Knox Becca stretches naked against me, with a kind of lazy satisfaction that suggests she believes this moment belongs to her, that the space she occupies has already been secured in a way that doesn’t need to be questioned. I let her move the way she wants, let her trace patterns across my tattooed skin that don’t mean anything beyond the fact that they are expected, because this – this arrangement, this rhythm – has always been easy to maintain. There are no complications here, no unpredictable reactions. Becca knows her place, and she always has. The bedroom is too warm, carrying the faint scent of her sickly sweet perfume. I lean back slightly, watching her with the kind of detached awareness that has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with control. “You’ve been distr

