61. Knox
SIXTY-ONE
KNOX
Isit back on my heels and let her sit up. Then I unbuckle my belt, and I take my time about it, because what comes next isn’t something I want to rush through. The belt slides free. The button gives. The zipper goes down. I push my jeans and boxers down past my hips in one motion and let her see.
She doesn’t gasp. I’m grateful for that.
She just looks. For a long time. Her eyes go wide, and her mouth opens slightly, and she sits up straighter without taking her eyes off me. I watch her face do the math.
“Oh,” she says, quiet.
“Yeah.”
“Knox, that’s—”
“I know.”
She reaches out. Slow. Her small hand wraps around me and even with her fingers spread she doesn’t make it all the way around. She pumps once, experimentally, and I groan, because her hand on me after weeks of just imagining it is almost more than I can take.
“I’ve never—” she says, and stops. Tries again. “I don’t know if I can.”
“You can’t. Not tonight.”
She looks up at me, startled. “What?”
I take her hand off me, gently, and bring it to my mouth. Kiss the inside of her wrist. Try to find the words for a thing I’ve spent fifteen years explaining to women and have never had to explain to one I actually loved.
“Fury. I’ve known my whole life that this isn’t a gift. It’s a problem. Women have looked at me the way you just looked and decided it wasn’t worth it. Women have tried and asked me to stop. I’ve hurt people I didn’t mean to hurt because I thought wanting it was enough.”
I tuck myself away and pull her into my lap, her bare chest against my chest, my arms around her ribs. She’s quiet, listening.
“It’s not enough. Your body has to be ready. Really ready. That takes preparation. Time. Probably more than one night. You take three of my fingers comfortably before we even think about it.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. Her hand has come to a rest over my heart, and her thumb is moving in a small slow circle there, like she’s thinking with her hands.
“So what do we do instead?” she asks.
“Tonight? Everything that doesn’t end with me inside you. And we work up to it. Together. However long it takes.”
“Okay. We work up to it then.” She tilts her head. “But what does everything that doesn’t end with you inside me include?”
“Whatever you want.”
Laying her back, I pull her dress and panties the rest of the way off and drop them on the floor.
Then I settle over her and take my time with her.
I’m in no hurry. The whole point of tonight isn’t to finish—it’s to give her body the experience of being attended to, slowly and completely, by a man who has nothing to prove and nowhere to be.
I kiss every inch of her. I learn the places that make her arch and the places that make her giggle and the place behind her left knee that makes her gasp and grab my head.
I take her breasts back into my mouth and stay there until her hips are rocking against nothing, until she’s making the small frustrated sound that means more.
I slide down her body. Hook her thighs over my shoulders. Take a moment just to look at her—slick, open for me—and murmur, “I’m gonna need a while.”
I put my mouth on her.
She cries out, hands fisting the sheets.
I find the rhythm that makes her breath stutter and hold it, long flat licks, my tongue swirling and sucking tight around her clit.
I alternate between the two and make her work for it.
Make her rock up against my face like she’s the one taking from me and not the other way around.
When she’s slick and dripping and the small sounds at the back of her throat have turned into pleading, I slide one finger inside her.
She moans. Her body grips my finger immediately, her hips lifting off the bed.
“Knox—”
“I know. I’ve got you.”
I add a second. Curl them. Find the spot inside her that makes her gasp and chase my hand.
My mouth stays on her clit, swirling and sucking, and I let her grind against me until she’s shaking, thighs trembling on either side of my head, and then she’s coming on my tongue—a long, low, broken sound, her body clamping down hard on my fingers, her hips rocking against my face like she can’t stop, like she doesn’t want to.
I work her through it. Stay with her until the last shudder fades. Then I sit back on my heels and watch her, collapsed onto the pillows, chest heaving, looking up at the ceiling with the dazed look of a woman who has just been somewhere she didn’t know she could go.
“Holy shit,” she breathes.
“I’m not done.”
She lifts her head. “You’re not?”
“I told you—everything that doesn’t end with me inside you.”
I crawl back up her body, kissing my way up, and I settle next to her on the bed.
