Chapter 6
Six
Knox
I knew she was a vegetarian. Though my research into Piper Matthews was nowhere near as in depth as I would’ve liked, I’d gathered what information I could from her social media page.
She didn’t eat meat, she loved Taylor Swift, she ran every morning, she drank lattes at the same coffee shop every day, her favorite book was some fantasy title I’d never heard of but had inexplicably purchased and brought with me. And, she believed in the power of crystals, as if hunks of rock were useful as anything more than paperweights.
I couldn’t fathom the amount of shit people shared about themselves on the internet, desperate to have someone, anyone, know them. As if they didn’t realize that in the right hands, that was the key to their ruin.
Benign personal information was the key to breaking her. While doing my supply run, the majority of what I purchased were meat products, very little vegetables or grains. That was intentional. She’d initially stick to her morals, the belief system she’d held as a marker of her identity. Then she’d get hungry. Eventually, she’d sacrifice who she was in order to survive.
And that would chisel off a little of her self-worth. Self-respect.
We had just over a month. Ideally, I would’ve had longer to draw out the process, have it be more subtle, but we didn’t have time. And now that I was stuck in a cabin with her, a month seemed like it might break me .
Such thoughts were obviously a sign of my mind finally fracturing. Madness was the only viable explanation for these feelings. Some five-foot-nothing civilian who smelled of peaches did not have the power to break me.
No one did.
Only me.
Only I had that power. And it was happening. All of my sins—committed in the name of survival, to feed that ravenous darkness inside of me—were finally eating at me. There would never be enough death, blood or depravity to keep me sane. I’d known that for a while.
Bad timing more than anything else.
But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t accomplish my goal. That I wouldn’t rip apart Piper and ensure she’d be begging to be taken to Stone.
Maybe my madness would help in doing just that. Or perhaps I’d bring us both down.
I hadn’t slept in days.
There had been too much to do. To prepare. I’d snatched a couple of hours here and there. I only slept a handful of hours on any given night anyway. Nightmares slithered in if I slept too deeply and for too long.
But this was less than even I was used to. I’d settled onto the sofa, hoping my body might shut down. Though I didn’t think it was possible for me to lapse into unconsciousness, knowing that Piper was in the same room as me. She was sleeping; I could hear the soft sighs coming from her, her body still.
When her breathing settled, and I stopped seeing any movement in the bed, I got up.
I wasn’t prone to making bad decisions. Every choice I made was calculated, precise, all possible consequences weighed.
Going anywhere near Piper for the purpose of doing anything other than breaking her will was a unilaterally bad decision.
My iron-clad control abandoned me as I stepped on soundless feet to stand at her bedside.
She’d yanked the covers up to her chest and was still clutching them in her sleep. She was tense, protecting herself, even in sleep. A normal person, a good person, might’ve felt a stab of guilt at that.
Then again, a good person never would’ve taken her captive in the first place.
My eyes traced the curves and ridges of her face. Her high cheekbones, her delicate nose, the gentle flaring of her nostrils as she inhaled. Her long lashes framed exquisite espresso and gold-flecked eyes.
Her rosebud lips were swollen, as if she’d been chewing on them all night. The arch at the top of her lip was enchanting. I wanted it wrapped around my dick.
Wanted her wrapped around my dick.
I’d always known I was sick, but not this sick. Not capable of watching my captive sleep with my cock hard, seconds away from coming all over her just by thinking about her.
It was shameful. Fucking creepy.
Yet I’d stayed there for an age, watching her chest move, memorizing the ridges of her face, cock standing at attention, refusing to sate my need. I didn’t do that. Didn’t give myself pleasure I didn’t deserve. Primarily because when I was done, I felt dirtier than before, and the call of the knife was louder, the need to cut through the filth undeniable.
By the time I finally forced my feet to walk back to the sofa, I’d given in to the call of the steel, exhaling as the familiar bite of pain eased the tension. But not enough. Nowhere near enough as it had in the past. Madness was truly near, then. If the one thing I could always rely upon had abandoned me. Wired and frustrated, I stared at the ceiling for hours before sheer exhaustion finally took me.
I was contemplating my fate. A month in this cabin with her. My control was already frayed, damn near destroyed, after one fucking night.
The urge to run was palpable.
But running meant defeat.
Running meant my death.
I had to stay. And I’d keep my hands off her.
She was Stone’s. I’d deliver her to him, willing and ready to be his wife. No matter how sick the prospect made me.
I’d fracture this beautiful woman because I could. Because I had to. Because she already had too much power over me.
