Chapter 15 #2
He doesn't hurry. That's the first thing.
Every other time there has been urgency underneath it, adrenaline or anger or the desperation of two people who know they shouldn't and keep doing it anyway.
This is none of those things. He sits on the edge of the bed, looks at me and takes his time looking, the way he takes his time at everything when he thinks no one is watching him think.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." He reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. That's all. Then his hand drops to my jaw and stays there and his thumb traces the line of my cheekbone once, slow.
I close my eyes.
"You don't have to do that," I say.
"Do what?"
"Look at me like that."
"Like what?"
I don't have words for it. I've been looking at Knox for seven days and I still don't have words for the way he looks at me when he thinks I'm not paying attention, which is foolish on his part because I am always paying attention.
"Like you're memorizing something," I say.
"I am." He says it flat. Statement of fact, no apology. "I've been doing it since the rodeo. You might as well know."
I feel it in the base of my throat.
He tips my chin up and kisses me, slowly, his tongue tangling with mine, deep and erotic, and it's nothing like anything before. A man with nowhere to be, taking his time with something he intends to learn. His other hand finds the hem of my shirt.
"Knox."
"Mm."
"I'm still angry about what you're not telling me."
"I know." His mouth moves to the side of my throat. "You can be angry tomorrow."
"I will be."
"Good." His hand slides up my back, warm against my spine, and the last coherent thought I have for a long time is that this is the first time we've done this without something to blame it on.
There is nothing to blame. I chose this. I choose it again now.
And Knox, who keeps score of everything, is going to know it.
He talks.
Not the way he has before, not the commands he gave me last night in his bed. Not that.
True things. Things I didn't know he'd been holding.
The way I tilt my head when I'm about to win an argument and he's already clocked it and he's been letting me think he hasn't.
The fact that, when I pulled the weapon off the man at the bottom of the stairs at Vásquez's sister's house, he felt something he doesn't have a word for yet.
That he has never once walked into a room this past week and looked anywhere except for me first.
I keep my eyes closed because I can't look at him while he tells me these things.
It's too much. Not the touching. The touching I can handle, I've been handling it for seven days.
But his voice, low and smooth in the dark, saying true things the way Knox says everything: like they've always been true and he's only now deciding to report them.
"Look at me," he says.
I open my eyes.
He's watching me with an expression I have never seen on his face. I have watched this man for a week and I have never seen this.
He moves down my body and I stop thinking in words.
His mouth finds my throat first. The curve of my neck, the soft spot behind my ear.
He takes his time with both, like he has all night, which he does, which we both know.
I feel that knowledge in every place his lips touch.
No urgency. No performance. Just his mouth learning me at a pace I have never been given before and have no idea how to survive.
The rasp of his jaw drags across my collarbone and I inhale sharply. Stubble. I feel it everywhere he moves and I want it everywhere he hasn't been yet.
I look at him in the firelight, this man who has been making my life difficult since I was fifteen years old, and the thought that surfaces is not complicated: he is the most drop-dead gorgeous thing I have ever seen in my life.
Every man before him was a rough draft. Knox is the thing they were practicing for.
That jaw. Those grey eyes. The ink on his arms and chest, the way he moves, and the heaviness of his attention when it lands on you, like you are the only thing in the room worth looking at.
I have been wanting to climb him since I was old enough to know what that meant. I have spent a decade pretending otherwise and I am done pretending.
"Knox."
He looks up from my collarbone.
"I want you," I tell him. Not a confession. A statement. "All the time. I want you all the time."
Something moves through his expression that he doesn't try to hide.
"I can tell," he says. Low. "I want you more."
My god, this man. This beautiful, dangerous man is going to break me forever. There’s no coming back from this.
Then his mouth keeps moving and I stop being able to form sentences.
His hands push my shirt up and off. I lift my arms. He looks at me in the firelight the way he looked at me in his office that first night and I feel it the same way I felt it then, like being seen by someone who has been memorizing you for years and is only now deciding to say so with his hands.
"You're fucking gorgeous," he says. A fact.
I pull in a sharp breath. A lifetime of Knox keeping his opinions to himself and now this, in firelight, with his hands on me. For the first time in my life, I have absolutely nothing to say back.
He unclasps my bra, drops it over the edge of the bed, puts his mouth on my breast, and I make a sound I don't try to swallow.
"Knox." My voice breaks on it.
He doesn't answer. He does it again, I arch into him and my hands go to his hair. I am not quiet and there is nobody to be quiet for and I stop trying. He takes that as the invitation it is.
His mouth moves south. Stomach. Hip bone. Lower. The inside of my thigh, slow and deliberate, and I know where he's going and I'm already shaking before he gets there.
"Look at me," he says against my inner thigh.
I do as he says.
"Keep looking at me."
He spreads my legs wider and then his mouth is on me. I lose the thread of every composed thing I have ever believed about myself. I am completely undone by his desire for me. Unraveling.
He is thorough in a way that tells me he has been thinking about exactly this.
Not in the abstract. This. The sounds I make when I can't manage them. The way my thighs tighten when he finds the right pressure. He finds it fast, because Knox has been watching me for a week and is now using everything he learned without mercy, and I have both hands tangled in his hair and can’t decide whether to pull him closer or pull him away. He doesn't give me the choice.
"God—Knox—"
He hums against me, low, and the vibration of it sends me halfway over the edge before I've decided to go.
"Don't stop," I hear myself say. "Don't you dare stop."
He doesn't stop.
He takes me apart slowly and completely, learning every sound I make and repeating exactly what made me make it, until I am nothing but want and heat.
The orgasm starts deep then builds and builds.
When I finally break, it rolls through me like electric current, my back arching off the bed, his hands gripping my thighs, holding me exactly where he wants me while I come apart and stop pretending I was ever going to be able to help it.
I cry out his name. Not quietly.
The storm hits the cabin walls and doesn’t care.
He stays where he is until the last wave passes. Until I stop jerking and shaking. Until my hands loosen in his hair and I can breathe again. He presses one slow kiss to the inside of my thigh and I feel it everywhere.
Then he moves up my body. I look down at him and he looks up at me.
His expression is something I have never seen on his face.
I look at him looking at me.
I want my mouth on him. I want to watch his face when he loses it the way I just lost it.
I reach for him.