Harlequin Romantic Suspense April 2021

managed, grabbing his discarded jeans and removing a condom from his wallet. Watching as he tugged it over his magnificent arousal, her mouth went dry.
Dizzy with desire, she reached for him again the instant he’d finished sheathing himself. His dark eyes smoldered as he swept his gaze over her, even as he murmured her name like it was a prayer.
Somehow, they made it to her bed, falling onto the sheets, their bodies still tangled together.
He took her then, sweeping her beneath him with one simple motion, both familiar and thrillingly new. The engorged tip of him pressed against her. Ready, warm and wet, she opened herself to him. Micha had finally come home.
“I never forgot,” she gasped as he entered her, filling her completely. The feel of his hard body, both familiar and foreign, electrified her, sending her into a kind of pleasure overdrive. Micha. She writhed beneath him, urging him to move, but maddeningly he held himself completely still, tension running through every muscle in his body.
“Hold still,” he managed to order. “Please. If you don’t, this just might be over before it even begins.”
This statement, coming from a man who’d always been able to take his time leisurely bringing her to pleasure, drove her wild. She could scarcely catch her breath, but with her heart pounding, she managed to do as he’d asked and not move. Though she could do nothing to stop the little pulses her body gave at him so deep inside her.
And then he began to move.
Pure and explosive pleasure, sweet agony of the kind she’d never thought she’d experience again. She saw colors, heard music, felt her heart expand even as her body melted. She could no longer control her cries of pleasure, matching his thrusts with wild abandon.
As she gave herself over to her release, she felt him catch his breath as he did the same. This at least hadn’t changed.
They held each other as their shuddering subsided, she clinging to him as if he might vanish in the space of the next gulp of air she allowed into her lungs. And he...he held on to her with a similar sort of desperate possessiveness. She traced her fingers over him, exploring while no longer in the throes of passion. His muscular body bore more scars, a tangled web of jagged lines that surely had something to do with his disappearance. She’d hear the story behind them soon, though not now, not yet. She wasn’t ready.
Neither spoke. She, because she didn’t want to ruin the fragile peace of the moment with reality. He, most likely because if he did he might have to explain. And right now, she really didn’t want to hear it.
Her phone chimed, the calendar alert reminding her she’d agreed to meet Harry for dinner in less than an hour. Just like that, her insides twisted into a knot.
“You should go,” she told Micha, trying not to look at him in all his naked, masculine splendor. “I have plans tonight.”
“With him?” No inflection in his voice, just the question, asked so quietly.
Miserable now, she nodded. “Yes.”
With a sinfully languid movement reminiscent of a big cat stretching in the sun, he got up from her bed and sauntered toward her bathroom, detouring into the hall to scoop up his clothes on the way. “I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”
Despite everything, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from his naked rear. She’d always loved his body, surprisingly graceful despite his sheer size. Now his skin looked like something she was familiar with from her work as a nurse. She’d spent a few of her clinical rotations in the burn unit. She’d seen skin grafts that looked like this, and horrific burns that had eventually healed, leaving their mark behind.
She ached to run her fingers over those scars, to kiss them to show she still found him beautiful and sexy, and always would.
No. She couldn’t even let her thoughts go there. She needed to shower and get ready to meet Harry.
And probably ruin forever what had been a burgeoning relationship.
Micha emerged from her bathroom a moment later, fully dressed. His shaggy hair even appeared to have fallen back into its former artful disarray. He looked, she thought grimly, both the same and completely different.
She followed him down the hall toward the front door. He reached for the knob to let himself out, but at the last moment he turned.
“Don’t go to meet Harry tonight,” he said, letting her see the naked emotion in his eyes. “Stay here with me and talk. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
Heaven help her, she caught herself swaying toward him. At the last moment, she caught herself and shook her head. “Like I said earlier, I’ve moved on. I’ve started over, made a life for myself. His name is Harry,” she pointed out. “We bonded over our shared grief. He lost his wife and daughter in a car accident around the same time I lost you. I’m not going to bail on him when he’s been there for me all this time.”
A flash of something—jealousy, maybe—crossed his face. “Are you planning to tell him about this? About...” He swallowed. “What just happened between us?”
She lifted her chin, letting him see some of the bitterness she felt. “I am. I’m not going to lie to him, Micha. All I can do is admit to my mistake and hope he forgives me.”
“Mistake.” Expression anguished, he stared at her. Spotting a pad of paper and a pen on the table near the door, he jotted down his number. “Call me if you change your mind or just want to talk.”
Slowly, she nodded. Then he let himself out the door without another word.
The instant it closed behind him, she instinctively locked the dead bolt. Devastated, she fought the urge to double over and cry. Refusing to allow herself to think, she spun around and marched toward the shower. She needed to wash every last bit of Micha