Epilogue - Part 1
MAREN
Six months later, I still know exactly how to make Knox lose his mind.
It's a Tuesday. His kitchen smells like the roast he's had going since noon.
The kind of smell that means he started early, rubbed it down with his own blend of salt and pepper and something smoked he won't fully name, worked it into the meat with his hands like we could wait an extra ten minutes for him to get it right.
Outside the west windows, the whole valley has gone white and hard, snow banked to the top of the porch rail, wind working the eaves in long low pulls that mean it isn't finished yet. Broken Sky is barely visible through it, just a pale suggestion of a mountain behind the blowing snow.
Knox has the fire going in the stone fireplace in the great room and this kitchen still runs warm anyway.
Sleeves rolled to the elbow like the cold doesn't apply to him, working a knife through carrots with the practiced skill he learned in college.
I am sitting on the island in wool socks and one of his flannel shirts, doing absolutely nothing useful, closer to the heat than I need to be and not moving.
"You could help," he says without looking up.
"I could." I swing my feet. "I could also watch you do it. You're better at it than I am and I enjoy the view."
"Flattery."
"Fact." I tip my head. "Your forearms are doing something unfair right now."
That gets him. Just barely, the corner of his mouth, the smallest concession a man like Knox ever makes, and I feel the small private thrill of having earned it. I still collect it every time like it's new currency.
"You've gotten worse," he says. "Not better."
"At what?"
"Hiding when you want something." He sets the knife down. Wipes his hands on the towel at his hip, unbothered, the way he does everything when he's decided to give me his full attention instead of half of it.
There's still something in the economy of the gesture that isn't entirely soft. An edge underneath the domestic ease that never fully goes away and that I've stopped wanting it to. "You used to at least pretend to negotiate."
"I don't negotiate with you anymore." I hold his gaze. "I inform you."
"Is that right?"
"That's right." I lean back on my palms, feel his eyes track the movement, and feel exactly how much of his attention I've just taken from the carrots. "I've decided something."
He crosses the kitchen. Doesn't hurry. He never hurries when he already knows where he's going to end up, and he ends up standing between my knees, his hands finding my thighs through the fabric of his own shirt.
The heat of him is instant and familiar, still hitting me exactly the way it did the first time.
"What have you decided?" he asks. Even. Taunting. The voice he saves for exactly this, for me, for nobody else on earth.
"That the roast can wait."
Something shifts behind his eyes, dark and immediate, and I watch a man who has spent his whole life being controlled decide, right in front of me, not to be.
He doesn't abandon the roast. He steps back just long enough to reach the oven, pulls it out with one hand wrapped in the towel from his hip, sets it on the stovetop, and kills the heat with a flick of his wrist, all in about four seconds, the same fluidity of motion that has never once needed a second try at anything, in this kitchen or anywhere else.
He tents foil over the top without even looking at what he's doing.
"It'll hold," he says, already turning back to me. "Twenty minutes, easy."
"You planned that?"
"I plan everything." He closes the distance again, hands finding my thighs right where he left them. "Doesn't mean I can't be interrupted."
He kisses me the way he always does when I've won.
Slow at first and then completely without mercy, one hand sliding into my hair, the other pulling my hips flush to the edge of the island so there's no pretending either of us has anywhere else to be.
I get my hands under his shirt, over skin I still haven't stopped wanting to memorize, and he makes a rough sound in his throat that I feel everywhere at once.
"Bedroom," I say, against his mouth.
"No." He pulls back just far enough to look at me, grey eyes gone dark and sure. "Here first."
He knows me completely now. That's the part I didn't expect when this started, back when I thought I was choosing a man I could manage the way I managed everything else.
He knows exactly where I unravel and how fast and he uses every piece of it without asking permission anymore, because he doesn't need to.
I gave that permission a long time ago and I renew it every single day I choose to stay.
He gets my shirt, his shirt, off over my head in one motion and looks at me for a long beat, the way he still looks at me every time like he's confirming I'm real.
His eyes go to my throat first, to the pendant still sitting right where it always sits, and something soft moves through his face before the heat comes back into it.
He leans in and kisses the pendant itself, just once, his mouth warm against the metal and my skin both, like he's saying something to it he hasn't said to me yet.
Then he licks a slow line straight down. He takes his time at each breast, thorough, until I have both hands in his hair and I'm arching into his mouth begging without words for more. He keeps going, works his way down to my stomach, and I feel the muscles there clench hard under his mouth.
