Chapter 18
MAREN
For half a second after he says those words, I forget how to breathe.
Knox’s hands are already on me, strong and steady and certain as he tugs me to the edge of the counter so that the best bits of us line up perfectly.
His lips press to mine. “Been thinking about you all fucking day.”
The sudden closeness of him sends a rush of heat through my chest, every part of me sparking alive again.
I want to tell him that I’ve been the same. Mention the number of times I’ve wrapped my hand around the back of my neck, just to capture the ghost of a memory of how his hand had felt.
My memory served me wrong.
It was more intimate than I remembered.
My tongue meets his desperately; I can’t get enough of him.
One hand settles on the back of my neck, the other squeezing my hip tightly.
And my brain flashes between the reality of him touching me again and the places he took me the night of the storm.
Everything about Knox envelops me. His size, the way his broad shoulders cover me, the warmth and scent of him, and the way his hands hold me tightly.
The sleeves of his shirt are folded up, revealing his deliciously muscled and veiny forearms. And those fingers he used on me in the shower, the ones clad in solid brass rings, have the ability to find the right places to touch me to make me come without any kind of instruction.
But as much as I want to fall into whatever this is with him, there is a tiny voice that’s getting louder and louder until I can’t ignore it. I swallow hard. “This is probably going to make things worse.”
My voice is far from steady.
Knox doesn’t step back. If anything, he leans closer. The hand on my hip slides up the side of my waist, beneath the polo shirt, until his thumb brushes the edge of my rib cage, making me shiver. “Probably,” Knox says. “Still waiting for that begging.”
My heart thuds. He smells so good. Clean soap, leather, and the faint salt air that seems to etch his skin.
I know what he’s doing. He’s giving me the out. If I don’t beg, we don’t do this. Because if I’m the one doing the pleading, it’s not him crossing the line, but me.
My fingers curl into the leather of his cut. “You’re manipulating me.”
“Is it working?” His mouth curves slightly, but his eyes are serious. His thumb strokes my cheek, runs across my lips. “Maren,” he says softly, and something twists in my chest.
“You said that if things were different…”
His gaze drops to my lips. “I know what I said.”
I place both my palms on his cheeks. “They’re not different, Knox.”
“No. But I’m having a really hard time convincing myself that any time spent kissing you is a bad idea.”
I laugh softly at the painful accuracy of his statement.
His forehead touches mine, and he presses the tip of his thumb between my lips. I suck on it before biting down gently on the pad. “If you’re trying to rationalize sleeping with me, I think that’s a sure sign we shouldn’t.”
He moves so that our lips are just touching. Not kissing. Just brushing so softly. Heat blooms low in my stomach, and my thighs tighten instinctively around the solid line of his hips.
I squirm a little at the ache between my legs. And he notices, his hand slipping back to my waist.
Of course, he notices.
He glances down between us as he slowly and deliberately grinds his erect cock along the seam of my denim shorts.
It’s slow and delicious. It’s impossible to not imagine what it would feel like if he freed it and slowly nudged it into me.
What it would feel like as he pulsed his cum into me, creating something more than the two of us.
A slow exhale leaves him, and his nose brushes along my cheek. “You realize, if I leave here tonight…” he says, his lips so close to my ear, his breath tickles, causing me to shiver. He pauses to lick the skin.
“If you leave here tonight, what?”
“If I leave here tonight, I’m going to spend the rest of my life wondering what it would have felt like to fuck you.”
My fingers tighten in his cut. “Knox.”
“And,” he continues, his voice rougher as he drags his lips along the line of my jaw, “it feels like a regret I’d rather avoid.”
His mouth finds the sensitive place just beneath my ear, and I gasp.
His hand tightens on my waist at the sound. “Yeah?”
“Don’t—” But the protest about to spill over my lips is crushed when his mouth finds mine.
The kiss isn’t gentle or tentative. It’s hungry. And my body needs it more than the air I breathe.
I can’t pretend any longer that I don’t want this. And perhaps Knox is right. Maybe, one day, I would regret it if we don’t.
I want to know. And not just because of Knox. Because for all I wondered if Knox was using me to get back at my father, there is a small piece of me that wonders if this isn’t my own act of rebellion.
So, I give in and kiss Knox how I want to.
I hitch my legs up higher around his waist and encourage him to grind against me. There is no restraint. Knox groans as he moves his hips against me.
The one thing I don’t do is beg.
His lips move over my face, along my jaw and over my cheek. They switch between heated kisses and gentle nips.
“God, you feel good,” he breathes against my neck.
My hands familiarize myself with the shape of him, running over his broad shoulders, up inside his cut to cup his neck, and into the loops of his jeans when I want to pull him closer.
