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She bucks once, and I stop dead with my fingers buried in her. She goes still. Her inner walls flutter and clench around them, and her thighs shake against the belt and my knee.

"Whose hands are these?" I ask her.

She knows exactly what I'm asking. She takes a long time to answer.

"Yours," she says. Her voice cracks. "The ones that signed it."

"Yes." I keep my fingers still inside her. "And they're the ones that stop the second you say Bandera. Tomorrow that's still true. Every day after, it's still true."

She starts to cry. Her head turns into my neck, and her tears run hot down my collarbone. She keeps her hands where I put them.

I hold still and watch her. She doesn't say the word. When I ease my fingers back, her hips follow them, chasing my hand. She isn't asking me to stop. She's asking me to keep going while she cries.

I move my fingers again, slow and deep, stroking that spot inside her while my palm grinds her clit. I can hear how slick she is. I bite the curve of her shoulder, not hard, and hold it in my teeth while I bring her right back up. Her belly goes hard. Her toes curl. I stop. I start again, slower. I stop.

Between rounds I run my hand down her bent leg to her foot. It's warm, and her toes flex against my palm. I let the belt out a notch anyway, and the leather slides looser over the red line it's left in her skin.

I do it again and again, until she's sobbing out loud. She's so sensitive now that every stroke of my fingers drags a sound out of her. Sweat runs between her breasts and slicks her back against my chest. Her thighs tremble in a steady shudder she can't control, and her ass grinds back against my cock every time she shakes.

"Please," she says. "Knox, please. Please let me."

"Not like this. I want your face."

I unbuckle the belt. Her leg has been bent too long to straighten, so I leave it bent. I slide out from behind her, turn her by the hips, and lay her on her left side. I stretch out on my side facing her.

Her face is flushed and streaked with tears. Her eyelids are red, and her eyes are on mine.

I lift her right knee, hook it over my hip, and hold it there with my hand spread flat under her thigh. Red marks from the belt run across the back of her thigh.

I fit the head of my cock against her and push in slowly, bare. Her swollen lips part around me and stretch. She cries out with every inch, and I don't stop until I'm buried in her.

She grips me tight. I feel her clench and flutter and pull at me from end to end. A sob breaks out of her.

Her forehead presses against mine. Her hand comes up to my chest, and she leaves it there, open, over my heart.

Neither of us is on top. We're eye to eye, and the only thing holding her is my hand under her thigh.

I kiss her. Her mouth is salty from crying and tastes like both of us, and she opens it under mine.

I move in her slowly, pulling almost all the way out and sliding back to the root. My grip on her thigh tips her hips into every stroke. Her nipples drag across my chest with every stroke. When I'm deep, I grind the base of my cock against her clit and hold there. The slick, wet sound of every stroke fills the room. Her breath catches, and I feel her start to shake.

"Not yet," I tell her.

She whimpers against my mouth and holds. When it gets to be too much, she sinks her teeth into my shoulder to keep from coming, and I let her.

I keep her there, stroke after stroke, slow and deep, while the bed creaks under us. She trembles so hard I feel it all through my body. Her fingers dig into my chest. Tears run sideways across her nose and into the pillow, and she never closes her eyes.

I stop deep inside her and pull her thigh tight against my hip.

"Look at me."

Her eyes are open on mine, close enough that I feel her breath.

"Now," I tell her.

She comes the second I say it. Her whole body clenches around me. Her thigh locks against my hip, and her pussy pulls at my cock in long, hard, rolling pulses that go on and on. I take her mouth as she comes, and she cries out into it, raw and broken.

The way she clenches around me sets me off. My hand locks on her thigh. I give her a last few hard strokes, as deep as I can get, and come with my forehead against hers and her name in my mouth. My cock jerks inside her with every pulse, hot and hard, and I empty into her until my legs go weak and I'm groaning against her lips.