Chapter 8 Callie
The clock by my bed says nine-thirty when I make up my mind.
We've been back from the Rusty Anchor since early afternoon, and the house has been quiet for hours.
Kane is in his chair by the stove, working a piece of pine with the folding knife he uses every night, and the small steady sounds of it come through the wall to my room.
I've been on the bed with a textbook open on my lap and I haven't read a word on the page.
I'm going to him tonight.
I get off the bed. I'm still in the jeans and long-sleeve shirt I wore to the Rusty Anchor, no makeup, my hair down on my shoulders.
I don't change. He's already seen me wet in a short robe.
He doesn't need bait. What he needs is for somebody else to make the choice he keeps telling himself he can't make.
I open the door. The hall is dark. The lamp by his chair throws yellow into the living room and out into the mouth of the hall. I walk barefoot, one hand brushing the wall.
He looks up the second he hears me. The knife stops.
"You should be in bed."
"I'm not in bed."
"I can see that."
I cross the living room. I don't stop at the distance I've been keeping for days. I close it, six inches at a time, until I'm standing between his knees.
He doesn't get up. Both hands stay on the wood and the knife. His face is the careful one he's been wearing for a week.
"What do you want, Callie."
"You."
The two syllables go into the room and stay there. He doesn't move.
"Callie."
"Don't. Don't tell me I'm too young. Don't tell me I'm Danny's sister. I know both of those things. I've thought about them every minute of every day since I got here, and I still want you."
He sets the wood down on the table beside the chair, the knife beside it. He puts both hands on the arms of the chair. For a second I think he's going to stand up, walk past me into his room, shut the door behind him. I'm ready for that. I've been ready for that since the night he made the rules.
But he doesn't.
He looks up at me, and his face is open. I haven't seen it open before.
"Tell me again."
"I want you, Kane."
"Tell me you know what you're asking for."
"I know."
"You haven't done this before."
"I haven't. That doesn't make me a child. I've been twenty-two for a while. I know what I'm asking for."
His hands tighten on the arms of the chair until the knuckles go white.
"Come here."
When I take the last half step he pushes out of the chair and stands to his full height. He's a full head taller than me, broader through the shoulders than the routine of a week has let me see. I tip my head back to keep his eyes.
He puts one hand at the base of my neck, fingers buried in my hair, and the other at the small of my back, pulling me hard against him. I feel the heat of him through every layer between us.
Then, finally, he kisses me.
I haven't been kissed before, not the kiss he gives me.
His mouth comes down on mine and everything else goes out.
His beard is rough where it meets my chin.
His mouth is warm and open, tasting of coffee.
His hand at the back of my neck doesn't move.
The other slides from the small of my back down to my ass, takes hold, and pulls me hard against him.
He kisses me with patience first, then with the hunger I can feel he's been carrying for a week. He licks into my mouth and the heat of it goes straight between my legs. I'm wet inside my jeans on the second pass of his tongue. A moan slips into him.
When I catch his bottom lip with my teeth, light, he growls low in his throat and presses his mouth harder against mine.
He pulls back to look at me. His pupils are wide. His mouth is wet.
"Last chance, Callie. Are you sure."
"I'm sure."
"Bed."
He picks me up. His arms wrap me whole: the small of my back, the back of my head, the curve of my hip, every part of me he can reach. I wrap my legs around him. He carries me the few steps to his bedroom in the dark.
The door is open and the room dark, the bed made up neat in the middle of the wall.
He sets me down on the edge of it and stands between my knees, hands on either side of my face.
"I'm going to take care of you. You tell me if anything is wrong. Anything. You tell me to stop, I stop. Are we clear."
"Clear."
"Say it back."
"You tell me, I stop."
He shakes his head with a small almost-smile. "From your end, baby. I want to hear you say it from your end."
"I tell you, you stop."
"That's it. Good girl."
The two words go to a place I didn't know I had.
He undresses me slow. He pulls my shirt off over my head and his eyes go to my bra. He doesn't pretend not to look. He unhooks it one-handed, slides it down my arms, and lingers on my breasts the second they're free. He looks at me hungry.
He cups them. He runs his thumbs across both nipples at once and a gasp catches in my throat.
"That's it," he says, low. "That's how you sound. I'm going to keep you making that sound all night."
He lowers his mouth to my left breast and sucks.