And I’d vowed to myself years ago, that no one would have that ever again.
Piper
Despite the situation, my gnawing hunger and my overwrought nervous system, I slept like the dead.
Clearly, my body’s exhaustion trumped my mind’s turmoil. For one night anyway. How I could shut down and be vulnerable and unconscious in the same room as the bastard sitting on the couch was beyond me.
Survival.
My body was wired to do that. And in order to survive, I needed strength. I needed sustenance.
One cursory glance in the small fridge and freezer showed me it was packed to the gills with meat, butter and a handful of vegetables. Same with the small pantry. Some bread, grains, but very little.
The next morning, I’d mindfully chewed on the bread and an apple. Somehow, he’d known. He’d known that I didn’t eat meat, ensuring that I would have barely enough food to keep me alive, let alone strong enough to fight back.
It was chilling, to be under the same roof as someone who was purely there to break my will. To batter me so completely that I would ‘willingly’ marry a monster. Stone could’ve easily forced me with a gun aimed point-blank to my sister’s head. I would’ve done it too. To protect Daisy. It would’ve been a fuck of a lot simpler than all of this.
Although he was a criminal piece of shit, he somehow considered himself civilized. His ego wouldn’t allow him to simply force me to marry him. He wanted to bring about the illusion of consent, whether that was for appearances or for his own warped mind, I didn’t know.
My hunger wasn’t sated by my meager breakfast, but it sufficed for the moment. I had to ration. It was all I had for the foreseeable future, and I was entirely dependent on Knox for all of my sustenance and safety.
A sobering and horrifying thought.
That’s what had me putting on my running gear in the bathroom—while Knox was presumably sleeping on the sofa. I didn’t look too closely at the large, prone form.
Although I was tempted. Sleep seemed like an impossible bodily function for him. Sleep left you too vulnerable.
There was nothing vulnerable about this man. Nothing soft, human. Nothing to cut into.
Not that I would. I’d eyed the unused steak knife he’d put in front of me at the table for about 2.5 seconds. Stabbing someone with a steak knife would do little. Unless by miracle you hit an artery or were willing to continuously stab. And that’s on someone who wasn’t fighting back.
Knox wouldn’t need to fight back. He was watching me so carefully, I’d have the knife out of my hand before it was even halfway through the air.
And even if by some miracle I did kill or incapacitate him… Then what? There was nowhere to run to.
I doubted that Knox did anything without a lot of thought. The meat. The sharp axe. All of it was a taunt. That he could give me a weapon on a silver platter, yet I was unable to use it. Even if I had the stomach for it, I couldn’t fight him, kill him.
On that thought, I shoved on my running shoes—purposely not looking in the direction of the sofa in case he was awake and watching me—then crept out the door.
I couldn’t kill him.
But I could run.
I felt him in the woods around me before I saw him. A slash of black against the crisp-green foliage and trees. A yawning black hole of death amidst the glorious life of the mountains.
He wasn’t wearing a suit. He’d abandoned that like a snake shedding its skin.
But he was still clad in black. A form-fitting sweatshirt, even though the morning was unseasonably warm. I’d shed my layers immediately, the long-sleeved tee I’d donned tied in a tight knot around my waist leaving me in only a sports bra.
His long pants were expensive, practical and spotless. Same with the black boots. He wore them well, even if I had the inkling this was the first time he’d worn gear like it.
The inky curtain of his hair was messier today, as if he’d been running his hands through it, falling across his face and highlighting his flawless, ivory skin. His eyes were dark and predatory as I came to a stop, raking over every inch of me.
I’d previously been sweating, flushed from the exertion of running on uneven terrain without the appropriate amount of fuel in my body.
My throat closed up with his attention on my bare skin. A flashback to when we first met. Was it really only yesterday when I’d been running through Central Park?
Like I had then, I resisted the urge to cover myself up, to protect my exposed skin from his gaze.
I didn’t know how he got there, how he tracked me, in the woods, at least a mile from the cabin. Not the city boy that he was. Maybe he was supernatural. Maybe he tracked me by scent. Smelling my blood. My fear.
I believed in all of that. In things that couldn’t be explained by science. I believed intuition was a form of divination, that souls called to one another, that auras communicated the true nature of people.
Knox was challenging those beliefs. His aura was dark, thorny, dangerous. Yet his soul called to mine in a way I couldn’t explain.
He wasn’t leaning anywhere, just standing in the middle of what couldn’t really be called a trail, more like a break in the woods.
