Page 225 of What We Bury

“Wait. Let me.”

I lower her back onto the pillows and follow her down, my mouth finding the hollow at the base of her throat first, then the slope of her collarbone, then lower. I take my time with her breasts, learning what makes her arch, what makes her breath catch, what makes the small sound at the back of her throat shift from a sigh into something hungrier. Her fingers drag over my scalp. Her thighs press under me.

“Knox,” she breathes, her fingers dipping lower, toward my belt. “I want you. All of you.”

I still her hands, kissing her palm. “Fury. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I do.” She looks right at me, steady. “I’ve thought about it every night since the alley.”

That gets me. I close my eyes for a beat. Then I open them and look at her, knowing that what I’m about to say is going to disappoint her.

“I want you to see something,” I say. “Before you decide you want all of me.”

SIXTY-ONE

KNOX

Isit back on my heels and let her sit up. Then I unbuckle my belt, and I take my time about it, because what comes next isn’t something I want to rush through. The belt slides free. The button gives. The zipper goes down. I push my jeans and boxers down past my hips in one motion and let her see.

She doesn’t gasp. I’m grateful for that.

She just looks. For a long time. Her eyes go wide, and her mouth opens slightly, and she sits up straighter without taking her eyes off me. I watch her face do the math.

“Oh,” she says, quiet.

“Yeah.”

“Knox, that’s?—”

“I know.”

She reaches out. Slow. Her small hand wraps around me and even with her fingers spread she doesn’t make it all the way around. She pumps once, experimentally, and I groan, because her hand on me after weeks of just imagining it is almost more than I can take.

“I’ve never—” she says, and stops. Tries again. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You can’t. Not tonight.”

She looks up at me, startled. “What?”

I take her hand off me, gently, and bring it to my mouth. Kiss the inside of her wrist. Try to find the words for a thing I’ve spent fifteen years explaining to women and have never had to explain to one I actually loved.

“Fury. I’ve known my whole life that this isn’t a gift. It’s a problem. Women have looked at me the way you just looked and decided it wasn’t worth it. Women have tried and asked me to stop. I’ve hurt people I didn’t mean to hurt because I thoughtwanting itwas enough.”

I tuck myself away and pull her into my lap, her bare chest against my chest, my arms around her ribs. She’s quiet, listening.

“It’s not enough. Your body has to be ready. Really ready. That takes preparation. Time. Probably more than one night. You take three of my fingers comfortably before we even think about it.”

She’s quiet for a long moment. Her hand has come to a rest over my heart, and her thumb is moving in a small slow circle there, like she’s thinking with her hands.

“So what do we do instead?” she asks.

“Tonight? Everything that doesn’t end with me inside you. And we work up to it. Together. However long it takes.”

“Okay. We work up to it then.” She tilts her head. “But what doeseverything that doesn’t end with you inside meinclude?”

“Whatever you want.”

Laying her back, I pull her dress and panties the rest of the way off and drop them on the floor. Then I settle over her and take my time with her. I’m in no hurry. The whole point of tonight isn’t to finish—it’s to give her body the experienceof being attended to, slowly and completely, by a man who has nothing to prove and nowhere to be. I kiss every inch of her. I learn the places that make her arch and the places that make her giggle and the place behind her left knee that makes her gasp and grab my head. I take her breasts back into my mouth and stay there until her hips are rocking against nothing, until she’s making the small frustrated sound that meansmore.