Page 87 of Rope Burn

I finish undressing her and stay where I am, on my knees. I leave the lamp burning.

The night the pickup followed me, I had her by touch in the dark with my eyes on a strip of light under a door.

This time I stand, step back, and look at her. I don't tell her to hold still. She does it anyway, bare in the light between the bed and the boots, and she lets me take all the time I want.

"Turn around."

She turns. The lamp runs along the long muscles on either side of her spine and catches the pink marks at her hip. I look until her shoulders tighten under it.

"Turn again."

She comes back around with the color climbing from her collarbones to her throat. Her chin lifts as it did the first night she stood in my doorway with a file in her head and a lie in her mouth. There's no lie in it now. There's nothing in it she isn't letting me see.

I strip in the same light and take off everything. The yellowed bruise along my ribs, the pink seam on my forearm, and every scar I've collected are there for her to read.

She takes her time with every mark. She doesn't reach for any of it, because I haven't told her she can.

I don't take her wrists tonight. I don't need to hold anything down.

I lay her on her side facing me on the narrow bed and stretch out close enough that her breath lands on my mouth. I hook her knee over my hip and draw her in by the back of her thigh until there's no space left between us that I didn't decide on. My other hand goes to the back of her neck, fingers spread into her hair.

From here I can see every change in her face. From here she can see every change in mine.

"Where do I find you?" I ask her.

Her lips part. She knows whose question that was, and whose answer. "Right here."

I reach down between us and make her wait for it anyway. She's already wet. I drag the head of my cock slowly through her slick folds, from her entrance to her clit and back again, and I don't push in. Her hips chase it. My hand tightens in her hair, and she stops. I do it again, press against her clit, and hold there until her thigh shakes on my hip.

Then I work one finger into her, and then a second, slow and deep, while the heel of my hand presses hard against her clit. She's hot, slick, and clenching around my fingers. When I curl them, her eyes start to close.

"Stay with me."

They open, and they stay open while I work her with my hand. She starts rocking against it in small, desperate rolls, my fingers working deep inside her, slick to the knuckles.

"Please," she says. The word costs her, and she gives it to me anyway.

"You'll wait." I give her one more slow stroke and watch it cross her face.

Then I line myself up and push into her slowly with her thigh held high on my hip. She takes me in a long, shaking breath that I feel against my own lips.

I don't pull back and drive. My hand goes back to her thigh, and I rock into her in short, grinding strokes. Every one of them drags against her clit, and my grip keeps her pressed into it, taking every stroke where I put it. She can't lean away. She can't hide her face in the pillow. I've got her by the nape, and she stays there, a hand's width from my eyes.

"I parked your truck outside that jail every afternoon," she says against my mouth. It comes out raw, like she's been holding it for days. "Every afternoon. They don't let anybody see you. I knew that, and I sat there anyway."

I grind into her harder, and her breath breaks. "You were where I could find you." I go still inside her. "Put your hand flat on my chest if you need me to stop."

"I know." Her voice shakes. "I won't need it."

"Look at me."

Her eyes are already there. The first night, she fought me for them. Since then she's given them to me by choice, for pleasure, out of defiance, and once without my asking at all. Tonight she gives them to me as she'd hand me anything of hers, without deciding first whether it's safe.

I keep her on the edge with my grip on her thigh and the slow roll of my hips. Her whole body starts to tremble against mine.

Then I pull her down onto me hard, hold her there, and she comes with her eyes open. It hits her low and deep. I feel it before I see it, a hard, rolling clench that pulls at my cock from root to tip and won't let go. Slick heat floods around me. Her thigh jerks against my hip and locks there, trembling, and her fingers dig into my forearm where it's braced behind her neck.

The sound she makes is raw and wide open. Tonight there's nobody in the lot she needs to hide it from, and she doesn't try. I keep moving through it in short, deep strokes that wring another pulse out of her, then another, each one tightening around me like a fist. A flush climbs from her breasts to her throat. Her lips part on my name an inch from my own, and her gaze stays on mine through every shudder, steady even when pleasure strips every other response from her.