Page 78 of Knot Your Sugar Rush
He sees it. Smells it. Of course he does. The humor in his face doesn’t vanish; it gentles. “Cam,” he says, “tell me what you need.”
The answer comes before I can second-guess it. “You,” I say, and my voice is too soft to be bold but too certain to be anything else.
His eyes darken, not with surprise so much as with care. “My leg is going to complain if I try to be acrobatic,” he says lightly, lifting a palm, “so I’m probably of limited help in the—”
“It’s not your leg I’m interested in,” I say, and the joke is accidentally earnest. Heat flares in my cheeks, and I press the heel of my hand there like I can cool it through my skin. “I mean—I know what I’m asking. I… I want your help.”
He doesn’t move for a heartbeat. Then he shifts, carefully, like he’s approaching a wild thing he doesn’t want to startle. “Okay,” he says. “Ground rules. You can change your mind at any second. You say stop and I stop, no questions. If you want me closer, you ask and I’m there. If you want me to just sit here and breathe with you, I do that.” A pause, his mouth curving. “I can even be very impressive at breathing.”
A startled sound escapes me. It isn’t quite a laugh. It’s something looser, relief bending at the edges. “Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”
“Good.” His palm opens toward me. “May I?”
I nod. He rises with a hiss of breath and a muttered word at his leg, and then he sits on the edge of the bed, close enough that the mattress dips and I lean into him without meaning to. His hand finds the back of my neck, warm and steady, his thumb drawing a small circle at the base of my skull. The touch isn’t demanding. It’s an invitation. My shoulders fall a fraction.
“Breathe with me,” he murmurs. “In for four, out for six.”
We do. Four beats in, six out. Again. Again. My body recognizes the rhythm before my mind does. Somewhere between counts the room grows larger—more air, more space, more me. The heat doesn’t back off; it blooms differently. Less like a fire I’m trapped in and more like sunlight I can step into on purpose.
“Still with me?” he asks quietly.
“I’m with you.” It feels true in my bones.
His forehead tips lightly against mine. It’s nothing more than that—two points of contact, a shared breath, the barest hum of something alive in the air between us—but I could cry from how careful it is. I don’t realize my fingers are clutching his sleeve until he covers my hand with his and eases my grip so I won’t cramp.
“May I kiss you?” he asks.
I nod. “Please.”
He kisses like a promise he intends to keep. Gentle first—soft press, retreat, return—letting me find the pressure I want and the angle and the yes. The room presses in around the small sounds I’m making; the window’s breath lifts the hair at my nape; the bed’s quilt is a familiar scrape under bare fingertips. When he deepens the kiss, it’s only because I lean forward to follow him. Nothing in me feels trapped. Everything in me feels chosen.
When we break for air, I hear us: the soft sound of it, the in, the out, and the faintest hitch when his thumb finds that placeat the hinge of my jaw. He kisses there, then lower, careful as a prayer. His mouth is warm and patient; his stubble is a rasp that turns my breath to a tremble.
“Tell me if anything’s too much,” he says against my skin. “Tell me what helps.”
“More,” I manage. “You. Just—stay.”
“Staying,” he promises, and the word lands like a weight on the scale, tipping it toward yes.
We move slowly. There’s a lot of laughter tucked between the wanting—because his leg decides to complain precisely when we attempt anything ambitious, and because I can’t stop making fun of his heroic grimace, and because he keeps apologizing to the blanket when it tangles around his bandaged leg. He makes a face at himself, and I lose it, forehead to his shoulder, shaking with silent giggles that shake into something else entirely when his hand skims the small of my back.
“See?” he says, voice a scrape of warmth. “I can be helpful.”
“You’re infuriating,” I tell him, breathless.
“True and yet beloved,” he murmurs, and I swear I can feel his smile against my skin.
Heat builds; I stop fighting it. It’s different with him—less like surrendering to a storm, more like being walked into the ocean hand in hand and told where the drop-off is and that he’ll stand between me and the pull if I need it. He keeps asking quietly—here? like this?—and I keep answering, and somewhere in the asking and answering the room narrows to the rhythm of us and the window’s breeze and the bedframe’s occasional sigh.
I make sure he’s comfortable on the bed before removing my clothing slowly, his eyes filled with desire and admiration, fawning my confidence. Then, I help free his cock. It’s hard, at attention, and slick. For me.
“This is more than I’d ever hoped for,” he admits, vulnerable.
I straddle him, slowly impale myself on his hardness, holding his eyes with mine as his hands explore my breasts, gentler than Dane but just as triggering. Every inch of my body is on fire, every cell demanding to be quenched.
I push down, moaning, and throw my head back. I take the lead, pumping up and down, to a very appreciative alpha.
“Cam,” he moans, taking hold of my hips and pushing me down as he buckles up. “Is this okay?”