I’d followed my instincts through the woods, running where the ground was most forgiving, lapsing into memories of my childhood, tearing through the trees and over ground carpeted with pine needles like the ones outside my grandmother’s house. Though her old property had been sold, abandoned, hundreds of miles away, I yearned for it. To be running back to a cozy house with freshly-made biscuits cooling on the counter, scrambled eggs from the chickens she kept. Thick cuts of juicy bacon from her neighbor who kept pigs. That’s what turned me into a vegetarian. I’d petted those pigs, named them.
My grandmother, an Appalachian woman through and through, was soft in many ways but hard when it came to life and death and sustenance. She cared for animals, loved her cat Frank and her hound Lewis, but she’d never hesitated to kill when she needed to.
My grandmother didn’t agree or understand my vegetarianism but had accepted it. Just as she had accepted everything from those she loved. Even when accepting that my mother loved my father and would be leaving the mountains for the city lost her her daughter.
“What are you doing?”
Knox’s flat voice jerked me out of my stupor. I was standing in the middle of the woods, half-dressed, panting and sweaty, staring at a killer.
“Running.” My voice was a little breathless but not weak. Weakness had no place in these woods, in front of this man.
Knox didn’t respond, he just stared.
“Not running from you ,” I stipulated, unable to weather the stare. “I’m running. Like I do every day. I was planning on coming back.”
Again, Knox didn’t speak as the woods gently hummed between us.
“Running. Here,” he said flatly. He didn’t look around, keeping his gaze firmly on me.
I felt one hundred pounds heavier under the weight of his gaze. I had an urge to shift on my feet, but I couldn’t signal my discomfort.
“Yes, here.” My tone was sharp. Challenging.
His jaw twitched. Barely, but I saw it. Only because I was determined to scrutinize him with the same intensity as he was looking at me.
“These woods are not Central Park, Piper,” he gritted out. “There are predators here.”
“I’m well aware that there are predators in these woods,” I raised a brow, my meaning clear. He was my predator. “And I’d rather face off with any of the animals in these woods than some of the men that lurk in Central Park, waiting for a woman to let her guard down.”
Though his expression didn’t change, not even a miniscule jaw twitch, I could feel his anger, his fury. A flock of birds even fled from a nearby tree.
Even though I believed in forms of magic, I convinced myself it had to be a coincidence.
“If you’re not smart enough to fear the wildlife—”
“I’m smart enough to know what to fear and what to respect,” I huffed.
The run was enough to rejuvenate me. Even if it depleted the physical energy reserves that I needed, I still fully possessed my mental faculties.
Again, I could feel a burst of enraged energy coming from Knox’s general direction.
He wasn’t used to being interrupted. I had the sense he was used to commanding a room, with underlings cowering beneath him in fear.
I wasn’t going to cower. It would be my destruction. My instincts told me that much.
After not so much as blinking, Knox drew in a visible breath. He was a fearsome creature. Like some kind of devil walking the woods. Though I sensed that even Satan would fear him.
“If you do not fear the animals, you’re still running in unfamiliar terrain. You could get lost.”
I didn’t mistake those words for concern. If he was concerned with me in any way, he wouldn’t have taken me here in the first place.
“You found me,” I shrugged, my tone as sharp as a blade.
He nodded. “I’ll always find you.”
My skin raised with gooseflesh at the promise in his words. It was terrifying. And exciting. Comforting.
Comforting? The fact that my captor would always find me? My mind was obviously fraying at the seams. I thought I’d last at least twenty-four hours... The reality of how brittle my mind truly was, was frightening.
“Well what’s the issue, then?” I folded my arms in front of me. “Even if I’m some damsel in distress, lost in the woods, you’ll come rescue me.”
Again, there was a long pause while he gave me that unyielding stare that turned my limbs to jelly and my skin ablaze. “You are not a damsel in distress,” he eventually replied. “And I’m not someone who rescues damsels. I kill them.”
I forced my expression to remain unaffected. He was trying to scare me. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing that it worked.
He stayed stock-still, as he had the entire time. It was unnatural for a person to stand like that, without any kind of physical tic, shifting of their weight, needing to scratch an itch, clenching their fists. He had complete control over every inch of his body. It was a finely-tuned weapon, that much was clear. “You wouldn’t want to deal with the consequences of me having to find you if you get lost.”
A threat.
“I’m not lost.” A flat-out lie. I wasn’t lost in these woods. But in life? Yeah, I’d never been more lost in my life.