He looks up at me from there, that small, wicked curve at the corner of his mouth, grey eyes gone dark.
"I'm going to have my way with you right here on this island," he commands. A promise, not a question.
I stare down into that look and squirm. "Promise?"
He hooks two fingers into my panties, blue today, and drags them down my legs slow enough that it's its own kind of torment, tossing them somewhere over his shoulder without once looking away from me.
He pushes my legs open wider and grins.
"Oh, Trouble. You have no idea." His mouth drops lower, his breath hot against my skin. "I'm a man of my word."
He takes me apart with his hands first and I combust. Slow, devastating, exactly where he knows I need him, until my whole body is trembling and I'm gripping the edge of the island and saying his name like it's the only word I have left.
Then his mouth replaces his hands and I stop being able to form sentences at all.
"Knox." Broken. "Knox, I need—"
"I know what you need." Against my skin. "I've learned every version of that sentence by now."
"Fuck my mouth." He says it rough, his hands gripping my hips harder, pulling me down against him. "Take what you need. I've got you."
"Right there," I manage. "Right there, don't you dare stop—"
He doesn't stop. He's thorough enough that it should be illegal after all this time, like a man who still hasn't run out of patience for learning something he already knows completely.
When I detonate, it's loud and unmanaged, my thighs quivering around his shoulders, his name torn out of me with nothing held back.
There's no one to perform for anymore and I stopped trying to a long time ago.
He doesn't let me recover before he's kissing his way back up my body. I taste myself on his mouth and pull him closer instead of pulling away.
"My turn," I say.
I slide off the island. He lets me push him back against the counter, watches me sink to my knees with an expression that's already coming undone before I've even started.
I take my time with him too. I know exactly how much discipline it takes him to hold still for it, and making Knox hold still has always been half the fun.
His hand finds my hair. Not guiding. Just holding on, the way he does, like he needs something solid while I take him apart.
"Christ, Maren." Rough. Undone. "Just like that. Don't stop."
"Wasn't planning on it," I hum against him and mean it.
The sounds he makes are pure desire, raw, and loud.
I take him deeper, and his hand tightens in my hair, nothing left in him of the man who was chopping carrots an hour ago.
"Fuck, baby." Barely words at all. "I want to feel you take all of it."
I do. He hits the back of my throat and my eyes water, tears streaming down my cheeks, and I don't stop, don't even slow down. I love this, love the power of it, love exactly what it does to him to watch me not stop.
I give him everything, swirling my tongue and hollowing my cheeks. I don't stop until he's unraveling, until his other hand is braced white-knuckled against the counter, until the sounds coming out of him have lost every trace of the composed man who thinks nothing in the world can touch him.
He pulls me up before he's finished. Doesn't say why. He just turns me instead, both hands at my hips, and presses me forward over the island until my chest meets the granite, cool and hard against my skin, a shock after all that heat.
"Knox."
"Hands here." His voice has gone rough and low, nothing careful left in it at all. He guides my palms flat to the counter, kicks my feet wider, and I feel him line up behind me, one hand splayed at the small of my back, holding me exactly where he wants me.
We haven't done this. Not like this, not from behind, not with him looking down at every inch of my spine like it's something he's been waiting to see for a very long time.
He pushes in slow, and we both go rigid, and then he isn't slow at all.
"Look how well you take me," he says, rough against my ear, one hand fisting in my hair to pull my head back just enough. "Every single time."
I can't answer. I can only grip the edge of the island and feel the granite bite cool into my chest with every thrust, feel him everywhere, feel the whole careful architecture of him coming apart behind me.
"You’re so fucking perfect for me." Ragged now, nothing composed left in it. "Fuck, I'm going to cum—"
He does, hard and sudden, a groan torn out of him that has no polish in it whatsoever, his whole body going taut behind mine, and I feel the exact moment it hits him too fast for him to stop it.
He drops his forehead between my shoulder blades, breathing hard, not moving.
"That," he says, into my skin, "was embarrassing."
I laugh, breathless, still shaking. "That was the hottest thing that's ever happened to me."
"I had plans."
"You can have plans in the bedroom." I turn my head, find him with my eyes. "I'm not finished with you."
Something dark and promising moves through his expression.
"No," he says. "You're not."