17. Micah
SEVENTEEN
MICAH
Icome awake with a jolt, heart slamming, the animal certainty that I’ve nodded off somewhere I shouldn’t have and something’s coming.
Shit. I fell asleep. I was supposed to be watching her.
Then the room resolves—gray-gold light, her weight tucked warm against my chest, her fingertips tracing slow lines along my forearm where it rests across her waist—and the panic uncoils.
I didn’t just fall asleep from sheer exhaustion during my watch. I fell asleep holding her, and now—
I’m hard.
Achingly, embarrassingly hard.
My cock is pressed right against the curve of her ass through the barrier of my sweats and whatever she’s wearing under those covers.
“Fuck.” I jerk back, scrambling to put space between us. “Sage—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t—”
Her hand catches my wrist before I can get more than a few inches.
“Don’t.” Her voice is quiet and not at all sleep-rough. Which means she’s been lying here awake for a while, stroking my arm, waiting. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. I shouldn’t have—”
“Micah.” She rolls onto her back so she’s looking up at me. Her hair is a mess across the pillow, and her eyes are clear, unshadowed, none of the panic from earlier. “It’s fine. I promise. You can’t help what your body does in your sleep.”
I swallow. My hand is unsteady where she’s holding my wrist. “Still, I should give you space. I can go set up on the couch—”
“I don’t want space.”
That stops me.
She’s staring up at me, and I watch her gather something—the small tightening of her jaw, the breath she pulls in like she’s bracing for a jump. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips.
“Will you kiss me?”
The question lands somewhere between my sternum and my spine. My whole body goes still.
There are moments when life splits cleanly in two—before the question and after it. This feels like one of them.
“Tell me no if you don’t want to,” she says, softer now. “I just . . . I wanted to ask this time. Enthusiastic consent, right? I should have asked last night, and I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
Jesus.
I close my eyes for half a second because fuck.
I’ve wanted a lot of things in my life. Wanted revenge. Wanted oblivion. Wanted enough money to stop counting coins at the grocery store. Wanted sleep. Wanted peace. Wanted to claw my way backward into the person I was before I learned what men can do when they think your body is theirs.
But this . . .
This is everything.
“I told you last night. You don’t have to be sorry. You can do whatever you want with me.”
Her mouth tilts up in a smile. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s an enthusiastic yes.”
She pushes up on her elbow and leans in. Her free hand comes up to cup my jaw, fingers careful against the stubble there, and she looks at me for one long beat like she’s making sure I’m still agreeing to this. Then her mouth presses against mine.
It’s not like the sudden, unrestrained kiss from last night. This one is almost chaste. Closed mouth, beautifully soft.
I’m gone.
She pulls back half an inch. Searches my face. Her thumb strokes the corner of my mouth.
“Was that okay?” she whispers.
I almost laugh. The fact that she’s asking me almost cracks me open right there. “Yeah, baby girl. That was more than okay.”
She kisses me again. Less careful this time. Her lips part a little, and I feel the warm shock of her breath. I cradle her there, gentle, letting her set the pace. She does. She presses closer, climbs up onto her elbow until she’s half over me, and I taste her.
She’s delicious.
I pull back. “Sage—”
“I want you,” she breathes against my mouth. “You can do whatever you want with me too.”
I search her face. Her pupils are blown but her eyes are steady. There’s no glaze, no dissociation, no panic at the edges. She’s here. All the way here.
“If anything changes—”
“I know.”
“I mean it. Anything that doesn’t feel right—”
“Micah.” Her hand tightens at my throat, and there’s something almost amused in her voice now. “I need you to trust me to know what I want right now. Can you do that?”
I close my eyes. Open them.
“Yeah,” I say. “I can do that.”
She kisses me deeper, and her hand slides under the hem of my T-shirt to find skin, and I make a sound I don’t mean to make. She smiles against my mouth.
“Touch me,” she whispers. “Please, Micah. I need—”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t have to.
“Baby girl.” It comes out hoarse.
“I like the way you call me baby girl,” she whispers, her fingers brushing my jaw, tracing the line of my cheekbone.
I can’t think. She’s staring at my mouth like she wants to bite it, her hand hot on my face and her thumb rubbing across my lower lip until I open for her automatically, commit the sin of tasting her thumb with the tip of my tongue.
