Page 163 of A Smile Full of Lies
His breath hitched.
“I’m not strong like you,” I said. “I’m greedy. Ineedyou. I need your hands. Your voice. Your control. Your fuckingpresence.I couldn’t do life without you in it. I didn’t want to.”
His hand in my hair tightened — just enough to sayI hear you.
“I thought if I did it myself,” I said, “if I just took care of it — then maybe I could keep you safe. Maybe you’d never have to know. But that was stupid. I see that now. I should’ve trusted you. I should’ve let you in.”
Silence pulsed between us, long and heavy. Then he moved. He rolled us both until I was lying on top of him, cheek to his chest, his heart thundering beneath my ear.
“You love me,” he said quietly.
I nodded.
“Youneedme.”
“I do,” I whispered. “More than I’ve ever needed anything.”
He exhaled slowly, his hand stroking down my back, lips brushing my temple.
“Then we’re even,” he said.
That was all I needed to hear.
We lay there for a long time, our breath syncing. The silence stretched between us — thick with everything we hadn’t said until now.
My body felt like a war zone. Used. Owned. Worshipped.
My nipples throbbed. My cunt ached. My throat was raw from screaming and sobbing and begging, and my eyes burned with the ghost of tears that still hadn’t fully dried.
And still… I had never felt more safe in my life.
Knox shifted under me, then gently rolled me onto my back.
“Hey,” he murmured, brushing my hair from my face. “You still with me?”
I nodded, barely.
His hand cupped my cheek.
“I’m good. Just… wrecked.”
A dark smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah. I can see that.”
But there was no pride in it. Just a kind of aching reverence.
He sat up, pulling away just long enough to grab the soft flannel blanket folded at the foot of his bed. He wrapped it around me, careful not to press too hard on the parts he’d marked.
And then he vanished into the bathroom. Water ran. When he came back, it was with a damp cloth in his hand. He cleaned me slowly. Tenderly. Like every inch of me mattered.
He murmured apologies against my skin with every pass of the cloth — even as I whispered back,don’t you dare— even as I curled into the touch like I couldn’t stand to be without it.
When he was finished, he pressed a kiss against my inner thigh and murmured, “I’ll be right back.”
He padded out of the bedroom and returned with a bottle of water. Then he pressed the water into my hand.
“Drink.”
