Page 59 of Rope Burn

I open the button of her jeans and draw the zipper down one tooth at a time. In the quiet, every tooth makes a sound.

She knows where my eyes are. A woman trained to track what a man is watching can tell when it isn't her.

"You're watching the door," she whispers.

"Somebody followed me home."

"And me?"

I push the denim over her hips and let it fall. Her boots came off while I was moving her car, and she steps out of the jeans barefoot and nudges them aside. I hook a thumb in the last scrap of cotton at her hip and draw it down her legs, and she steps out of that too. Then I set my palm on the outside of her knee and bring it up the inside of her thigh, unhurried, the calluses dragging over skin gone hot and tight. I stop a breath short of where she wants me. She draws up and holds.

"I don't need my eyes for you," I tell her. "I've got you memorized."

Her next inhale stops halfway into her lungs. She knows where those words came from. She knows what I've just done with them.

"Walls are thin." I keep my voice low. "I want to hear that lot. You don't make a sound unless I give you one."

I lift my hand and lay it at the front of her throat. My fingers rest light along the side of her neck, and my thumb settles in the notch above her collarbone. I don't press. The weight of my hand is enough.

"If I feel a sound here, I stop touching you."

Her pulse jumps against my palm. She nods, and I feel the nod too.

I start at her hipbones. I trace them with my thumbs, then follow the crease where her thigh meets her body until she's trembling from the effort of standing still.

I lean in and put my mouth low on her belly, below her navel, and drag my teeth over the edge of her hipbone hard enough to sting. Her stomach jumps under my lips. Her throat stays quiet under my hand.

I straighten and slide my free hand between her thighs. She's soaked. I stroke two fingers through her, front to back, slow, spreading her open without going inside, and her knees go loose. Beneath my hand, a sound starts to build in her throat. I feel it before it has a voice.

I stop.

I hold my fingers against her, still, while she fights it. Her breath comes in thin, careful pulls through her nose. I wait until the vibration under my hand goes quiet, and then I wait longer, until her thighs stop quivering and she understands I'll wait all night if that's what she needs to learn. Then I give her one more slow stroke, and she takes it in perfect silence.

"Good." The word goes through her and down into her thighs against my hand.

I pull her onto my lap with her knees sinking into the mattress on either side of my hips. Her hands rise toward my shoulders, and I stop them before they land.

"Behind your back." Her hands freeze in the air. "Hold your own wrists. Don't let go until I tell you. If you need me to stop, let go of your wrist and put your hand flat on my chest. Otherwise, you stay where I put you."

She folds her arms behind her and locks one hand around the other wrist. The position pulls her shoulders back and lifts her breasts toward my mouth, and it takes away the last leverage she had. With her arms folded at her spine, there's nothing for her to brace on but me.

I work my belt open with one hand. The buckle is cold, and when the metal brushes the inside of her thigh, her hips flinch. She stays where I put her.

I open the button and drag the zipper down. Then I lift her up onto her knees with one hand at her waist, brace my boots on the floor, and raise my hips off the mattress long enough to work denim and cotton down my thighs with the other hand. The bedspread is rough under my bare skin. I fit my hands around her hips.

I lift her and lower her onto me. My ribs flare white-hot when I take her full weight. I take it anyway. I let her down an inch and hold her there, then another, and she can't hurry it or catch herself with her hands.

Her thighs shake around my hips. Her mouth opens against my temple on a breath that makes no sound, and her throat works with every swallowed noise, furious. She's so wet and so tight that I have to pause halfway and hold still until I can trust myself with the rest.

When she's seated to the root, I slide my palm from her hip to the base of her spine and tilt her forward. The next time I lift her and let her down, the angle grinds her clit against the base of my cock. Her whole body goes taut from her locked hands to her knees.

I do it again. Then again, slower, lifting her until I'm barely inside her and bringing her down so she feels every inch of it at that angle. Her head drops forward until her forehead rests on mine.

Her eyes are open. In the thin gray light from the window seam, I can see them fixed on me. I never asked for them tonight. They came on their own and stayed.

Outside, a truck door slams.

I stop with her fully seated on me. She goes rigid in the same instant, holding her breath, gone still in my hands.