Page 35

Over his head, the black window reflects the whole lamplit room. I can see myself in the glass, on top of him in my shirt with his hands under me. The last time I saw myself in that window, my eyes went empty and I left my own body. This time I look at that woman. Then I look back down at Knox, and I don't go anywhere.

"Whose voice is this?" he says.

"Yours."

"Say my name."

"Knox."

"Again."

"Knox." It comes out broken.

He starts driving up into me from the chair while he pulls me down onto him, hard and fast now. His hips slam up to meet me, and skin smacks against skin. The chair legs knock against the floorboards. Sweat slicks his chest, and his breath rasps through his teeth. His hands stay low, well below my ribs.

He shifts more of my weight onto my planted feet and one big hand, and he slides the thumb of the other between us. He finds my clit and rubs it in hard, tight circles while he fucks up into me.

"You don't come till I say."

I'm right at the edge, so wound up I'm trembling all over. I fight it off with everything I have, because he hasn't said I can come. Tears are running down my face, and I don't care.

He tips his head back to hold my gaze. Then he says it low and even, exactly the way he said it to two bleeding men in his ring when I was nineteen.

"Bell rang."

I come apart on him. My pussy clamps down on his cock and pulses around him again and again, and I cry out loud. I don't bite it back the way I did the first time in his bed. My left fist stays locked on the chair back, and my right hand clenches on his shoulder hard enough to leave marks.

He keeps his thumb on my clit and works me through every wave of it. His jaw clenches and his lips part while he watches me come.

He drags me all the way down onto him, drives up into me a last few hard times, and comes with a groan torn out of his chest. I feel his cock jerk deep inside me. His fingers dig into my hips, his forehead drops against my breastbone, and his whole body shudders under me.

I'm still here. For the first time in a year, a man had his hands on me and I stayed for every second.

This is what I wanted on that hay bale at nineteen, before any of them ever touched me. The want was mine all along. Those men never owned it.

That's when I start shaking. It starts in my legs and goes all the way up until my teeth chatter.

I'm crying now, hard, with my hands still locked on the chair back and his shoulder. He hasn't released me yet.

"Let go," Knox says quietly. "You're done. You can move."

I let go and curl my wrists against my chest.

Knox takes my backside in both hands, well below my ribs. "Legs around me." I wrap them around his waist, and he stands up out of the chair with me. He slips out of me as he rises, and I'm left empty and aching. I press my face into the side of his neck. His skin is slick with sweat and hot against my cheek, and his heart is pounding hard enough that I feel every beat against my curled wrists.

He carries me to the bed and bends slowly, keeping my ribs from folding. He lays me on my back near the pillows, where the lamplight falls, and slides a pillow under my head. Before he lets me go, he presses his mouth to my forehead and holds it there.

Knox goes into the bathroom. I hear the lid of the trash can clack shut, and then the water runs.

When he comes back, the condom is gone, and his cock hangs heavy and half-hard between his thighs. He sits on the edge of the bed with a warm washcloth and cleans me between my legs, gently.

He takes the quilt from the foot of the bed, shakes it out, and wraps it around me, pulling it closed over my arms. He settles me against the headboard. He sits down beside me and puts his left arm around me under the quilt, below my ribs.

"Drink." He holds the water glass to my mouth.

I drink half of it, and he makes me drink the other half.

He reaches across with his free hand and takes one of mine under the quilt. He works his thumb into my palm and keeps his fingers well clear of my wrist. Then he does the other hand.