He considered this. “Didn’t seem like your first time.”
I grinned, cheek pressed to his chest. “You’re a very good teacher,” I said. “Also, I’m a quick study. Also, I may have watched a lot of tutorials on the internet.”
He made a noise that was part snort, part groan, and I realized with something like awe that Knox McKenzie was blushing. Not a lot, but enough for the heat to rise through his skin.
I tried to look up, but he clamped a hand gently over the back of my head, pressing me down again. “Stop talking,” he said.
“Can’t,” I said, muffled. “It’s a medical condition. You have to let it run its course or it gets worse.”
He exhaled, and I could feel him shaking with silent laughter. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
I almost said “promise?” but decided it would be funnier to keep him guessing.
He pulled the comforter over us with his free hand, then tucked it around my shoulders. The night was still and warm, and the only thing left to do was wait for sleep or for the next aftershock of dopamine to hit.
I didn’t know how long we lay there. Time had stopped mattering somewhere between the third orgasm and the pointwhere my body gave up all pretense of being an independent organism and just melted into his orbit.
I was dozing, or pretending to, when the sound of tires on gravel snapped me fully alert. I wasn’t sure if Knox heard it, but my own sense of fight-or-flight was tuned to exactly two frequencies—the sound of my brother’s boots on a linoleum floor and the sound of an unrecognized vehicle approaching from the main road.
I tensed.
Knox noticed immediately, his hand tightening fractionally on my waist. “What?” he said, voice instantly on high alert.
I listened. The engine was low and even, definitely not a McKenzie truck. It rolled to a stop just outside the house. The silence that followed was even more ominous.
Knox rolled out from under me, rising in one smooth, catlike motion that was both unfair and extremely hot. He was naked, of course, but didn’t bother reaching for anything—just stalked to the window and peered out through the slit in the curtains, every muscle tensed like he was ready to take down a bear with his bare hands.
I tried to sit up, but my body disagreed. I ended up sort of propped on my elbows, sheet tangled around my hips. My heart was going about twice as fast as a normal human heart was supposed to go.
Knox’s shoulders relaxed, just a little. He turned back to me, the lines of his face in shadow, eyes narrowed.
“Stay here,” he said, which was the dumbest instruction ever, because there was absolutely no force on earth that could have moved me off this bed at that exact moment.
I watched him get dressed, quick and efficient, pulling on sweatpants and a faded tank top. He didn’t look back at me, but I could feel the heat of his attention, as if the back of my head was suddenly a solar panel.
I wondered, for a wild second, if I should have been more scared. If I should have panicked at the possibility of being found out, exposed, thrown back to the wolves.
Instead, I just felt a weird, electrical charge running under my skin. I wanted to see who was at the door. I wanted to know what would happen next.
But most of all, I wanted to stay exactly where I was, in the warm, crumpled sheets that still smelled like sweat and cedar and possibility.
I burrowed deeper, listening as the front door opened downstairs, followed by the low rumble of voices—one unmistakably Knox, the other familiar, but harder to place.
I waited, and waited, until the adrenaline drained out of me and all that was left was the memory of Knox’s mouth on my neck and the knowledge that, whatever happened next, I would remember this night for the rest of my life.
If this was going to be the aftermath, I’d take it. And if anyone came looking, well, I was ready to be found.
My theory about post-traumatic bliss was put to the test approximately five minutes later, when Ransom’s voice hit the door at roughly the same decibel as a tornado siren.
“Knox!” he yelled, pounding the wood with his meaty fist. “Sheriff’s here. And he’s got company.”
That was all it took for my pulse to jump from “gentle afterglow” straight to “hummingbird on meth.” My stomach did a perfect floor-dive; my hands went slick and useless. I froze on the bed, sheet hiked up to my hips, mind gone instantly, humiliatingly blank.
Company meant one thing—my father or maybe Luther. Either was bad news for my continued existence as a free-range gay.
I tried to move, but it was like my whole body was made of jello, the off-brand kind with extra gelatin and no flavor. My teeth started to chatter.
Knox was back at the side of the bed in one stride, his face a hundred percent military, no-nonsense, mission parameters engaged. He reached for me and I latched on, fingers digging into the muscles of his forearm like a very desperate, very panicked squirrel.