My mouth finds hers—she tastes of salt and herself and a faint sweetness underneath, and she moans into my mouth.
My hand slides down between her thighs, finding her still slick, still open, the aftershocks of her orgasm still pulsing.
“This time we’re going to take it slower,” I say.
“Slower than that?”
“Slower.”
I slide two fingers inside her, easy now, her body welcoming them. Curl them. Find the spot. Keep my thumb light on her clit, just enough to keep her warm without driving her up too fast.
“Two of my fingers,” I murmur against her temple, “and you’re already taking them like they belong there. Imagine three.”
“I want three.”
“Soon. Not yet.”
“Knox—”
“Patient, Fury.”
She whimpers and presses up into my hand, chasing the rhythm she wants, her hips setting the pace. My mouth moves to her neck, her shoulder, the soft place just below her ear that I’m cataloging as one of her tells. When she’s wet enough that her juices are dripping down my hand, I add a third.
She gasps. Tenses. Pushes down against my hand experimentally.
“Easy. Breathe.”
“It’s—”
“I know. Just breathe.”
I keep my fingers still inside her, letting her body adjust. The stretch is real—three of my fingers isn’t me but it’s still more than most—and I want her to feel it, to learn what it’s going to be like before she even considers taking more.
When her breathing evens out, I move.
Slow. Deep. Curling on the upstroke, finding the spot, my thumb working her clit in time with my hand.
Sounds fall from her lips that aren’t quite words—please and Knox and more all running into each other—and her hips lift to meet me, fucking herself onto my hand because her body has decided it knows what it wants.
“That’s it, Fury. Take what you need.”
“Knox—”
“You’re so beautiful like this. Open for me. Greedy for me.”
“I want—”
“What do you want?”
“I want—deeper—”
I press deeper. She cries out. I hold the rhythm she’s chasing and I let her ride my hand the way she’d ride me if she could, and somewhere in the middle of it, her thighs tighten around my wrist, her breath shortening, small high sounds at the back of her throat I’m already learning to recognize.
“That’s it, Fury. Come for me. Come on my hand.”
She does. Harder than the first time. Her whole body bows up off the bed and she clamps down on my fingers, bruisingly, and her mouth opens in a soundless cry. I watch every inch of her coming apart for me. And I think this is what I’ve been waiting for my entire adult life and I didn’t know it.
“Knox! Oh God!”
I work her through it. Slow my hand as she comes down, ease my fingers out gently when she’s too sensitive to take them anymore. Pull her into my chest and hold her while she shakes.
“I have you,” I murmur into her hair. “I have you.”
“That was—” Her voice is wrecked. “Knox. Fuck. I took three.”
“Yeah, you did. Proud of you.”
She laughs—small, breathless, slightly hysterical—and the sound goes right through me. She presses her face into my chest and breathes me in, and I run my hand up and down her back and let her come back to herself.
After a long minute, she lifts her head.
“Can I taste you now?”
“If that’s what you want. You can do anything you want with me.”
“As long as you’re not inside me.” She smirks.
“Right. You stretch good, Fury, but we’re not there yet.”
She gives me a dramatic pout as she gets onto her knees. “Okay. Got any pointers for me?”
She leans forward, still flushed, trembling slightly and hooks her fingers in my waistband, working my jeans down my hips until I spring free.
She looks at me lying back against the headboard, at the obvious situation between my legs, and her eyes go dark again—not the wide, alarmed dark from earlier, but a focused, deliberate dark. Hungry.
My cock jumps.
“First pointer,” I say, voice rough. “You don’t have to take all of me in your mouth. Not even close.”
Her gaze flicks up to mine, then back down. “That’s reassuring.”
I huff a laugh. “Use your hands. Mouth where you want. Hands do the rest.”
“Okay.” She swallows. “Okay.”
I should ask if she’s sure one more time. I know I should. But then she leans in and presses a kiss to the tip of me, soft and tentative, and every coherent thought in my head fucking scatters.
“Jesus, Fury.”
She smiles against me, wicked and pleased with herself, then she puts her small hands around me—both of them, and even with two she can’t make a full circle—and lowers her mouth over the head.
