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"I'm looking at you." She lets her fist rest on my chest. "Bo's in the ground. You don't get to hide behind him. Bo used his hands to beat people down. Tonight you used yours to stop a man from getting beaten."

I don't have an answer for that. Nobody has ever said it to me, not even Jesse.

"I've been looking at you since I was seventeen, Knox."

I take her fist off my chest and open it. Her knuckles are red from my jaw. Across the backs of them run thin pink lines where she split them open on the guest house tile her first night here.

I bring her knuckles to my mouth. They're hot and swollen from my jaw, and the thin scars across them are raised under my lips. I drag my mouth over them slowly, one knuckle at a time, and press my tongue into the hollow between the last two. She tastes like salt and my own sweat. Her fingers curl tight around my thumb, and her breath catches.

"You hit like you meant it."

"I did. And you were faster in Bandera, Hollister. I almost made the cedar."

I laugh out loud, with my jaw throbbing and my hips pinning hers to the canvas. Then I reach up over the top rope and ring the bell.

The sound fills the empty barn. Every fight tonight ended on that bell. She quits fighting the second it rings, the way she promised, but her jaw stays set.

"Hands on the bottom rope," I tell her. "They stay there till I say."

First she pulls the flannel cuffs down into her fists, so the cloth stays over her wrists.

She reaches up and back over her head and wraps both hands around the bottom rope. It's close enough that her elbows stay bent and her head stays flat on the canvas. Her knuckles go white around it.

I take the front of her flannel in both fists and rip it open. Buttons pop loose and scatter across the canvas, and a couple of them roll off the edge into the dirt.

She has nothing on under it. Her breasts are small and high, and her nipples are drawn up tight and dark. Sweat shines in the hollow of her throat and runs in a thin line between her breasts. The old bruises along her ribs have faded to yellow, and the skin around them is flushed pink from fighting me.

I run my palm up the center of her, from her belly to her breastbone, between the bruises. My palm is rough with rope calluses, and her skin is hot and slick with sweat under it. Goose bumps rise everywhere my hand goes, and her nipples pull even tighter.

I bend down and lick the sweat from between her breasts in one long, slow stroke, from her breastbone to the hollow of her throat. She tastes like salt and barn dust. The stubble on my jaw scrapes her skin pink, and she hisses through her teeth.

I close my hand over her breast and squeeze hard enough that she bites her lip. I roll her nipple between my thumb and finger until it's rigid. Then I pinch it hard and hold it there while I watch her face.

She makes a low, raw sound in her throat. Her back bows up off the canvas toward my hand, but her hands stay on the rope.

I let go. Her nipple is dark red and swollen, and she's panting through her open mouth. I blow a breath across it, cool against the heat I put there, and her whole body jerks.

I take that nipple into my mouth and suck it hard against the roof of my mouth. She whimpers. When I drag my teeth over it, her heels scrape across the canvas.

When I unbutton her jeans, her hips lift off the canvas toward my hands. She catches herself and forces them back down.

She wants to fight me so badly that her arms shake on the rope.

I drag her jeans and underwear down her legs together and throw them out through the ropes. She doesn't kick. Her bare heels dig into the canvas, and her toes curl hard against it.

She's naked on my canvas except for my torn flannel spread open under her. Her knees are pressed together, and her thighs are trembling. The work lights burn down on every inch of her, and there isn't a shadow left for her to hide in.

"Open."

She lets her knees fall apart.

"Wider. Let me see what fighting me did to you."

She spreads her knees until the muscles along her inner thighs stand out and shake. Her pussy is swollen and dark pink, and it's so wet that it shines under the lights. Her wetness is smeared down the insides of both thighs. She's been wet like this a while.

I put my thumbs on either side of her and spread her open. Inside, she's a darker pink and glistening. Her clit stands up swollen and hard out of its hood, and her opening clenches on nothing while I look at it.

Her face goes red from her cheeks down to her breasts, but she doesn't close her legs.