Chapter 15
CYPRESS
The silk sheets are cool against my back, a stark contrast to the furnace heat radiating from the green body hovering above me.
Knox braces himself on arms thicker than my thighs, the muscles corded and trembling with visible restraint, and the city lights streaming through the windows catch the sharp edges of his tusks as he stares down at me.
I reach up to trace the line of his jaw, feeling the roughness of his skin beneath my fingertips, and his eyes flutter closed at the contact like I've wounded him with nothing more than a gentle touch.
"You are so small. So impossibly, terrifyingly small. I could break you without meaning to. I could crush you beneath me and never even realize—"
"You won't." I slide my hand around to cup the back of his neck, feeling the tension coiled there like a spring wound too tight.
"You haven't broken anything yet, Knox. Not the coffee maker, not the office furniture, not any of the very breakable humans who work for you.
You have more control than you give yourself credit for. "
"Those things do not matter." He lowers his head until his forehead nearly touches mine, until I can feel the warmth of his breath washing over my face and count the individual striations in his amber irises. "You matter. You are the only thing that matters, and if I hurt you—"
I silence him the only way I know how, by surging up to capture his mouth with mine and swallowing whatever self-flagellating nonsense he was about to spout.
He groans against my lips. His tongue sweeps against mine, careful even now, controlled even now, and I bite down on his lower lip hard enough to make him hiss.
"Stop treating me like glass." I pull back just far enough to glare at him, though the effect is probably somewhat diminished by the fact that I'm panting and flushed and sprawled beneath him like an offering.
"I survived a heist tonight. I outran security guards and cracked a digital safe and watched you carry me down four flights of stairs like I weighed nothing.
I am not going to shatter if you actually touch me. "
Something shifts in his expression, something dark and hungry and barely leashed. "You want me to touch you, little valkyrie? You want to feel the full weight of what you have claimed?"
"Yes." The word comes out steadier than I expect, considering my heart is trying to batter its way out of my ribcage. "Yes, I want that. I want you, Knox. All of you, not just the careful, controlled version you think I need."
"Remember that you asked for this," he growls, and then his mouth crashes down on mine with a ferocity that makes our previous kisses feel like polite handshakes.
The careful restraint doesn't disappear entirely—I don't think it can, not when the size difference between us is so vast and the potential for harm so real—but it transmutes into something rawer, something that feels less like holding back and more like barely contained power.
His hands find the hem of my borrowed shirt, the black turtleneck I grabbed from his closet, and he strips it over my head with an efficiency that leaves me gasping and exposed in the silver city light.
"Beautiful." The word sounds like a prayer falling from his lips as he stares down at my bare torso, his eyes tracing over every inch of revealed skin like he's memorizing me. "Every part of you, every single inch—"
"Less talking." I grab the waistband of the borrowed sweatpants I'm swimming in, but his hands close over mine before I can push them down.
"Allow me." He slides down my body, and even that simple motion makes me dizzy with want, the drag of his frame against mine lighting up nerve endings I didn't know I had.
His fingers hook into the elastic waistband, and he draws the pants down my legs with a reverence that makes my throat tight, pressing kisses to each inch of skin as it's revealed—my hip, my thigh, the sensitive crook of my knee, the delicate bones of my ankle.
I'm trembling by the time he tosses the sweatpants aside, naked and exposed and desperate for him in ways I don't have words to express.
He kneels at the foot of the bed, and even kneeling he's enormous, his shoulders blocking out the light from the window and casting me into shadow. His hands wrap around my calves.
"I have wanted this. Since the moment you opened your mouth in that first meeting and corrected my mathematics in front of the entire collapsed senior staff.
Since you stood your ground against men twice your size and quoted obscure corporate bylaws like they were battle hymns.
Since you looked at me—truly looked at me—and saw something other than a monster. "
"You're not a monster." I sit up enough to reach for him, my fingers finding the hem of his turtleneck and tugging insistently. "You're infuriating and dramatic and you have a truly concerning obsession with medieval siege metaphors, but you are not a monster. Take this off."