She inhales like I shocked her, and her arm snakes around my neck and pulls me in.
This kiss is clumsy and desperate—her mouth opening under mine, her fingers fisting in my shirt, her body arching down into me like she’s been starving for this and didn’t know it until now.
I let her take what she wants for a moment, let her set the weight and the pace from above me. Then I get an arm around her and turn us, slow, rolling her onto her back so gently it’s more suggestion than motion—giving her every second to stop it, to push back, to change her mind.
She doesn’t. She goes where I guide her, her hair fanning out across the pillow, looking up at me with those blown-wide eyes, and the trust in it nearly takes my legs out.
“Touch me,” she breathes. “I don’t want to beg.”
There’s no way I’ll make her.
My hand slides under the covers, under the hem of her shirt, across the warm skin of her stomach. She shivers, and I pause, giving her time to tell me to stop. She doesn’t. She just looks at me with those gray eyes, pupils blown wide, and nods.
I move lower.
She’s not wearing anything under her sleep shorts. Just soft skin and heat and wetness that makes my breath catch. I find her with my fingers, gentle at first, learning what she likes by the sounds she makes—the gasps, the whimpers, the way her hips rock up to meet my hand.
“Fuck, baby girl. You’re so wet for me.” I circle her clit with my fingers, slow, delicate, coaxing.
Her head falls back into the pillow, mouth opening on a broken little sound that goes straight to my cock.
I kiss her before she can get embarrassed by it. Slow at first, then deeper when she grabs my shirt and keeps making those noises into my mouth. I stroke her in small circles, light and steady, and she trembles under me.
“Just like that?” I murmur.
“Yes.” Her voice hitches. “God, yes. Give me more.”
My fingers slip inside her so easy I swear she’s pulling me in, her legs opening to give me room, her nails digging into my shoulder as my thumb strokes her clit, fingers moving through her heat. Back and forth.
I shift back just to watch her. God, she’s beautiful.
Face flushed, mouth parted, that perfect pulse under her jaw hammering as I fuck her with my hand.
I want to see more—want to see her come apart—but I hold back, keep it gentle, keep reading every signal she gives me.
She likes it like this, slow but deep, a rhythm she sets by grinding against my palm.
“Micah—” She gasps, her whole body tensing. “Don’t stop. I—just don’t—”
Her head tips back, exposing the long line of her neck, and I press my mouth there, tasting salt and heat.
She comes so hard it wrings a sob out of her, her body going rigid, then shuddering, her nails raking my back through my shirt.
The sound echoes in the quiet room, wild and a little desperate.
I don’t stop, getting off on the way her thighs lock around my wrist, her face buried in my hair, muffling the cries that come in helpless, irregular bursts.
“Micah—oh my god—” Her words dissolve into a string of curses, and then her body sags, limp and heavy, sweat slicking her skin. I withdraw my hand and she flinches a little, hypersensitive. She gives me a lazy, satisfied look.
I sense movement behind me as her gaze flies to the door and she abruptly jerks into a seated position.
“Eli,” she gasps.
I freeze.
For one horrible second, I think she’s been imagining him this whole time—that I was just a stand-in, a warm body, a means to an end. But then I follow her gaze to the doorway, and my stomach drops.
He’s standing there.
Eli. In the doorway of her bedroom. His face carved from stone, utterly unreadable, but his eyes—his eyes are burning. I can’t tell if it’s anger or hurt or something else entirely, but whatever it is, it’s aimed at both of us.
How long?
The thought is the only thing my brain can produce.
How long has he been standing there?
Long enough to see her come apart on my hand? Long enough to hear her say my name? Long enough that he could have made his presence known at any point in the last two minutes?
Sage isn’t breathing.
“I was worried.” His voice is flat. Controlled. “You missed check-in and you weren’t outside. The door was open. I thought—” He stops. Swallows. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You don’t have to leave,” I blurt, because my default setting around Eli is managing him. Smoothing edges. Making the room safe.
It’s reflex. Stupid fucking reflex.
Eli’s jaw ticks.
He turns to go anyway. Gets one hand on the doorframe.
And stops.
I watch it happen—watch the leaving simply fail.
