Page 60 of What We Burn

“A single letter,” he says once he’s in the driver’s seat. “You never sent me a single letter. I sat there ninety minutes fully prepared to commit a felony and you didn’t even need me.”

“Devastating. It’s as if I can go out in public and somehow be safe.”

“Lots of things happen in public, kitten. And I had a whole rescue plan.” He starts the engine and pulls out, and as we swing past the café I glance back through the window.

Jamie and Amy are saying goodbye on the sidewalk. Amy turns one way. Jamie turns the other.

“Good time with your friends?”

“Yeah,” I say, smiling. “I had a great time.”

“I love that for you, kitten.”

He takes my hand. Laces his fingers through mine. Doesn’t say anything else. Neither do I.

I just lean my head against the window and hold on to the normal. Stupid, beautiful normal.

EIGHTEEN

SAGE

Mon, Jul 27 at 10:38pm

Brock

Missed me yet? Your throat looked so pretty in that noose. Let’s try again soon.

[delete]

“Oh fuck! Yes! Right there!”

Micah’s mouth is going to kill me.

Not the way everything else in my life is trying to kill me—with rope and threatening texts from dead men’s phone numbers. This is the good kind. The kind where his tongue swirls and sucks my clit and my spine arches off the mattress.

I make a sound that I’m fairly certain carries through the walls because I hear Milo shout, “GET IT, KITTEN!” from somewhere down the hall.

Micah laughs against me, which does things to my nerve endings that should be illegal.

“Ignore him, baby girl,” Micah murmurs, and presses his mouth back to where it was. I moan.

His hands are on my thighs, holding them apart, thumbs pressing into the soft skin where leg meets hip. He’s taking his time, reading my body the way he always does. I’ve got one hand fisted in the sheets and the other in his hair, and every time he flattens his tongue and drags it slow, my hips chase him and he pins them back down.

“Micah. Please.”

He hums. The vibration travels through me like a current, and I whimper. Then he adds his fingers—two, curling, finding the spot that makes my vision blur—and works me.

“Fuck, Micah! I’m gonna— I’m⁠—”

I come with his name in my mouth and my hand twisted in his hair. Both legs shaking as he stays with me through it, gentling but not stopping, easing me down with soft, slow strokes of his tongue until I’m boneless and panting and staring at the ceiling.

“Fuck you taste so good, baby girl,” he says, crawling up my body, pressing kisses to my stomach, my ribs, the underside of my breast. His eyes are dark and liquid and a little smug. “Missed the way you pull my hair when you come.”

I reach up and tug at him until our mouths crush together. I taste myself on his lips, which should be gross but isn’t, it’s fucking hot, and I let him know it. He bites at my bottom lip, soft, then hard, and I wrap my arms around his neck, bring him down so all his weight presses into me. He makes this sound, almost a growl, and grinds his cock against my thigh.

“Inside,” I whisper. “Now.”

Micah raises his head, grins, hair falling into his eyes. “Hard to say no when you ask like that, Sage.”