Page 37 of Thunder

He always knows I'll come.

"Raine's out cold," he says low, before I can ask. "Went down at eight, slept every night this week straight through. But the walls in this place are thin, rattlesnake."

His eyes travel down me, slow, and my whole body answers before my brain does. "So, you're gonna have to be real quiet for me. Can you do that?"

"I'm always quiet."

His mouth curves in the dark. "You are the furthest thing from quiet I have ever put my hands on, and we both know it. Get over here."

I go.

I climb up onto the bed and into his lap, careful of the hip out of habit even though it's better this week, and he lets me settle there.

Then he just looks at me a second, one hand coming up to push my hair back off my face, and the look on him strips me down worse than his hands ever have.

Because this is the part that changed.

Back in the spring it was all heat and rules and no feelings stamped on everything we did.

Now he looks at me like this, steady and wide open, and there's no rule left to hide behind, and it terrifies me more than the choking ever could.

"There she is," he murmurs. "You gonna let me have you tonight?"

"Yes."

"Then give me your hands."

He reaches over to the nightstand and takes up his belt, the wide worn leather one he had looped over the bedpost, and my breath goes short before he's even touched me with it.

"This okay?"

Always the question.

Even now, even with his voice gone dark. "Same as before. Two taps and I stop, everything stops, no questions. You remember?"

"I remember." My voice isn't steady. "Yes. Do it."

He loops the belt around my wrists, snug, practiced, and draws my arms up over my head and anchors them to the slat of the headboard.

The second I test it and find I can't move my hands the whole rest of me goes molten.

He knows what it does to me.

He's always known.

He gets me stretched out under him and I'm helpless and it quiets the part of my brain that never stops running. The part that's been screaming about my family and the secret and everything I can't fix, and for once, bound to his headboard in the dark, that voice just—goes silent.

"There it is."

He watches my face change. "That's my girl. All that noise up there finally shut off?"

I nod, because I can't talk.

"Words, rattlesnake."

"Yes." It comes out cracked.

"It's quiet. You made it quiet."