The heat goes through me in a long wire from there to between my legs.
He uses his teeth, careful. I arch into him and grab his hair with both hands.
He growls against my skin, switches sides, and does the same to the right.
By the time he comes up for air I'm shaking.
He unbuttons my jeans. He strips them and my underwear off in one motion, drops them off the side of the bed. Then he stands back and looks at me.
I'm naked on his bed with his eyes on every inch of me and I don't try to cover myself. He hasn't earned that hiding. I want him to see me.
"Fuck, Callie."
"Touch me."
"I will. Lie back."
I lie back. He puts a knee on the bed between mine, takes his shirt off over his head one-handed, and now I see the tattoos for real. Dark tribal lines covering his whole back, his left shoulder and arm. The muscle moves under them.
He is more beautiful than the picture I had of him in my mind.
I sit up and put both hands flat against his chest. The muscle is warm and hard under my palms. I run my hands down to his stomach, slow, feeling the give and the not-give. He doesn't move. He's letting me have him for a minute.
I lean forward and kiss his stomach. I kiss the line of muscle under his ribs and the one below his navel. His hand comes up and slides into my hair at the back of my head, gentle, holding me without pulling me anywhere. He groans low in his throat.
I slide my other hand down to the front of his jeans. He's hard against the denim, big enough that my palm can't cover the whole shape of him. His breath catches sharp.
"Callie."
I close my hand around what I can hold. He puts his hand over mine and presses me harder against him. "Fuck." He's breathing through his teeth now.
When I look up his eyes are on mine, his mouth parted. His face is naked. I'd swear nobody has put hands on him in a very long time.
His hand tightens in my hair just a little, then he eases me back down to the bed and gets on his side beside me. He puts a hand on my belly and slides it down, slow.
"You ever touched yourself thinking of me?"
"Yes."
"Recently?"
"Every night since you saw me in the robe."
"Then show me what you do."
I look at him.
"Show me where your hand goes. Show me what gets you off. I want to learn how you work before I take it over."
I'm not sure I can do it. But his eyes are on me, his hand is open on my belly, waiting.
I trust him with this more completely than should be possible after a week.
I take his hand and put it where I want it.
He doesn't move it. He waits. I put my own hand over his and I show him, slow, with the circles I've taught myself.
He learns me fast. After a minute he lifts my hand off and takes over. He starts where I started him, light circles, then he gets more confident. Every touch is patient, curious, perfect. He listens to my body more than to my mouth.
"That?"
"Yes."
"That?"
"God. Yes."
"Tell me when you're close."
"I'm getting close."
"Don't fight it."
I don't fight it. He pushes one finger inside me. The rest of him is on my clit. I come around his finger with my back arching off the bed and a cry that would have carried through the whole house.
He doesn't take his hand away while I come down. He keeps me there with the press of his palm, lighter now, and watches my face the whole time.
"Beautiful," he says, quiet enough that I almost miss it. "Beautiful."
He kisses me. He kisses the corner of my mouth, my jaw, the spot under my ear I didn't know I could feel anything in. He works down my throat to my collarbone, to the curve of my breast, back up. Every part of me twice.
I want him in me before I burst. I tell him.
"Kane. Please. I want to feel you inside."
"In a minute, baby."
"Now."
"I want you ready for me. Trust me."
"I'm ready."
He smiles. It's the first full smile I've ever seen on his face. It almost wrecks me.
"You're going to be more ready in two minutes."
He goes back to it. He puts two fingers inside me and curls them forward against a place I didn't know was there. A half-word breaks out of me. He keeps his thumb on my clit and works pressure inside me until I'm coming again, harder than the first time, my whole body shaking under his hand.
When I come down he's standing beside the bed undoing his belt. I watch him. His chest is heaving. His cock is hard against the front of his boxer briefs, and seeing the shape of him this time is different from feeling it.
He sheds the rest. He gets a condom from the drawer of the nightstand. He puts it on without looking away from me. Then he climbs back up the bed and settles between my thighs. The weight of him pinning me down is the most intimate thing I have ever felt.
He kisses me, slow, while his hand goes between us and he positions himself at my entrance.
"This is going to stretch."
"Okay."
"Look at me when I do it."
"Okay."
I look at him. His eyes are open and stripped: fear, tenderness, want, all of it, every wall he's built peeled off because he can't afford a wall right now. I hope this is a version of him no other woman has seen. I'm choosing to believe it is.
