Page 148 of What We Bury

Teeth and tongue, his lips slamming mine open so hard that I gasp, and he’s all over me, hungry and uncontained in a way that’s never, ever happened before.

I taste coffee and salt and the pent-up charge of every minute he’s spent not touching me these last two weeks.

His hand fists into my hair, tightening, holding my head still so he can ravage my mouth. And I moan because there is nothing else to do. His tongue slicks into my mouth, and the sound he makes is a growl—deep, animal, the sound of a man who’s been starving for so long he doesn’t trust the food is real.

He pulls back just enough to bite my lower lip, hard. I whimper and taste copper, and he licks over the sting, then pulls back with a sound like it’s physically hurting him to stop.

“Christ, you taste fucking amazing,” he rasps, breathing hard, hand still tangled in my hair.

Then he drags his thumb over my bottom lip, collects the blood he’d drawn, and puts it in his own mouth like it’s the sweetest thing. He makes a noise—hungry, involuntary—like he wants to devour me from the inside out. Then he’s gone. Just. Gone.

The door clicks closed behind him and I’m left in the entryway, swaying on my feet, lip throbbing and thighs slick.

My head is buzzing like I just stepped out of a wind tunnel. I barely register the passage of time until the front door rattles and swings open, and Amy comes in with a cardboard carrier of lattes and her purse, hair windblown, sunglasses already off. She stops short, eyes wide at the sight of me standing stupefied in the entryway.

“Jesus Christ, Sage, did you get attacked?” she blurts, setting the coffees down on the dining table. “What the fuck happened to you?”

I try to answer but breathing is a full-time job. My mouth tingles. My lip is still bleeding, apparently, because Amy’s gazesharpens to laser focus and she crosses to me in two strides, hands hovering near my face.

“Are you okay?” she says. The question is soft, criminally gentle, but her body is already bracing for whatever disaster I’ve brought into her home this week. “Sage? Talk to me. Are you all right?”

I let out a high laugh. “I’m fucking amazing.”

FORTY

SAGE

“You don’t look ‘fucking amazing.’” Amy steers me to the couch by both shoulders and presses me down onto it. She crouches in front of me, takes my face in both hands, and tips my chin toward the window like she’s inspecting fruit for bruises. “Why is your mouth bleeding?”

“It’s barely?—”

“There is visible blood. Exiting your face. Sage.” Her voice drops into something low. “Did someone do this to you? Because I’m small but I’m feral. I’ve watched a lot of true crime. I know where the soft parts are.”

“Nobody did anything to me.”

“Then why do you look like you went three rounds with—” She stops. Her whole face recalibrates, eyebrows climbing toward her hairline. “Oh . . .”

“Amy—”

“Oh myGod.” She lets go of my face and grabs my hand instead, like she needs a piece of me to hold onto for the ride. “You gotkissed.”

I press my lips together, which is a mistake, because it makes me wince, which she clocks.

“You got kissedhard.” She’s vibrating. “But seriously. You’re okay? He didn’t scare you?”

“Nothing scary about it.” I can’t hold back my grin. “It was an amazing kiss.”

“Oh my God. Was it the hardware guy? From the other night—Milo?”

“No.”

“No?” She says it like the word personally wounds her. “Which means there’s a someone, and the someone isn’t the one I already met. Sage.Sage.”

“His name’s Holden.”

She goes still. “Who’s Holden?”

I weigh it for half a second. There’s no full version of the truth I can hand her. But there’s a shape of it I can. “He’s a cop.”