Her tongue swirls. My head goes back. I groan.
She works me slow, careful, learning the shape of me with her mouth and her hands together. She can only take a fraction of me past her lips before her jaw is straining. Her lashes flutter and she pulls off me with a wet sound, breathing hard.
“I have an idea,” she gasps.
Then her hand slips between her thighs.
I watch, transfixed, as she drags her fingers through the mess I made of her, gathers the slick there, and strokes it over me from root to tip.
“Thought this might help,” she murmurs, voice shy and filthy all at once.
It helps.
Fuck, it helps.
My whole body locks. My hips jerk before I can stop them, and she laughs softly—pleased, emboldened—then does it again, slow this time, spreading herself over me like she’s learning exactly how I fit in her hand.
“Fury.” My voice comes out wrecked. “You keep doing that and this is gonna be over before you get started.”
“That bad?”
“That good.”
Her smile goes molten. She braces one hand on my thigh and works the other over me, using her spit and her slick to coat my shaft.
She leans down again and takes the head of me into her mouth while her hands stroke lower, and the combination nearly rips a sound out of me loud enough to shake the windows.
“Fuck.”
She hums around me, pleased, and the vibration goes straight through my spine.
I fist the sheets instead of her hair. Every instinct in me wants to guide her, to take over, to fuck up into that hot little mouth and see how much she can take, but this isn’t about that.
It’s about letting her learn me at her own pace.
I breathe through my nose. Try to keep my voice steady.
“Good girl. Just like that.”
Her lashes lift. She looks up at me while she strokes me, mouth still working the head, and it’s so obscene and sweet and fucking earnest that my control slips another inch.
“Christ, Fury.” I reach down and brush her hair back from her face. “You’re killing me.”
She pulls off me long enough to grin. “I thought that was usually your job.”
A laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it. “Brat.”
“Mm.” She kisses the tip again. “You like me.”
“I more than like you.”
She smiles and lowers her mouth over me again.
This time she’s bolder.
One hand grips the base where her mouth can’t reach, the other slides higher, twisting lightly in a way that makes me lose my mind.
She takes me as deep as she can, cheeks hollowing, tongue flattening along the underside of my crown, and I have to bite back a curse because she’s not polished—she’s better.
She’s eager. Present. Every movement says tell me what you like and I’ll learn it.
My thighs tense.
“Fuck, Fury. That’s it.”
She moans softly around me at the praise, and the vibration punches through me so hard I see white for a second. Her eyes stay on mine. That’s the part that wrecks me. Not just her mouth. Her face. Open and intent and a little smug every time I twitch in her hands.
I slide my hand to the back of her head, holding.
“Easy,” I rasp. “Breathe through your nose.”
She does. Pulls off, drags in a breath, then licks a stripe up the length of me that has my head tipping back against the wall.
“Jesus Christ.”
She giggles. Actually giggles. Then takes me back into her mouth.
I’m gone.
“Fury—Fuck—”
It tears out of me. I come hard, and I have to grab her shoulder to keep from bucking hard enough to shove her off.
My release spills hot over her tongue and the heel of her hand and my stomach, my whole body tightening around it.
She pulls off when I guide her, coughing once, eyes wide and shining, and I swear I fall harder right there—watching her wipe her mouth with the back of her hand and then smile at me like she just won something.
“You okay?” I ask, voice wrecked to hell.
She nods fast. “Yeah.” Then she looks down at the mess on my stomach and laughs, breathless and delighted. “Wow.”
I huff out a laugh of my own and reach for the box of tissues on her nightstand. “Come here.”
I clean her first. Her lips. Her fingers. The little smear on her wrist. Then myself. She watches the whole thing with her chin tipped down and that post-orgasmic, over-kissed softness all over her face that makes me want to put her in my pocket and keep her there.
“You did good,” I tell her.
Her cheeks go pink. “I nearly choked to death.”
I grin despite myself. “You handled it. I’m proud of you.”
Her blush deepens, and I’ve never felt more for another human than I do in this moment. “Come here, Fury,” I say, dragging her against me.