His knuckles whiten on the wood. His shoulders lock.
Every line of him is pointed at the hallway, at the front door he came in through, and he doesn’t take it.
He just stands there gripping the frame like it’s the only thing keeping him upright, and I realize I’ve never once seen Eli unable to do a thing he’d decided to do.
“Don’t go,” Sage whispers, her eyes flicking to me like she’s making sure I’m on board here. I give her a quick nod. “Stay.”
The room goes still.
Eli turns, his eyes locking on hers, unblinking. There’s a long, suspended moment where I’m very aware of my hand still under the covers, still slick with her. Aware of Eli’s breath in the doorway being too even, too controlled. The way you breathe when you’re working not to feel something.
“Sage,” he says, voice low, frayed at the edges in a way I haven’t heard before. “I can’t. You don’t—”
“Come here.” Her voice is small but clear. “Please.”
“I shouldn’t—”
“Eli.”
He closes his eyes for one beat. When he opens them, something has cracked. The wall is still up, but he pushes off the doorframe and approaches the bed. His gaze drops to my mouth. Then lower. To the sheet bunched at Sage’s hips. To my hand.
“Take it out,” he says.
I go still.
Sage does too, her breath catching sharp. Eli doesn’t look at me when he says it. He looks at her like he’s carving himself open with the effort of staying where he is.
I slip my hand free.
“Tell me what she tastes like.”
I lift my fingers to my mouth, sucking her juices from each digit.
Her flavor blooming on my tongue. I don’t break eye contact with Eli as I do it.
He’s not looking at my face, though. He’s watching my hand, and the rough sound he makes somewhere at the bottom of his ribs has me moaning with pleasure.
I wipe my mouth on the back of my wrist. All the while, Sage is silent, chest rising and falling quick as she watches both of us.
“She’s . . . sweet,” I say. “Like nothing I’ve tasted before.”
Eli shudders. “Show me.”
I don’t know if he means her or me, but it doesn’t matter. The word flips a switch. I move back, giving Sage room, and she sits up, nervous and vibrating as she pulls the blankets to the side and shimmies out of her sleep shorts.
When her knees drop open, I let out a groan and Eli moves to the foot of the bed, hands shoved into his pockets like he needs to be restrained.
He does.
“Micah,” he says.
“Eli.” My voice comes out hoarse.
“Touch her again.”
Sage’s whole body shudders.
“Eli,” I start.
“Look at how wet she is. She wants you to.”
“Sage.” I turn back to her. Her hair is damp at the temples. Her eyes are dark and steady. “Tell me what you want.”
“Touch me.”
There’s zero hesitation in her voice. I look at Eli. He’s locked onto Sage’s face with the kind of focus you’d give a thing you knew you only had a moment to memorize before it was taken from you.
I settle my hand between her legs again.
She gasps—sharp, oversensitive—and her hips jerk up off the bed, and one of her hands fists in my hoodie while the other drifts. Reaches across the empty space toward the foot of the bed. Toward him.
Her fingers don’t reach him. The bed is too wide. But the hand stays there, stretched out, extended.
“Slower,” Eli says. “I want to see your fingers coated with her.”
I slow.
She’s so fucking slick it’s hard to keep the pressure light. I push in slow, let her clamp around me, watch the way her breath stutters. I drag my fingers out, just a little, then slide in again, coating myself with her and circling her clit until she’s shaking.
I hold my hand up so Eli can see how wet she is, glistening in the thin morning light, and he makes a sound—almost a growl, almost a plea—that I’ve never heard from him before. It’s the sound of holding back a scream.
“Let her suck your fingers,” he says.
I do. My body’s almost on autopilot now. I lift my hand and Sage opens for me, tongue flicking out to taste herself, lips wrapping around two fingers at once. Fuck. I watch her eyes as she does it, the hunger there, the delighted, gone look of someone who stopped caring about shame a long time ago.
Her tongue is hot and greedy, swirling around them, and I’m pretty sure she’s fucking with me when she bites down—just enough to make me gasp and twitch. And when I look up, Eli’s jaw is clenched so tight I worry he might break something.
Sage pulls my hand away, leaves a thread of spit and slick between us—then sucks in a breath and glances down the bed. “Eli,” she says, voice wobbling.