He pushes inside me.
The pressure is more than I expected. There's a sharp pinch and then a stretch. A small whimper escapes me, not pain but not pleasure either, just the body of someone who hasn't had this happen before.
He stops. He's barely an inch in. His arms are shaking with the effort of staying still.
"Hurt?"
"Stretch."
"Breathe out."
I breathe out. He pushes in a little more.
"More?"
"Yes."
"You sure?"
"Yes."
He sinks in slow, an inch at a time, checking my face for each one. By the time he's all in I'm stretched around him completely. I had no idea I could feel this full. He holds himself still. He drops his forehead to mine.
"How are you, babe."
"Good. I'm good."
"Yeah?"
"Yes. Move, Kane. Please move."
He moves.
The first stroke is slow. He watches my face.
The second is more. By the third I'm breathing in time with him and I moan with every one.
He holds my hip with one hand, braces with the other, and rocks into me slow and controlled.
Every shred of discipline he has is holding him in check, because if he lets it slip he's going to wreck me, and I see all of it on his face.
"Talk to me, Callie."
"I'm okay. I'm — fuck."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Want it deeper?"
"Yes."
"Wrap your legs around me, baby."
I do. He goes deeper. He braces with one forearm beside my head and pumps into me with a rhythm still controlled but harder. The pressure of him hitting deep makes me gasp on every stroke.
"That's it. You're taking me good."
The praise wrecks something in me. I'm wet, full, and being worked open by a man who's barely holding on to his own control. I want him to stop holding on.
"Kane."
"Yeah."
"Don't hold back. I can take it."
His pupils blow.
"You sure?"
"I want all of you."
His face changes. His jaw sets. His next stroke is harder, and the one after that. Now he's fucking me in earnest, his teeth set, a low growl coming out of him with every breath that goes straight between my legs. He keeps his eyes on me the whole time.
"That's it. That's what you wanted, isn't it."
"Yes."
"You're so wet on me. You feel so fucking good, Callie. You're going to make me come."
"Yes."
"You first. You're going to come for me again. Hand on yourself. I want you with me when I go."
I put my hand on my clit. He keeps fucking me, harder, and I work my fingers in time with him. Inside a minute I'm coming again. I cry out his name. He buries himself in me with a low growl and comes inside the condom with his whole body shaking against mine.
He stays in me for a beat afterward, forehead on my collarbone, breath hot and ragged on my throat.
"Jesus, Callie."
"Yeah."
He lifts his head and looks at me. He has never looked at me this open before. Every wall is down and there's only him.
He kisses me, soft. Then he gets off me to deal with the condom. I'm alone on his bed for a minute, looking at the ceiling and trying to figure out what just happened.
What just happened is that I came three times and my body still doesn't know what to do with itself. I'm sore in places I didn't know existed, and my pulse is in places it has never been.
Nobody told me. Nobody told me sex could be this much. The books I read left it out. The friends I had didn't say. I would have done this years ago if anybody had been honest with me about how good it is.
I get it now. I get why people lose their minds for it. I want him again, and we haven't even moved off the bed.
He comes back in his boxer briefs. He sits on the edge of the bed and looks at me for a long minute. Then he pulls the covers down on his side, gets in beside me, and pulls me into him so my head is on his chest. His arms wrap around me, and the blanket settles over us both.
He doesn't say anything. I don't either. His heart is loud under my ear. The pine shavings on his skin smell of him and the heat of what we just did. He presses his mouth to the top of my head and stays there for a beat.
"Callie."
"Yeah."
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah."
"I didn't hurt you?"
"You didn't hurt me. I'm sore but not hurt. I'm good, Kane."
He lets out a long breath against my hair. He's been holding it.
"Don't go back to your room tonight."
"I wasn't going to."
"Good."
He tips my chin up and kisses me, slow and deep.
The hunger isn't gone from him, just banked.
I'm breathing harder when he pulls back.
He kisses me once more, gentle this time, and lets me settle back down on his chest. We don't say anything else.
I lie with his arm around me, his heart under my ear, and I don't sleep for a long time.
I think about Danny. I think about the letter still in the drawer. I think about Colonel Thorne and the piece Kane hasn't told me yet.
I don't ask. Not tonight.
Tonight I stay.