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I don't give her time to get used to me. I hold her hips up off the canvas and fuck her hard and deep, all the way in on every stroke. My hips slap against the backs of her thighs, and my hands keep her from sliding up into the ropes.

Her grip pulls the bottom rope taut each time I bottom out in her. I pull back until only the swollen head of my cock is still inside her and watch her pussy cling to me. Then I slam back in to the root.

The canvas squeaks under her shoulders. The ropes creak against the posts, and the old bell hums each time the post takes a jolt. Her breasts bounce with every stroke, and the wet slap of me fucking her is the loudest sound in the barn.

Sweat runs down my chest and drips off my chin onto her belly. My knees burn through the denim where they grind into the canvas. The bruise on my jaw throbs with my heartbeat, and I want her to give me another one.

Her hips try to roll up to meet me, but she stops them herself. Stroke after stroke, I watch her want to fight and choose not to. It makes me fuck her harder.

I check her face. She isn't scared. She's flushed and fierce and right here with me, and her lips are bitten red.

I take her right hand off the rope myself. I fold her fingers into a fist, the fist that hit me, and press her knuckles to my mouth.

"Leave the other one where it is."

Her left hand stays locked on the rope. I hold her fist against my mouth with one hand and her hip with the other. I keep driving into her, short and brutal now, and grind the base of my cock against her clit at the bottom of every stroke.

I set my teeth in the heel of her hand, below her thumb, and bite down.

She comes. I never told her she could, and I never told her she couldn't.

She holds still through it, with her hips up on my thighs, one fist on the rope and the other against my teeth. Her pussy clamps down on my cock in hard, deep pulses that squeeze me from the root to the head.

She's sobbing my name. Her toes curl against the canvas, and her thighs shake around my hips. A fresh rush of wetness coats my cock and runs down onto my thighs, hot against my skin.

Watching her come on my cock is what finishes me.

I drive into her as deep as I can and hold there. I come so hard my knees slide on the canvas. My cock jerks inside her with every spurt, and I empty into her with her knuckles still against my mouth, groaning her name into her fist.

I stay buried in her with her hips on my thighs while I get my breath back. Every time my cock twitches inside her, she shudders around me and whimpers.

"Let go of the rope."

I ease her hips down and slide out of her slowly. My come runs out of her, and she makes a small, wrecked sound.

Her fingers don't want to open, so I work the rope out of her left hand. Her palm is red from it, and the flannel cuffs still cover both her wrists.

I pull her up into my lap. Her thighs are slick with both of us, and the bite on her thigh is already darkening. My teeth marks show at the base of her thumb.

I take her right hand and lay her knuckles against my jaw, where she hit me.

"Nobody's landed a punch on me since San Angelo without me hitting back."

"You didn't hit back."

"No. What hurts that shouldn't?" I ask.

"My ribs, a little. My shoulders, from your canvas." She looks at the teeth marks on her hand. "These hurt a lot. I liked that."

"I liked running you down. Next time I won't ring that bell so soon."

"Next time I won't drop my shoulder." She takes her knuckles off my jaw. "You let me hit you, and you kissed my hand for it. I watched your face the whole time, Knox."

Every woman before her got a careful version of me, with my hands held back, because I never trusted what I'd do without that. Delilah got all of it tonight, my hands and that grin, and she looked straight at it the whole time. She's still sitting in my lap. That matters to me more than I want it to, and I don't say a word about it. I tighten my arm around her waist and hold her against my chest, where she's staying.

I put my work shirt on her over the ruined flannel. She pushes her arms through the sleeves herself, and I snap it closed up to her throat. The cuffs hang past her fingers.

I pull my jeans up, buckle the gun belt back on, and clip the radio to it.