Chapter 33 #2
“You want that with me, Maren? You want to run barefoot through these trees, your hair a little wild, so I can catch you and give you that? Fill you with my cum and make something wonderful.”
“Yes,” I sob, wishing we were doing that right now. I know, later, I’ll be grateful we used a condom, but right now, it’s all I want. To feel him come inside me and hold it in there.
“Fuck,” Knox says as his hands quickly unbutton my already destroyed jeans so he can shove his hand beneath my panties to my clit. It’s tender from the way he sucked on it earlier. The pain of it clashes against how good his cock feels inside me.
“Please,” I say. “Knox, I’m begging.”
“There it fucking is,” Knox says, stripping away my last heartbeat of control. “Don’t need you…to be anyone…other than who…you are out here.”
When I come, I’m almost delirious. I move with him, grinding against his hand.
“Ah, yeah, I feel that. Fuck! Yeah.” And then, he thrusts deep and stays there so I can feel him pumping into me. He twitches, but never really thrusts, until he’s nearly done, and he strokes in and out of me three more times.
For a while, neither of us move as Knox softens, until finally, we fall onto our sides before he settles me against him.
The ground beneath us is still warm from the day. I’m resting my head on Knox’s chest, his arms banded around me as he plants the occasional kiss on the top of my head. The air feels silent, like the world has somehow exhaled along with me.
I can feel Knox breathe. The steady rise and fall. And I feel removed from life, like we’ve stepped outside of everything else for a hot minute.
His thumb brushes the skin above my undone and utterly ruined jeans.
My jeans that will never be worn again. I can’t say I feel bad about the loss.
“This place,” he says after a while. His voice is roughened but quiet. “Used to come out here with my brother.”
The mention of his brother makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I slide off him and fall onto my side so I can look at him properly. There’s a change in his face, but he keeps on looking up at the sky.
“He’d drag me out here every day in the summer.
At stupid hours too. Said it was the only place he felt quiet.
He’d spend hours looking for alligators without knowing there weren’t any around this stretch.
We’d sit out here, talk shit, throw rocks in the water.
Sometimes, we’d never say goddamn thing.
” A small breath leaves him, not quite a laugh.
“You grew up around here?”
“About a mile north. We’d come here on our bikes. The old man who owned the property was a friend of my father’s. He didn’t mind us killing the long days of summer on his property. His only rule was if we caught anything, we had to share it with him.”
I smile at that. I’d hate to live in a city or suburb where people fight over fence boundaries and build them so high you can’t see one another.
“How did you end up with the property?” I ask.
“The old man needed to go into a residential care place. When I heard he was selling, I asked if I could make him an offer before he put it on the market.” Knox smiles at the memory.
“And he let you?”
“Yeah. On the day of the signing, he reduced the price by one hundred and thirty-four dollars.”
“Why?”
Knox laughs. “It had a line item that said Fish Tip. Said it covered all the fish we’d left him over the years.”
“Does it make you sad? Being somewhere with such big memories?” I ask.
Knox tugs me close and brushes his lips over mine. “Just made some new big memories.”
I let him kiss me, but don’t let him off the hook for the question. “You know what I mean.”
“I’ve just always felt closer to him here. Once I’d bought the house, he’d come over and spend time on the porch. Said the fun had gone out of the fishing, that it wasn’t quite as illicit as when we were kids.”
“I understand that logic, somehow.”
Knox grins. “Me too. Haven’t fished down this end of the property since the day I moved in.”
“I’m sorry,” I admit. “For all of it. For my father. For your brother.”
“Thank you.”
“I know there was an investigation and my father was cleared. But I’ve never really believed my father is a moral man.”
“You think your father hid something?”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to give you any kind of false hope about the truth because I don’t know anything about what happened that day.
But he’s always had a strange relationship with power.
He’s always believed the badge made him…
invincible. Like, he believes the badge, in isolation from any kind of culpability for his actions, commands respect.
In a different life, with a different background, he could have been a dictator of a small country. ”
“What happened to your mom?” Knox asks.
I finally move and sit up, placing my back against what will forever be known as the outdoor sex tree.
