Page 62 of What We Bury

This is everything.

“I told you last night. You don’t have to be sorry. You can do whatever you want with me.”

Her mouth tilts up in a smile. “Is that a yes?”

“It’s an enthusiastic yes.”

She pushes up on her elbow and leans in. Her free hand comes up to cup my jaw, fingers careful against the stubble there, and she looks at me for one long beat like she’s making sure I’m still agreeing to this. Then her mouth presses against mine.

It’s not like the sudden, unrestrained kiss from last night. This one is almost chaste. Closed mouth, beautifully soft.

I’m gone.

She pulls back half an inch. Searches my face. Her thumb strokes the corner of my mouth.

“Was that okay?” she whispers.

I almost laugh. The fact thatshe’saskingmealmost cracks me open right there. “Yeah, baby girl. That was more than okay.”

She kisses me again. Less careful this time. Her lips part a little, and I feel the warm shock of her breath. I cradle her there, gentle, letting her set the pace. She does. She presses closer, climbs up onto her elbow until she’s half over me, and I taste her.

She’s delicious.

I pull back. “Sage?—”

“I want you,” she breathes against my mouth. “You can do whatever you want with me too.”

I search her face. Her pupils are blown but her eyes are steady. There’s no glaze, no dissociation, no panic at the edges. She’s here. All the way here.

“If anything changes?—”

“I know.”

“I mean it. Anything that doesn’t feel right?—”

“Micah.” Her hand tightens at my throat, and there’s something almost amused in her voice now. “I need you to trust me to know what I want right now. Can you do that?”

I close my eyes. Open them.

“Yeah,” I say. “I can do that.”

She kisses me deeper, and her hand slides under the hem of my T-shirt to find skin, and I make a sound I don’t mean to make. She smiles against my mouth.

“Touch me,” she whispers. “Please, Micah. I need?—”

She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t have to.

“Baby girl.” It comes out hoarse.

“I like the way you call me baby girl,” she whispers, her fingers brushing my jaw, tracing the line of my cheekbone.

I can’t think. She’s staring at my mouth like she wants to bite it, her hand hot on my face and her thumb rubbing across my lower lip until I open for her automatically, commit the sin of tasting her thumb with the tip of my tongue. She inhales like I shocked her, and her arm snakes around my neck and pulls me in.

This kiss is clumsy and desperate—her mouth opening under mine, her fingers fisting in my shirt, her body arching down into me like she’s been starving for this and didn’t know it until now.

I let her take what she wants for a moment, let her set the weight and the pace from above me. Then I get an arm around her and turn us, slow, rolling her onto her back so gently it’s more suggestion than motion—giving her every second to stop it, to push back, to change her mind.

She doesn’t. She goes where I guide her, her hair fanning out across the pillow, looking up at me with those blown-wide eyes, and the trust in it nearly takes my legs out.