his arm.

Tanned, rounded biceps flexed as he washed away remnants of paint in the streaming water. Veins stood out from his skin. An arrow tattoo ran the length of the inside of one forearm leading to the hand marked with the black bird, and the star on his finger.

She couldn’t look away. He was glorious.

He tossed his mass of black hair out of his face and noticed her standing there. More ink covered his shoulder, a pattern of waves and swirls she couldn’t make out the details of from here.

When she’d asked before about the new tattoo on his arm, he’d mentioned how rocks caused scars. Had he meant the tattoos covered scars caused from his work? Or other scars…

No.

Her eyes slid over all the tattoos covering his arms and hands. His shoulders. His flank. There were so many. Did they cover scars from an abusive father? A man who was not a man at all.

A monster.

The puzzle pieces slid together, and suddenly she understood why Donovan was the way he was. Disconnected, angry, short-fused.

But… what was he now? What was he to her? Right now he looked nothing short of beautiful. Like a wounded animal backed into a corner, growling whenever someone nice got too close. Because what did he know of close? What did he know of nice?

What had he known of virgins?

The kinds of girls she saw him leave with at the restaurant weren’t nice. They sure as hell weren’t virginal. Sofie remembered the way it hurt to see him go home with girls who didn’t give a crap about him when she cared so very much.

No, she wasn’t that kind of girl. But he’d gone home with her.

The blurry edges of the past narrowed and focused.

Unaware, he continued scrubbing his arm under the running water from the showerhead. He tipped his chin to direct her upstairs.

“I have a T-shirt if you want to clean up and change. There’s an attached bath in my…”

He trailed off, and the reason he trailed off was because Sofie whipped her shirt over her head. Stripping herself bare the way he had a moment ago when he told a story about a boy who had deserved compassion, not closed fists.

She swiped the paint from her arm and fingers and dropped the soiled shirt to the floor.

Standing in her bra and pants before him, she asked in a small voice, “Do me?”

Her request hung in the air between them for exactly half a second. Donovan slammed his fist into the faucet to shut off the water and reached for her with one dripping wet arm. He pulled her body flush against him, his mouth hitting hers hard.

Her eyes closed in relief—in sweet, sweet bliss. She ran her hands over his naked chest, his muscles, his tattooed skin. This kiss wasn’t as desperate as before. It was as if an understanding had passed between them because of what he’d told her. Now that she knew, she saw him in a new light.

Coming into the light.

Just a little. Just enough.





Stop.

Dammit, stop.

Donovan ignored the warnings in his head. Now that he was drinking Sofie in, her warm half-naked body pressed against his, there was no stopping. There was nothing he wanted more than to taste her, to feel her against him. To feel the noises she made when he turned her on vibrating along his rib cage.

There’d be no more telling himself how he didn’t deserve her, or reminding himself he was paying penance. There was only Sofie and there was only him and there was only the scorching heat burning between them. The same heat that had burned between them the last time he had her.

The last time he’d had anyone.

To say remaining celibate hadn’t been easy would be the understatement of the decade. His only method of survival was burying the sexual frustration in his work. Which was why he was a damn good mason. Why he had a waiting list of clients who paid handsomely for him to build custom fireplaces up and down the East Coast. There were no women pulling his hyper-focus from the one thing he did morning, noon, and night.

Like monks who made the best beer in the world, Donovan was a man without the distraction of sex.

Was.

With his tongue in Sofie’s mouth, and her hands climbing his body, his extended bout of celibacy was about to become a memory. If having her meant he couldn’t wrangle enough brain cells to construct another fireplace ever, so be it.

He wanted her. Only her. The dam had burst, and there was no holding back the flood.

He reached around her back and unclasped her bra. She continued kissing him, running her lips over his, making him forget his name, or what anyone’s lips had tasted like before hers.

“Scampi.”

“Yes,” she said, kissing him again and again. “That’s going to be my answer no matter what you ask.”

He hadn’t planned on asking her anything, but he’d take it. He needed a yes.

God, how he needed a yes.

He ran the straps of her bra down her arms, before tossing it to the floor. He took in every inch of her smooth, bare skin like a man savoring his last sunset before going underground forever. Fingers following the path of his eyes, he ran them over her rib cage, up the sides of those fabulous tits, and down over pink, supple nipples.