60. Knox #2
Bending down, I meet her halfway. Her lips are soft, tentative.
But when I press in closer, she melts against me, her small hands sliding up my chest to grip my shirt.
The kiss deepens slowly—her mouth opening under mine, a quiet sigh escaping as my tongue brushes hers.
She’s sweet from the shrimp, salty from the air, and I take my time, savoring every second, my free hand settling at the small of her back to pull her flush against me.
She makes a soft sound in the back of her throat, and it sends heat straight through me.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders, urging me on, and I oblige—kissing her deeper, one hand tangling gently in her hair to angle her head just right.
The world narrows to her warmth, her breath, the way she fits against me.
We break apart only when the need for air becomes too much, her forehead resting against my chest as we both catch our breath.
“Knox,” she whispers, voice husky. “Take me home.”
The walk back to her apartment is charged, every brush of her body against mine feeling like a spark.
She keeps stealing glances at me, her cheeks flushed, and by the time we reach her apartment, the tension is thick enough to slice.
She fumbles with her keys, and I take them from her gently, unlocking the door and guiding her inside.
The apartment is dark, quiet—no sign of Amy or Tyler. Good. I don’t want interruptions tonight. Even my phone stays silent in my pocket. Silence means the plan is moving. If they need me, they’ll call. And I hope to fuck they don’t.
Sage turns to me as soon as the door clicks shut, her hands finding my face again, pulling me down for another kiss.
This one is hungrier, more insistent, her body pressing against mine as we stumble toward the bedroom.
I lift her easily, her legs wrapping around my waist, and carry her the rest of the way, kicking the door shut behind us.
I lower her onto the bed, careful, always careful—she’s so small compared to me, fragile in ways that make me hyper-aware of my size.
She pulls me down with her, our kisses turning feverish, her hands roaming under my shirt, tracing the ridges of my abs, my chest. I shrug out of the shirt, letting her explore, her touch sending shivers across my skin.
She sits up to look at me. Her hands settle on my shoulders and travel down, slow, taking inventory.
The pucker of an old entry wound below my left collarbone, the matching exit higher on my back—a round that should have killed me and didn’t, somewhere I’m not allowed to name.
The clean ridge along my ribs from a piece of shrapnel that came out of a ditch outside a town that doesn’t appear on most maps.
The shiny patch of grafted skin along my forearm from the time a building came down with me still inside it.
The faded ink at my hip—unit numbers, a date, names I don’t say out loud anymore.
Her fingertips read each one like a language she’s learning, no flinch, no pity, just the same patient curiosity she gives everything.
“Tell me about this one,” she says, tracing the entry wound.
“Can’t.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Can’t. The country it happened in still doesn’t admit I was there.”
She nods, understanding. She moves to the next one. The shrapnel ridge.
“This?”
“Same answer.”
“And the ink?”
I hesitate. The ink is the one I could tell her about, if I wanted to. Twelve names. Eight of them dead. The date is the day we lost the first of them, the start of the long count. I’ve never said any of it out loud to anyone who wasn’t there.
“Brothers,” I say finally. “Some of them are still around. Most of them aren’t.”
Her thumb traces the dates. She doesn’t ask which is which.
She leans down and presses her mouth to the ink instead, and the small, deliberate kindness of that—kissing the names she’ll never know, honoring them anyway—does something to me I can’t put a word to.
She moves to the entry wound and kisses that too.
Then the shrapnel ridge. Then the graft.
By the time her lips reach the ridge of muscle along my hip, my whole body has gone tight in a way that has nothing to do with violence and everything to do with the fact that nobody has ever read me like this.
Like the marks are mine and worth knowing, instead of warnings to back away from.
“Fury,” I say, and my voice has gone rough.
“Mm.”
“I need you out of this dress.”
She looks up at me through her lashes, a grin breaking, and she reaches behind her for the zipper.
I beat her to it. I pluck her off the bed, setting her on the floor facing away from me, then run the zipper down her back slowly, watching the fabric fall away.
The dress slides off her shoulders and pools around her hips, and she’s wearing a simple black bra underneath, plain cotton, the cheapest thing on a department store rack, and the sight of it stops my breath.
“You’re beautiful,” I say.
She blushes—this woman who killed a man in front of me a few weeks ago—and reaches behind to unhook the bra.
I stop her hands. I want to do it. She lets me.
The hooks give under my fingers, the straps slide down.
I turn her to face me, and she’s bare from the waist up in my hands.
I just look at her for a long moment because looking is a thing I haven’t been allowed to do enough.
“Knox.”
“Wait. Let me.”
I lower her back onto the pillows and follow her down, my mouth finding the hollow at the base of her throat first, then the slope of her collarbone, then lower.
I take my time with her breasts, learning what makes her arch, what makes her breath catch, what makes the small sound at the back of her throat shift from a sigh into something hungrier.
Her fingers drag over my scalp. Her thighs press under me.
“Knox,” she breathes, her fingers dipping lower, toward my belt. “I want you. All of you.”
I still her hands, kissing her palm. “Fury. You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I do.” She looks right at me, steady. “I’ve thought about it every night since the alley.”
That gets me. I close my eyes for a beat. Then I open them and look at her, knowing that what I’m about to say is going to disappoint her.
“I want you to see something,” I say. “Before you decide you want all of me.”