Chapter 8 #2
Not the desk, not this time. I want room.
I sit and pull her down beside me. The conference room was urgent. It was years of wanting detonating in thirty seconds flat. But tonight is different. She chose to come here. She can have slow.
I get her out of the red dress.
She lets me and watches my face while I do it.
I know from the way she's watching that she's known exactly what that dress has been doing to me all night.
Of course she knew. She wore it on purpose.
It falls and she's bare from the waist up and I go very still.
I look at her for a moment I'm not going to apologize for.
Then she grabs the hem of my t-shirt and pulls it over my head.
Now she's in nothing but a scrap of red panties and her hands are on my forearms.
She traces one tattoo from my wrist up toward the elbow, slow, following the ink up to my shoulder. I feel it everywhere. She moves to the one that spans my chest and down my other arm.
"What's this one?"
"Outlaw. My horse."
She finds the next one. Waits.
"Ranch coordinates. North pasture boundary."
She traces that one twice. She's beside me on this couch in her red lace, learning my skin, and I have about ten seconds of patience left in me.
I take her face in both hands and tip her head back.
"You can learn the rest later," I say. "Right now I'm going to put my mouth on you."
Her breath goes out and her eyes darken.
I lay her back against the cushions and take my time getting there.
My mouth at her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her breast. I find a small scar below her ribs I didn't know about and press my lips to it.
A scatter of freckles across her stomach.
I learn all of it. Her skin rises in goosebumps under my mouth and she makes a sound she's trying to swallow.
"Knox."
"I know." I keep going.
I pull her panties down and off and settle between her thighs. Then I look at her for one moment, flushed, chest heaving, and hair spread across my cushions. I finally put my mouth on her.
She comes fast. Her thighs clamp and she says my name sharp and broken and I work her through every second of it.
Then I slow down.
I take her apart the second time like I have all night, which I do.
Long, thorough, attentive to every sound she makes.
Her thighs are over my shoulders, quivering, her hand is fisted in my hair, and she can't decide whether to pull me closer or push me away.
I don't give her the choice. When she comes the second time, it rolls through her in waves.
She arches off the cushions and says something that isn't a word.
I stay where I am until she stops shaking.
Then she sits up. Her hands find my belt, unzip me, and she frees me and exhales slow.
"God." She wraps her hand around me and I feel that everywhere.
She runs her thumb across the tip and I drop my forehead to her shoulder.
"Birth control," she says. "I'm on it." A pause. "No condom. I want to feel you."
I lift my head and look at her. Dark eyes. Certain.
I press her back into the cushions and settle over her. I find her wet slit and push in slow. I want to feel every inch of her sweet pussy.
She gasps. Her nails go into my back.
"You're so—" She doesn't finish. Her head falls back.
"You are so fucking tight." My voice sounds rough even to me. I don't move yet. I let her feel it. Watch her face until the tension shifts into something else entirely.
Then I move.
Tight, slick, warm, and skin on skin is something I am not going to recover from. My first time with no condom and I am going to fucking lose it. I find a rhythm and she meets it, hips rolling up to mine, one leg hooking over the back of my thigh, pulling me deeper. I drop my mouth to her throat.
"Tell me," I say against her skin.
"Harder." No hesitation.
I give her harder. She makes a sound I feel in my spine. I brace one hand on the arm of the couch and go deeper. She digs her nails in and says my name the second way, the one she doesn't know about.
"Again," I say low against her ear.
"I can't—"
"You can." I change the angle. "Tell me what you need."
She tells me and I give it to her. When she comes the third time I'm watching her face, which she tries to control and can't, and the fact that she lets me see it is more than anything else that's happened tonight.
I follow her a beat behind, pulsing and letting my seed go deep inside of her.
Holy fucking god. That just happened. I stay where I am, her legs locked around me, both of us breathing.
Then I wrap an arm around her and roll us, pulling her up onto my chest. She comes without resistance, which is new. Completely boneless. Her cheek against my sternum, her hand slack on my ribs, and the sweat cooling between us is the only thing either of us has to say for a long moment.
My heart is working hard. She can feel it against her face and I can feel her notice it, the small shift of attention. My hand moves up her spine, slow, not asking for anything. Just finding her.
She stirs first. I feel it before she moves, the small shift of intention, and something in me wants to pull her back.
Hold her here. Keep her exactly like this, slick, warm, and boneless on my chest, where she can't be a Sullivan and I can't be a Blackwater, and the only thing that exists is the sound of her breathing slowing down.
I want to claim this. I want to claim her. I don't move. I let her go.
She pushes up, finds her dress on the floor, and pulls it back on. Crosses to the desk. Picks up her glasses and slides them on. Pulls up the subnet records like we didn't just take each other apart on my couch.
I get up and pull on my jeans. She doesn't look at the screen while I dress.
I catch her watching from the corner of my eye, her gaze moving over the ink on my arms, my chest, following it the way her fingers did earlier.
I reach for my t-shirt. Her eyes track it all the way down as I pull it over my head, and when the hem drops and covers the last of it, she looks back at the monitor like she was never watching at all.
I cross the room and stand in front of her.
She looks up.
I reach out and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Slow. She goes very still under my hand.
"The subnet will be there tomorrow," I say.
"Knox."
"It will be there tomorrow." I hold her gaze. "Stay."
Something moves through her expression that she doesn't quite manage to put away.
"One condition."
"Name it."
"You cook breakfast."
I almost ask her how she knows I cook. Nobody knows I cook. It's the one thing I kept for myself, found it at MSU in a steakhouse kitchen that had nothing to do with Blackwater Ranch and everything to do with being a person instead of an heir.
I look at her.
"Done," I say.
I take the tray and the wine glasses back to the kitchen. I'm at the counter when footsteps come down the hall. Not Maren's. I know every step in this house.
My mother is in the kitchen doorway in sweats and an oversized t-shirt, water glass in hand. She looks at the two coffee mugs. Looks at me with the expression she uses when she's decided not to ask a question.
"There's someone in your office?" she asks.
"Maren Sullivan."
Whatever she thinks about that doesn't reach her face. She goes to the sink and fills her glass. I follow her back, because I'm thirty-one years old and I still know better than to leave my mom alone near a conversation.
She pauses in the office doorway.
Maren has put the printed pages in order and is back on the subnet records. She looks up when she hears us, pulls her glasses off without hurry.
"Josephine," she says.
"Maren." My mom's eyes move across the desk. The papers. The printout on top with McKenna Group in the header. Her hand tightens once on the water glass. Then releases. The stillness that follows is not the stillness of someone who doesn't recognize a name.
I watch her.
She doesn't look at the printout again. Doesn't look at Maren. She looks at nothing, which is more unsettling than anything she could have looked at.
"My mother used to say some mountains remember things," she says. Her voice is even. "I thought she was being poetic." A pause. "Now I'm not so sure."
She turns toward the hallway.
"Night, Mom," I say.
"Goodnight, Knox." She doesn't stop. "Get some sleep."
Her footsteps fade up the stairs.
The office is quiet.
Maren looks at me across the desk. "What does that mean?"
I look at the doorway.
"I don't know," I say.
I'm not entirely certain that's true.