“Maren,” he says. The sound of my name on his lips makes my stomach drop in a delicious way. “We could just…” His hand slides between my legs, cupping me before pressing his thumb over my clit.
My back arches just as surely as if he’d commanded me to bend it. “What?” I gasp.
“Get it out of our system.”
Six words I was not expecting Knox to say to me. “What?”
“I need to feel you, Maren. It’s driving me insane. Maybe we could just get this out of our system.”
“Is that you pleading?” I ask.
“It’s me being practical. We could keep it quiet. Just the two of us. Until the heat of this has died down between us.”
My fingers tighten on his shoulders as he cups me firmly, pressing up against me. I know if he slid his fingers up the hem of my shorts, he’d find me utterly soaked.
But I still find his solution crazy. “You’re seriously suggesting a secret affair in a town the size of a postage stamp?”
Knox chuckles. “This postage stamp town is good for the club because of its access to the water and a low cop-to-square-mile ratio, so I’m not gonna shit on it.
And this has to be the fucking weirdest pre-fucking chat.
But yes. We’re private people, you and me.
We could do this. And you’re thinking too hard. ”
“I might argue you aren’t thinking hard enough.”
He glances between us. “Something is already really, really hard.” His thumb brushes over my lip.
“I don’t know if I can do this again and not get hurt.” It’s an admission I don’t really want to make, but it’s true. “I think you might have the power to do me some damage.”
He cups my cheeks and takes a step back. “Not sure I could hurt you if I tried. But something that feels this good, even when there are a million reasons that it shouldn’t? Don’t we owe it to ourselves just to be selfish for a goddamn second? Or am I the only one thinking this way?”
He leans forward and kisses the side of my lips, tenderly. My body arches back towards him.
“I need rules,” I say suddenly.
“Name ‘em.” He nuzzles my ear.
“When you’re finished with the two of us, you get your ass over here and tell me in person. You don’t just text me or leave a message or, worse, ghost me.”
“Done,” he says, immediately.
“The next rule is obvious. I’m not prepared to be one of many. You can’t sleep with anyone else.”
“Not sure how I feel about you holding my balls, Maren. But I’m thinking I won’t need anyone else with this pretty pussy at my beck and call.”
I shove at his chest. “And no beck-and-call shit. I can’t do this if you just show up for sex, stay for five minutes, and then disappear. It really sucked when you made me come and then walked out.”
He smiles softly at that. “If only you knew how hard it was to lie there, awake, with you in my arms yesterday, knowing I had to leave. I’m thinking we might need a rule where you can tell me to not come over.”
“For now, I think I’m okay without that rule, but I reserve the right to add it.”
Knox chuckles. “You have no idea how many times a day I’m gonna want you.”
I raise my eyebrow. “At your age?”
“Hey. I still got all my own hair and sex drive. You got any more rules?”
“One final one.”
Knox kisses me softly. “What’s that?”
“It needs to feel like a date.”
He laughs at that. “Maren, I haven’t been on a date in, like, fifteen years.”
“Then it will be good practice for you.”
“Sure. Fine. Whatever. Yes. It can be like a date. But you better keep your bar low because I suck at this shit and it’s not like we can really go anywhere.”
I offer him my hand. “Deal?”
Knox looks at it, then shakes it. “It’s a deal, Maren.”
He reaches for the hem of my polo shirt to lift it above my head, but I grab it and shove it back down. “Not here. We can’t do this in the bait shop.”
Knox looks around at the empty place. “Why not? Didn’t realize the bait shop had strict moral standards.”
I shove his shoulder and push him away. He slips his hands around my waist and lifts me down off the counter. Then, he takes my hand and leads me towards the main door and the external steps up to my home, and I shake my head.
“We’ll use the apartment in the boathouse.”
Knox looks to the stairway up to my apartment above the store. “Don’t you live upstairs?”
“I do. But you can hide your motorcycle in the boathouse.”
Something unreadable flickers across his face. “I can do that and still meet you upstairs.”
“When this inevitably ends,” I say, “it’ll be easier to forget you if my memories of you aren’t tied to everything inside my home.”
For a moment, Knox just looks at me. Then, his jaw tightens. “Jesus, Maren. Don’t plan for the end.”
I touch my fingertips to his cheeks. “I’m being pragmatic. One of us should be.”
He opens his mouth as if he wants to respond but then closes it again. He presses a kiss to my forehead. “Then, I’ll go move my bike.”
And as I watch him go, I wonder where I buried the last of my sanity, because I have a feeling that no matter how hard I work to protect my heart, it’s going to be utterly ruined.