Page 191 of What We Burn

FORTY-NINE

SAGE

The crack fills the room. My body jolts, a yelp tearing out of me, and Knox absorbs it—his thumbs sweep my cheekbones, steady, unhurried, while the sting blooms across my skin.

“That’s for the motel,” Eli says.

Another. Harder. My eyes squeeze shut and Knox’s grip firms.

“Eyes open,” he says. “Stay with me.”

I force them open. Knox fills my vision while the paddle lands again.

“That’s for stealing Knox’s file and going after his target alone.”

The next one jolts me forward and a sob breaks loose. Knox catches it with his thumb on my lower lip, pressing gently, grounding me.

“You’re doing so good, Fury,” Knox murmurs. “Take what he gives you.”

A fifth. The hardest yet. My hips slam into the bench and I cry out against Knox’s hand.

“That’s for making us think we’d lost you again,” Eli says.

Then silence. His palm rests on the skin he’s just punished, warm and unmoving. I feel him lean closer, his chest almost touching my back, his mouth near my ear.

“I made you a promise, Sage.” His voice is low. Rough. Nothing like the measured control from before. “I told you I wouldn’t try to stop you. That when you were safe again, I’d fucking help you. Make sure it was done right.” His hand tightens on my hip. “Then you went after him while someone is still hunting you. You decided my promise wasn’t worth waiting for and took on a man who could have killed you.”

My throat closes. He offered me a future where I wouldn’t have to hide this part of myself. I wanted it. I just couldn’t wait for it. The screams in my chest got louder, and instead of telling him, I ran.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. For the first time tonight, the apology isn’t performance or appeasement. It’s real.

“I know you are.” His lips brush the shell of my ear. “But this is the part you remember: you don’t have to do it alone anymore. You have five people who understand the hunger.” A pause. “I understand it. I’ve always understood it.”

Knox’s forehead presses to mine. His breath is warm on my wet face. “Still here,” he says. “Still got you.”

My skin is on fire. My nipples are somewhere between screaming and numb. My wrists ache inside the cuffs. My ass cheeks burn. But inside I’ve gone quiet—the noise, the static, the constant hum of run, fight, scream that’s been the soundtrack of my life since the first time a man put his hand over my mouth and told me not to scream.

Eli’s palm smooths over the skin he’s just reddened. Gentle now. Tracing the heat. His fingers slide lower, trailing through my soaked center, and the sound he makes—low, rough, almost pained—tells me everything about what this is costing him too.

“Fuck, little savage,” he breathes.

Knox pulls back enough to look at me. His thumb traces my jawline, my mouth, the tear tracks on my cheeks. He doesn’t wipe them away. He just maps them, like he’s memorizing what I look like when every wall is down.

“There she is,” he says softly. “There’s my Fury.”

Eli withdraws his hand. I hear the clink of his belt. The slide of leather through loops. The zip. Every sound is a sentence in a language my body has learned to read fluently—and every sentence says I’m not done with you.

Knox stands. Even wrecked, with my hands bound and my face a mess of tears and want, the sheer size of him makes my mouth go dry.

He brings over a stool, sets it in front of the bench, and guides my head onto his lap, his thigh a pillow. He reaches down and removes the clamps from my nipples, and the pain of the blood rushing back is worse than the clamps ever were.

I scream into his thigh. Both points ignite at once, a white-hot flare that steals everything—thought, breath, the room itself. Knox shifts me like I’m a rag doll, his mouth closing over one nipple, warm and wet, tongue moving in slow circles while the nerves shriek and then, gradually, impossibly, begin to sing a different note. His hand cups the other breast, thumb gentle, and the agony alchemizes into something that makes my hips roll helplessly against nothing.

“There you go,” he murmurs against my skin. “Come back to me.”

Behind me, Eli’s hands grip my hips, and then he’s inside me in one deep thrust, and the sound I make isn’t human.

“That’s it,” Eli growls. His pace is punishing, every stroke driving home everything he said—the promise, the recklessness, the five people who understand the hunger. “You feel that, little savage? This is what you almost threw away tonight. Us. This.”