He is magnificent, overwhelming, a creature built for war and destruction who handles spreadsheets with the same intensity he probably once directed at actual battlefields.
"Better?" he asks, and there's a vulnerability in the question that catches me off guard, a flicker of uncertainty beneath the confident exterior.
"Much better. Now come here and stop making me wait."
He moves over me like a wave, like a force of nature, and I have a moment to register just how thoroughly he eclipses me before his mouth finds my neck and all coherent thought dissolves into sensation.
He kisses his way down my throat, pausing to scrape his tusks gently against my pulse point, and I arch into him with a sound that might be his name or might just be wordless plea for more.
His hands map the topography of my body with meticulous attention, cataloging every sensitive spot, every place that makes me gasp or writhe or dig my nails into his shoulders.
"Here," he murmurs against my collarbone, his tongue tracing patterns I can't decode.
"You like this." His thumb brushes over my nipple, and I nearly come off the bed.
"And this." His teeth close gently around the curve of my breast, not quite biting, just enough pressure to make me see stars.
"I will learn every part of you, Cypress.
Every secret your body keeps. Every way to make you fall apart beneath me. "
"Less learning, more doing," I manage, though it comes out breathless and desperate and nothing like the composed professional I try to be. "Knox, please—"
"Please what?" He lifts his head to meet my eyes, and the expression on his face is devastating—tender and hungry and utterly focused on me like I'm the only thing in his universe that matters. "Tell me what you need, little valkyrie. Use your words."
"You." I wrap my legs around his hips as best I can given the size differential, pulling him closer, trying to eliminate any remaining space between us. "I need you. I need—"
He kisses me before I can finish, deep and searching, and I feel his hand slide between my thighs with gentleness.
His fingers are enormous, thick and blunt, and when he touches me I have to bite down on his shoulder to muffle the sound that tears from my throat.
He works me open with a patience that borders on maddening, one finger at first, then two, stretching me gradually while his thumb circles my clit in patterns that seem designed to drive me completely insane.
"That's it. Let me feel you, Cypress. Let me—"
The first orgasm crashes through me without warning, pulling me under like a riptide, and Knox swallows my cry with his mouth as I shake apart around his fingers.
He doesn't stop, doesn't slow, just keeps working me through the aftershocks until I'm oversensitive and trembling and digging my heels into his back in a silent demand for more.
"Ready?" he asks.
"Yes." I reach down to help guide him, my hand wrapping around the considerable length of him, and he hisses through his teeth at the contact. "Yes, I'm ready, I need—"
He presses forward, and the stretch is unlike anything I've experienced before—a slow, relentless pressure that makes my breath catch and my fingers scrabble against his shoulders for purchase.
He's impossibly large, and every inch feels like a revelation, like my body is being remapped around the reality of him.
He moves with excruciating slowness, giving me time to adjust, to breathe, to accept him, and by the time he's fully seated I feel hollowed out and remade in equal measure.
"Cypress." My name sounds wrecked on his tongue, broken and desperate. "Are you—"
"Move." I rock my hips against him, the motion sending sparks cascading up my spine. "Knox, please, you need to move—"
He does. Carefully at first, the restraint still visible in the tension of his jaw and the way his hands grip the sheets on either side of my head like he's trying to anchor himself.
But I don't want careful, don't want restrained, not after everything we've survived together.
I dig my nails into his back and bite down on his shoulder and tell him exactly what I want in language that would make my grandmother faint, and gradually—finally—he gives it to me.
The rhythm builds between us like music, like mathematics, like the inevitable progression of a proof toward its conclusion.
His hips snap against mine and I match him as best I can, wrapping myself around him, taking everything he gives and demanding more.
He growls praise against my skin between kisses, calling me brilliant and brave and his, his, his, and each repetition of that possessive claim sends another pulse of heat through my already overwhelmed system.
"Close," I gasp, feeling the tension coiling tighter in my core. "Knox, I'm close—"