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Every time my hips try to rise to meet him, he stops dead inside me and waits until I've gone still again. He keeps doing it until my legs are shaking, tears are running into my hair, and my fingers open and close on nothing.

He lifts his hand off my right forearm and takes hold of my fingers, nowhere near my wrist. He presses on my thumbnail until it goes white, lets go, and watches the pink come back into it.

"Hands?" he asks. "Pins and needles?"

"No."

"You get any, you tell me." His hand goes back to my forearm and pins it again. He does it without missing a stroke, like a man who's done it often.

Somewhere in the middle of it, I realize I'm not listening for boots on the stairs. I don't know when I stopped. All I can hear is his breath going ragged, the slick sound of him moving in me, and my own voice saying his name over and over.

"Please," I say.

He looks down at me for a long moment. "Please what?"

"Please let me come."

He drives into me hard and stays there, pressing the base of his cock against my clit with his whole weight pinning my hips.

"Now fight me," he says.

I shove up against his hands and his hips as hard as I can. Every time I strain up, my clit grinds hard against him, and he doesn't budge. I fight him harder. The pressure builds low in my belly, hot and tight, until my thighs are trembling around his hips and I can't get away from it or from him.

I come fighting his hold. My pussy clamps down on his cock and pulses around him, again and again, so hard it almost hurts. My whole body bucks under him, and his weight keeps me pinned through every bit of it. My ribs throb with every jolt, but I don't care. I scream his name. I keep coming for a long time, sobbing, and I'm in this bed with him for every second of it.

He groans through his teeth while I squeeze him. Then he stops holding back. He pulls almost all the way out and slams back in, hard and fast now, and the bed knocks against the wall. His hips pound into mine, and his hands crush my forearms into the quilt.

A few hard strokes later, he holds himself inside me and comes with a rough groan. I feel his cock jerk inside me, and his hips shudder against mine while he empties himself. His forehead drops against my temple, and his breath is hot against my ear.

He lets go of my arms first. He takes his weight off me a little at a time, watching my face, and he stays inside me until he's softened.

"You can move," he says.

I bring my arms down and fold them against my chest. My forearms ache where he held them, but the ache feels good. My pussy still twitches when he pulls out of me.

He gets rid of the condom in the bathroom and comes back. He pulls the folded quilt up over me and lies down on his side next to me. He takes my right hand by the fingers. "Squeeze."

I squeeze his fingers. He has me do it with my left hand, too. After that he rubs each of my forearms where he held them, from the elbow to the edge of my cuff and never past it. The ache goes warm under his hands.

Men held me down on a stone floor for weeks. Tonight a man held me down because I asked him to, and I never once left the room. I lie still under the quilt and let myself believe it.

I lift my head off the pillow and look at him.

"Who taught you how to do that?" I ask.

His thumb keeps moving on my forearm, slow and steady, and for a while that's his only answer.

"Go to sleep," he says.

It's an order, low and even, in the voice he uses to stop a fight in his ring. My eyes are already closing. I hate how easily I obey that voice. Tomorrow I'm asking him again, and I'm asking what he wouldn't tell me about my father.

10

KNOX

The dark-haired woman is parked on the county road with binoculars, and she doesn't run when I walk up. She lowers them, sets them on the dash of her gray sedan, and rolls her window down the rest of the way.

Hector texted a little after nine, from the stock tank in the north pasture.