Page 61 of What We Burn

His hands bracket my head so he can watch my face while he pushes inside, slow at first, like he’s giving me a last out. I don’t want out. I want everything, all the pain and want and fucking oblivion. So I wrap a leg around his hip and hook my heel, pulling him tight. Fuck subtlety, fuck the neighbors, fuck whatever it is inside me that thinks I’m still breakable.

“Jesus,” he breathes, squeezing his eyes shut as he bottoms out. “You’re—shit, Sage. Every fucking time⁠—”

He doesn’t finish. He bends and kisses me hard, like his sole focus is the shape of my mouth, the way I taste, the way I catch his lip between my teeth and refuse to let go until he’s thrusting into me and the world tilts sideways.

The bed creaks, every movement driving the headboard into the wall with soft, regular thumps.

I dig my nails into his back. “More.”

He gives me more. Hooks my knee over his elbow, changes the angle, and drives into me hard enough that I shift up the bed. His jaw is tight. His breathing ragged. This isn’t the way we normally fuck. Micah is normally slow, loving, present. But tonight he’s fucking like a man chasing away demons, and fuck, if that isn’t exactly what I need right now.

“Harder,” I gasp. “Please. You won’t break me.”

“Fuck, baby girl.”

His mouth crashes into mine and we stop talking. The sex turns raw and mutual and necessary—two people using each other’s bodies to burn through the things they can’t say out loud. His hand slides up my breast, fingers pinching my nipple, tight, bordering on painful, and I arch into the touch because I trust him, because he would cut off his own hand before he’d hurt me, and because right now I need to feel someone’s strength without it being a threat.

He comes with a groan that vibrates through his whole body into mine, his face buried in my neck, his arms locked around me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go. I follow him over—a second, quieter orgasm that rolls through me in waves while he’s still inside me, still holding me, still shaking.

We lie there. His weight on me. Our breathing evening out. Somewhere in the house a door closes and I hear the low murmur of Knox’s voice saying something to someone.

He pulls out gently and settles beside me on his back. One arm behind his head, the other hand finding mine between us. And that’s when I feel it—the ridges across his knuckles as our fingers lace together. I turn his hand over in the dark.

The skin’s healing but not healed. Faded green-yellow bruising spread over the joints, one knuckle still raised, a thin scabbed-over line where the skin split and knit back wrong. Weeks old. Old enough that whatever did this happened while I was still in a hospital bed and nobody mentioned it in the weeks I’ve been out.

I run my thumb across the damage. “What happened to your hand?”

He’s quiet a second too long.

“Tyler.”

I go still. “Tyler came after you?”

“No, baby girl.” He lifts our joined hands to his lips. “We went after him. Picked him up while you were still in a coma. Asked him some questions. When it was clear he didn’t know anything, we cut him loose.”

“Questions don’t damage a hand so bad there’s still evidence a month later.”

A pause. “No. They don’t.”

I turn my head and look at him.

Moonlight from between the blinds catches on the planes of his face—soft mouth, long lashes, the kind eyes that always make people underestimate what lives underneath them. He stares at the ceiling like it might volunteer the rest for him.

My skin is still humming from sex. My body is loose and warm and used. But my brain sharpens all at once.

“How hard?” I ask quietly.

Micah exhales through his nose. “Sage.”

“How hard did you hit him?”

His jaw works. “As hard as he deserved.”

I prop myself up on an elbow so I can see his face. “Micah. What did he do?”

“It’s not what he did.” His hand goes still in mine. “It’s what he said. About you.” His eyes find mine, then slide away, like he can’t look at me and repeat it in the same breath. “I’m not putting his words in your head, Sage. You’ve got enough living in there. But I heard them, and I put my fist through his face. And even after Holden said to cut him loose, I went in and beat him until the rage inside me slowed. And I’d do it again right now if he walked through that door.”

There are multiple marks on Micah’s body directly tied to me. A scarred-over bite mark, the knife slash, and now his knuckles. My stomach gets hot and tight knowing this beautiful man is willing to put his body on the line for me, over and over again—that gentle Micah split his knuckles open on a man who was talking shit about me.