Page 184 of What We Bury

We don’t speak. The air between us is made out of secrets and want. I can smell the clean, cool scent of him, soap and something metallic and dark, like the echo of blood in memory. He pulls me forward until I’m straddling his lap, knees braced on both sides, my pulse thundering in my own ears.

I think he’s going to kiss me. Or maybe I just want him to. But he holds me there, caged in his arms, the distance between us a held breath.

I reach out and touch his face.

My fingers trace the line of his jaw—rough with stubble, warm, solid as bedrock. He goes perfectly still in that predatory way, like he’s waiting for the smallest provocation, the signal to attack.

“You’re beautiful,” I say, shocked by my own honesty. It feels daring, like touching a bruise or poking a bear. “I bet no one tells you that.”

His jaw shifts. His hands tighten minutely on my hips, and I feel the length of him growing hard between us.

“You are,” I whisper. “Beautiful.”

Still nothing, but his breathing is a little less regular now, his eyes a little hungrier. I lean forward and run my hands up the sides of his neck. The skin is so warm, textured with fresh stubble, the muscle underneath like rebar. He lets me trace the column of his throat, the sharp horizontal line of his cheekbone, the scar above his eyebrow—a pale line, maybe an inch, as if some other life tried and failed to split him in half.

My thumbs rest on his jaw as I lower my face toward his. I move soft, slow, afraid he’ll vanish if I break the tension too fast. Our noses bump. My mouth hovers a whisper above his. I wait, one heartbeat, two, not sure if he wants this.

He answers by catching my mouth with his.

This kiss is nothing like I expected. After all the restraint between us lately, I thought it would be rough or devouring, allblunt force and heat. Instead, he kisses me like he’s learning the shape of my lips, like he’s mapping my mouth cell by cell. His tongue barely grazes mine, a shiver so light it sends every nerve in my body sparking alive.

I melt, just a little. His mouth opens under mine and the sound he makes, a low, deep vibration I feel in my sternum, sends liquid heat pooling between my thighs. His hands tighten on my waist, thumbs pressing into the soft skin above my hip bones, and I rock forward against him on instinct.

I feel him.

Oh.

Oh.

He’s hard. Impossibly, alarmingly hard. And even through the fabric of his jeans, I can tell that Knox is built like everything else about him. Excessive. Overwhelming.Huge.

I rock against him again, and he groans into my mouth—the deepest sound I’ve ever heard a human make, like tectonic plates shifting. His fingers press harder, holding me still. Not pushing me away. Just . . . controlling the pace. Keeping me from going somewhere he’s decided we can’t go yet.

“Sage.” His voice comes out low, strained, almost pained. It makes my heart crack open.

“I know,” I whisper. “I feel you. I want you.”

“You can’t.” His jaw works, a muscle jumping in his cheek. “I’ll break you.”

I kiss him, hard, wanting to prove him wrong—wanting to feel exactly how it would break me. Wanting to know the difference between breaking the way you do when a man holds you down and tries to rip you apart, and the breaking that comes from letting someone inside so deep they threaten to make a home there.

Knox’s mouth moves down my jaw, licking fire across the skin under my ear. My nipples are tight through my shirt and Iwant to rip the cotton off, let him see every mark the others left last night and paint over it in his own colors. I want him to fuck me. I want him inside. I want everything, right now, all at once, punching a hole in the numbness that’s haunted me for so long my body forgot how to want anything else. He holds me perfectly still, both hands bands of steel above my ass. The whole length of his cock is hard, straining up between us.

“Please, Knox. You won’t break me,” I say. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“I know you’re tough, fury.” His thumb traces the ridge of my hip bone. “But tough isn’t the same as ready. I’m too big for you.”

I want to argue with him. Tell him I can handle anything, that I want to handle it, that my insides have been hollowed out by worse things than sex with a man built out of indestructible matter.

But Knox’s eyes are so earnest, so pleading, it stalls my protest.

“I’m not saying no.” His forehead rests against mine, his breath rough and uneven. “I’m saying not yet.”

For one second, the heat in me stutters into something softer. He wants me. I can feel exactly how badly he wants me. And he is still choosing not to take.

“Okay,” I breathe. “Okay.”

I kiss him again, softer this time. His hand slides up my back, fingers spread wide, holding me against his chest. I can feel his heart hammering through his shirt—fast and hard, completely at odds with the calm exterior. Proof that underneath all that granite, Knox is just as desperate as I am.