Page 61 of What We Bury

He kicks off his shoes and climbs onto the bed beside me, careful to stay on top of the covers while I’m underneath. I turn onto my side, and he curls around me from behind, his chest against my back, his arm draped over my waist, his breath warm on my neck.

He doesn’t try anything. Doesn’t let his hands wander. Just holds me, steady and solid, like an anchor in a storm.

“Is this okay?” he murmurs.

“Yeah.” My voice is thick, drowsy. “This is perfect.”

SEVENTEEN

MICAH

Icome awake with a jolt, heart slamming, the animal certainty that I’ve nodded off somewhere I shouldn’t have and something’s coming.

Shit. I fell asleep. I was supposed to be watching her.

Then the room resolves—gray-gold light, her weight tucked warm against my chest, her fingertips tracing slow lines along my forearm where it rests across her waist—and the panic uncoils.

I didn’t just fall asleep from sheer exhaustion during my watch. I fell asleepholding her, and now?—

I’m hard.

Achingly, embarrassingly hard.

My cock is pressed right against the curve of her ass through the barrier of my sweats and whatever she’s wearing under those covers.

“Fuck.” I jerk back, scrambling to put space between us. “Sage—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t?—”

Her hand catches my wrist before I can get more than a few inches.

“Don’t.” Her voice is quiet and not at all sleep-rough. Which means she’s been lying here awake for a while, stroking my arm, waiting. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. I shouldn’t have?—”

“Micah.” She rolls onto her back so she’s looking up at me. Her hair is a mess across the pillow, and her eyes are clear, unshadowed, none of the panic from earlier. “It’s fine. I promise. You can’t help what your body does in your sleep.”

I swallow. My hand is unsteady where she’s holding my wrist. “Still, I should give you space. I can go set up on the couch?—”

“I don’t want space.”

That stops me.

She’s staring up at me, and I watch her gather something—the small tightening of her jaw, the breath she pulls in like she’s bracing for a jump. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips.

“Will you kiss me?”

The question lands somewhere between my sternum and my spine. My whole body goes still.

There are moments when life splits cleanly in two—before the question and after it. This feels like one of them.

“Tell me no if you don’t want to,” she says, softer now. “I just . . . I wanted to ask this time. Enthusiastic consent, right? I should have asked last night, and I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

Jesus.

I close my eyes for half a second becausefuck.

I’ve wanted a lot of things in my life. Wanted revenge. Wanted oblivion. Wanted enough money to stop counting coins at the grocery store. Wanted sleep. Wanted peace. Wanted to claw my way backward into the person I was before I learned what men can do when they think your body is theirs.

But this . . .