“Yes. Do you want to take the bra off?”

“Hell, yes. But...I probably shouldn’t. We—”

She set her warm, soft hands over mine, which for some reason made my tongue stall out.

“Please help me get over this jealousy. Give me more than you ever gave her.”

From that point on, I was a goner. The girl I loved was asking me to do this for her, so I would. And I’d love every fucking second of it.

“Okay,” I whispered. When I set a hand on her hip, she beamed at me.

Her flesh was warm and so freaking soft. I didn’t know skin could be this soft. And when I smoothed my palm up all that naked, soft skin it gave me goose bumps. She was just as smooth and warm all the way up. When I reached the back of her bra, I paused, but decided not to go there. I’d heard too many horror stories about guys fumbling too long with a bra clasp, so I skipped it entirely and moved to the thin, silky strap on her left shoulder.

I met her gaze and hooked my finger under it. Then I smiled as I slowly dragged it down her arm. The top part of her bra cup sagged, revealing the uppermost swell of her breast.

Breathing in through my mouth, I studied them in dazed wonder before I lifted my gaze to make sure she was doing okay.

Grinning at me, she caught my cheek in her palm and said, “You look excited yet worried.”

Bingo. “I don’t want to mess this up,” I admitted.

Shaking her head, she assured me, “That’s not even possible.” Then she bit her lip. “Unless you don’t like what you see.”

I snorted. “Now that isn’t possible.” I slid off the other strap, and the front of her bra slid down even more until I could almost see nipple.

After one last glance at her face to make sure she was okay, I folded the front down entirely.

“Oh.” I sucked in a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. “Wow.” I glanced up at her face. Her cheeks were blazing pink, but she kept smiling, so I went back to her nipples. They were rosy pink and already beaded so tight into hard buds I couldn’t help but reach out and brush my thumbs over them.

She gasped and grabbed my shoulders. “Oh!” It was her turn to gasp. “Wow.”

We shared a smile, and then I cupped their weight in my hands before flicking my thumbs over the straining nipples again.

“God, Knox.” She ground her lap down on mine. “You freaking tease.”

I gave a husky laugh and then leaned down to close my mouth over one ripe peak.

She grabbed my hair and pulled hard. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

Sucking her in deep, I spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the hell out of second base.

The hardest thing I ever did was sit outside the stairwell and listen to her cry.

Bad shit had happened to me, things I relived in my darkest nightmares, but I’d always been able to fight back, rage against those attacks, react. Forcing myself to not react as Felicity wept because I had hurt her slaughtered me. Something inside me withered and then crumbled into dust.

Probably my humanity.

This was best for her, though; that’s what I kept telling myself. I could only hurt her if I reentered her life.

So why the hell was she out there, bawling after I’d attempted to do the right goddamn thing? She needed to stop. She needed to stop weeping, or I was going to lose it.

I pressed my back against the wall, rested my elbows on my bent knees and cradled my head in my hands as I gritted my teeth and listened to the worst sound in the world.

And then she did stop. I’m not sure how long she’d gone on—it felt like fucking decades and I was half delirious by that point—but the hiccups gradually subsided, then she picked herself up off the floor, and she left.

I remained, sitting just outside the stairwell, my hands shaking, my heart pounding and my vision graying at the edges.

I had no idea she’d tried to visit me in prison...and on her birthday, no less. I remembered her birthday clearly. I’d been lying on my stomach in the medical ward, trying not to cry out from the pain as they stitched the tear in my rectum back together. Turning my head away from their tray full of supplies so I didn’t have to look at all the needles and shit they were going to use on me, I’d ended up facing a bare wall with nothing but a calendar hanging on it. When I’d realized it was her eighteenth birthday, I’d closed my eyes and sung happy birthday to her in my head to distract myself from what was happening.

Recalling that day didn’t calm me any, though. Rage, the same sick need to destroy that I’d had the night before in Pick’s office, rallied inside me. I had a bad feeling as soon as I stood up, I’d take out the entire hall, rip every door off its hinge, dent in all the walls, heave the fire extinguisher out the window. So I sat there clenching and unclenching my hands and concentrating on breathing.