Page 181 of These Secret Years

“Do you have lube?” I ask.

“Of course I do.”

The sigh that shivers out of me is as much relief as it is anticipation. Using one of his hands, he digs around in his pajama pocket and tosses a mini bottle of lube onto the sleeping bag. “You weren’t gonna leave without trying again,” I say in amazement.

His grin is sexy as fuck. “I didn’t come here to lose you all over again. I came here to take back what’s mine.”

His words are another rush, and I swear I feel a little high. “You don’t ever get any less hot. You only get hotter.”

“You do, too. Just my type.”

My palm on his neck is hypersensitive to the movement of his Adam’s apple. The vibrations coming from his vocal cords. There is an entire symphony to write about this man’s body and all its miracles, both seen and unseen.

“Undress me,” I tell him.

He starts with my pants while my hand still holds his neck to the mattress. I tell him not to move when I strip off my sweatshirt. “May I touch you?” he asks when I’ve got him by the throat again.

“Only if you keep it interesting.”

That grin again. He runs his hands up my thighs before taking hold of my ass cheeks, squeezing them and separating them before letting them slap back together. I lower myself to take another kiss from his mouth and thread a hand through his hair, which I then use to find another grip on him. Another soft restraint he could easily break free of but doesn’t seem to want to.

I have to pause there a moment, break away from the kiss to breathe. This was done to me. It was part of Quinn’s assault. Not the hand on the throat but the yanking, ripping hold he had on the roots of my hair.

Knight looks up at me with no fear. Mostly lust. The slight crease in his brow is his concern.

“I’m okay,” I tell him because I’m not going to let him stop us again. When I said I was ready the other day, I meant it. I am ready. Do I know how it’s gonna go, or how I’ll feel when it’s done? No. But at least I’ll finally know if I can ever have sex again. The last thing I want to give away to someone who never deserved it is my body—my choices. And maybe “forcing it” on Knight—forcing him to take it in this small way is the compromise we couldn’t find until now. The thing that might free us both.

He’s hard. So hard beneath me as I grind my crotch against him. It’s not a deliberate move. More an unconscious expression of the desire that’s been building in me to be slaked for months. From the moment I watched him step back into himself on the football field and become the man he was meant to be. I’ve always wanted him, but I have never wanted him more than I have this fall. “I love you,” I remind him.

“Fucking prove it, then.”

“Lube your dick.”

I lift my hips off him so he can do as I say. I give him a moment to grab the bottle, but once he’s got his hand around his erection, I’m kissing him again, hands still secured in a grip on him that’s only getting firmer. He grunts, and I think that means he likes it. That he wants this maybe half as much as I do.

“Are you scared?” I ask him.

“A little. But I’m not gonna stop.”

“I will break up with you for real if you do.”

“Okay, that’s the last time I’m ever gonna allow you to say that. Now get me the fuck inside you. I can’t wait anymore.”

I feel what he means when I let go of his hair to position his slick crown at my hole.

Slowly sinking onto it, memories rush at me in a burst. A twisted, but in some spots beautiful montage. Our first time like this—my first surrender to my feelings for him. That bastard in Detroit taking what did not belong to him. Knight’s white truck. The woods. Peter Goddamn Gabriel singing the best, cheesiest love song in the background with the chirps of birds and the overwhelming hum of the cicadas as his accompaniment.

“Fuck me,” I demand once he’s halfway inside.

And he does. Using the bounce in the air mattress, his hips dip and lift, his cock drilling deep and sure into a hole that’s been empty for too long, and fuck do I mean a lot of things by that.

I wanted this want back. I wanted us like we were in the beginning. I wanted us the way we should have been when he was grieving his father. I wanted this long provocative kiss I steal from him with his pulse thready and quick beneath my fingers.

I don’t just sit there, either. I fuck him back, riding his lap with all the rage and all the cruelty that stole this from me for too long. I never should have given them so long.

I shift up and back and down, through squelching and our heavy breaths. Knight’s hand comes up to wrap around my wrist, and I realize how tight a grip I’ve got on his neck now. I try to loosen it some, my body stuttering to a halt in the process, but he says “No. Keep going.”

“Call me a whore.”