“The truth is, no one really knows. My grandmother took a call from her, crying, saying she couldn’t do this anymore and that she was leaving, and to take care of me.
Dad said it was for another man. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had lots of thoughts about it. ”
Knox stands and rights his clothes. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive her for leaving me behind with him, whatever the reason. Like, how could any mom do that? But as a human being who deals with my father, I can also understand how he wore her down and chipped away at her until she felt there was nothing left.”
He offers me his hand to haul me to my feet, then cups my cheeks. “I’m sorry you don’t have closure on that. I’m sure it hurts.”
His grip is warm and steady, grounding me, such that I don’t feel the usual trip in my gut when I think about Mom.
“You know, it’s easy to focus on what I don’t have. But my grandparents were truly wonderful people. You’ve seen the apartment. They barely had room for me, and yet, they never made me feel like a burden. At least, for the window of time I was allowed to live with them, there was some joy.”
“I’m glad you had that.” Knox pulls a leaf from my hair. “C’mon. Let’s get you back and cleaned up before we start growing roots out here.”
He takes my hand and leads me back to his house after pulling his knife from the tree. We don’t rush. In fact, I take my time, looking at the way the light falls through the trees. The way the light makes the tips of the gentle ripples of water dance.
The path is uneven beneath our feet as we walk, but Knox never lets go.
My fingers stay threaded through his.
The house comes into view slowly through the trees. But before we take the steps up to the porch, Knox stops. He places the jacket on the steps and turns before brushing my cheeks with his thumbs.
“Did you like that? What we did out there.”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “I did. I think…” I try to compose the whispers of thought floating in my head into sentences I hope he’ll understand.
“You think what?” he asks.
“That I’m not just falling in love with you. I think I’m falling in love with me a little bit too.”
“Maren.” The single word is said roughly, as if he could fit everything he’s feeling into five letters. He releases my face and reaches for my hands.
“I don’t think I’ve ever let myself feel like that before. I felt free, like I was allowed to want things, and, perhaps, just take them if I want them.”
Knox’s hands tighten around mine. “I understand. I understand because I saw her beneath the boathouse. But, also, because it’s how I’ve chosen to live my life.
People don’t understand bikers. Ninety percent of the time, people fear us.
But the truth is, we scare them because we’re doing what they can’t.
We broke the mold. We don’t let anyone else dictate what that looks like. ”
My heart feels like it’s about to burst wide open. “I think that side of you is rubbing off on me.”
Knox huffs. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I’ll take the compliment, but honestly, I think this side of you has always existed and you’ve curtailed her to suit your father.
And I’ll take you anyway I can get you, but, man, if I got to wake up to this version of you every day, I’d be the fucking luckiest man on earth. ”
Tears sting my eyes. “You would?”
“Yeah. Be my old lady, Maren. Forever.”
Despite not fully understanding what that means, I throw my arms around him. “Yes.”
“You understand what that means to me, right? What it means to you?” Knox asks, pulling back just enough so he can look at me.
I open my mouth, but the truth is, I don’t have a neat answer. It all feels too big to pin down in words. “It means being with you, in your world, in your club.”
He cups the back of my neck and squeezes as he kisses me.
“It means, you’re mine, Maren. In every conceivable way, beyond what the laws of this country can offer.
It means, you’re the one I want to come home to at the end of the day.
You’re the one I want to protect. You’re the one I want to build a life around and with.
You’ll be my property in the sense that you’ll be someone I care for always and try to be the best version of myself for, so you’re happy and willing to be called that.
I’ll have your back. Every day. No matter what comes our way.
And it means, that there won’t be a single minute in the rest of your life that you have to face alone. ”
Something inside me gives way completely at his words. Any remaining walls around my heart are demolished. The beliefs my father instilled, that I wasn’t worth anything to anyone, disappear.
Because I’m precious to Knox.
“I want that, Knox,” I say, and his thumbs drag beneath my eyes, catching tears I hadn’t even realized were falling. “I want all of that with you.”
And this time, when he kisses me, there’s nothing uncertain left, at all.