I meant to head to the bedroom, but my reflection caught my eye as I passed the vanity. I still hadn’t looked at my face. Honestly, I’d been avoiding it. Now, I couldn’t look away. My cheek was purple and angry. A bluish tint had spread up under my eye and even over to my nose. Three darker black-blue marks sat along my bone, distinct outlines of his knuckles. I raised my finger to trace the edges, testing the pain.

We needed a picture of it. I knew that much. Evidence.

But I didn’t care much about practical tasks at the moment. I was swept up in something else. The ugly. That as much as I wanted to forget about the person who gave me half my DNA, as much as I wanted to ignore that he ever existed in my life, he’d always be marked on me. Even when the bruises faded, he’d still be there. He’d still be the source of my ugly.

JC slipped in to face me, blocking me from my reflection. “This is where I’ll start.” He took my hand from my face and held it in his. Then he leaned in and kissed along the bruises, carefully, tenderly. “Here,” he said between kisses, “he touched you here. And here.” He didn’t stop until he’d covered every tinted spot of flesh.

When he was done, he trailed his lips across the bridge of my nose to my other cheek. “How about here? Did he ever hit you here?”

I nodded, and he placed a kiss there.

“And here?” as he moved under my eye.

“Yes.”

Another kiss. “And here?” Above my brow.

“Yes.”

So it went until he’d covered my skin from my forehead to my jawline. Each gentle kiss a gesture of love. Each “and here” an acknowledgment of pain. My face was wet from my tears as he moved down my neck, and while I knew that he’d eventually press his lips against every part of my body, there was something else I needed. I needed life breathed into me in a big way. Needed my system jolted.

“JC.” I waited until he’d lifted his eyes to mine. “Be rough with me. Please. I need to know I’m real. I need to know you’re real.”

He hesitated a moment before breaking into a wicked grin. “Thank you, Gwen, for telling me that. You know how hot it makes me when you trust me with your needs.”

He proceeded to show me, claiming my lips like a predator, devouring me. Our mouths still locked, he picked me up and spun me around. He set me down on the counter and loosened my towel. This time as he moved his mouth down my body, he didn’t ask where I’d been hurt. Instead, he covered all of me. Every inch. Nipping and licking and sucking. He left hickeys on my chest. Bites that would later bruise covered my breasts. He kissed me and he marked me.

He covered me with love.

I was already moaning and writhing when his lips found my clit. My core was tight, high-strung from all his attention. So when he sank to his knees, his nails digging painfully into my thighs, and sucked the swollen bud of nerves into his mouth, I immediately found myself on the brink of orgasm. “Fuck, JC. I’m going to come.”

“Good girl. Tell me more.” He tipped my hips back and threw my legs over his shoulders, opening me wider to him.

I put my arms back and braced myself on my elbows, searching for the words I knew he liked to hear while he pleasured me. “It’s building. I’m getting tighter. God, it feels so good. You make me feel so good. You make me feel so loved.”

Fingers plunged into my wet center. The second he hit the sensitive spot against my wall, I went over. I cried out his name, my legs tightening and shaking while my whole body—every nerve ending—ignited and flared with warmth.

My vision was still clearing when he brought his fingers out and used my slick juices to slide a finger into my ass. I was tight and snug, but I opened up easily to him. With his mouth still adoring my clit, and the rush from my first orgasm still clinging to me, the brush of his fingertip against my tender tissues set another climax gathering.

I surrendered then. Completely. Totally, letting the waves crash over me, through me. He was going to love me big, and I was going to resist, but here, under the ministrations of his mouth and tongue and fingers, I could let go. Here, I could let him love me whole and entirely. Here, his love was full, and I knew how to accept it.

***

When I was limp and boneless, JC carried me to the bed. “How are you? Can you take more?”

Despite the two overwhelming orgasms that had wrecked through me, he had yet to fill me, and I wanted that. “I can take more.”

“Good.” He dropped his towel to the floor and my eyes flew to his erection standing thick and ready. Just the sight of it sent another stirring through my veins. It hit me then, how lucky I was to have found him. This creature who could care about my body and my spirit in equal measures. This man who could fuck me and fall for me too. It was absolutely fucking incredible.

Before joining me in bed, he turned the lights down and messed with his phone until music started playing. “Is this okay?”

“I love Maroon 5.”

“Listen to the lyrics.”

I’d heard it before, but I listened now as JC turned me to my side and slid behind me. The words were about being scared, scared to love. And the singer asks his woman to say yes, to take a chance on their relationship. The title repeated over and over in the refrain—My Heart is Open.

Damn, it could have been my song for JC.

Was he trying to tell me he understood how I felt? He was always so in tune with me—it wouldn’t surprise me.

He didn’t explain the choice. As the song played, he kissed along my back, trailing his lips underneath my shoulders and along my scar there. His cock pressed into the crack of my ass, hot and hard. His hand curled around to my chest and squeezed my breast, then pinched my nipple to the point of pain. I’d thought I was spent, but with the music and his twitching erection and the way he was worshipping me, glorifying me, a new hum began to sing between my legs.

The song was over by the time he’d covered every inch of my backside, but after a second of silence, it started up again.

He rolled me over to my back and nestled between my legs. His cock pressed against my center, and I squirmed, trying to get it in the place I wanted it. But JC held me still.

“I heard it today,” he said, his eyes finding mine. “In the cab ride from the airport to the club. I downloaded it immediately. I realized it’s everything I want to be with you. I want to tell you yes. I want to be here for you until you tell me yes back. Even with the things I can’t share, Gwen, even with the words I can’t say yet, my heart is open.”