His silence conveyed his disbelief. In his eyes, I was a damsel. If I wasn’t a damsel, I wouldn’t be here, would I? I would’ve found a way to escape Stone’s attention, to outsmart him. Defeat him.
I read books about women overcoming all odds, slaying dragons or riding them then laying waste to entire regimes. Yet there I was, face-to-face with a monstrosity I was powerless against.
“Fine.” I turned on my heel, even though it went against all my survival
instincts to give him my back.
I started running.
“Try to keep up. And don’t break an ankle on a protruding tree root,” I called over my shoulder, willing him to do just that.
The crackling of detritus behind me was the only thing that told me he was running behind me. That was it, though. The initial crunch of boots against the forest floor, then … nothing. I listened for him with an experienced ear, but I couldn’t hear him. He moved through the brush like a hunter. Impossible. Even me, someone accustomed to these woods made small missteps, making my presence known.
Even though he made no sound, I didn’t need to turn to know he was behind me. I felt him. The hairs on the nape of my neck were raised in fear.
My heart slammed against my breastbone as I pushed my already burning legs to go faster. I kept mind of the roots, rocks, the uneven terrain. Even nature was primed to test you to see if you could survive there.
The woods flashed by; my previously cold body warmed up, more sweat running down my skin, my pulse pounding in my ears.
It was an eternity and a second when the small cabin came into view. I let out a fractured breath of relief, of victory.
This had been what I wanted, wasn’t it? To prove to Knox that I was no damsel in distress. To prove to myself that I wasn’t afraid of him. I turned, panting with a self-satisfied smile, planning on gloating.
Until I saw the expression on Knox’s face.
There was no longer cold calculation holding his features captive. No, there was a wild animal, a demon glowing behind his ferocious eyes.
Reflexively, I scuttled back, almost tripping on the uneven ground of the cobbled walk to the cabin.
Knox advanced, prowling toward me like a feral animal. And the animal inside of me responded with a singular instinct—to run.
The door to the cabin hit my back hard, stopping my retreat. Just as I was about to dart to the left to run toward the overgrown garden, Knox’s arms caged me in. His palms rested on the wood of the door as he leaned forward, his face inches from mine but not touching me.
Still, my body trembled. Fear was a physical, tangible thing inside of me, squeezing at my throat.
He didn’t speak immediately; he just stood there, hovering close to my face, eyes locked onto mine, pupils dilated, his entire being a threat to my very existence.
My heart must’ve been beating because I didn’t drop dead there and then, but my lungs shrank. Not from the run but from the pressure that was burgeoning inside my body, the very air being sucked from them.
“Don’t ever run from me again.” Knox’s voice was featherlight. But there was a tension there, as if he was about to snap. The pulsating cords in his neck told me that he was having trouble holding himself back.
I couldn’t tear my gaze from him.
Nor could I speak.
I just stood there in the cage of his arms, breathing rapidly like the prey I was. Like a scared rabbit. It didn’t seem out of the question that I was going to have a heart attack from terror.
“Piper.” My name was like the crack of a whip I swore I could feel tearing apart my skin.
All I could do was blink at him.
“If you value your life, I need you to tell me you won’t ever fucking run from me again.”
It struck me that I’d never heard him curse before. I got the sense he didn’t do it often, only when needed. The four-letter word was spoken in a velvet tone, but it cut like that same whip.
I was scared. I don’t think I'd ever been more scared in my entire life. But not just that. I was filled with shame and disgust about it, but there was a wetness between my thighs. And it was not my bladder releasing.
It was from desire. My clit pulsated in response to the violence emanating from Knox. Because I would’ve bet my life on it—my life that could very well be in jeopardy right then—that he was feeling some kind of desire right then too. Yes, he was a predator. But he was also a male predator. Some primitive chase and mate instinct.
Mate. Rut. Fuck.
Filthy carnal words for an act I previously considered sacred, something I only did with people I respected. I certainly didn’t love or respect this barbarian.
But I wanted him.
It was undeniable.
Still, my mouth couldn’t open. Wouldn’t open.
“Speak,” he demanded.
I flinched. Again, the command was a weapon. Used to wound, to make me bleed on the inside. To make me cower.
And despite my terror—and yes, my shameful craving—I didn’t submit. Wouldn’t.
He was there to break me. And this was just the beginning. A hairline crack, a harbinger of further destruction.
I jutted my chin upward, my teeth grinding together with force that made me worry they might shatter.
“No.”
He didn’t even flinch. But I swear, the weight of his gaze became even heavier. The air felt thicker.
“Excuse me?” he asked quietly.
“No,” I repeated. “I will not tell you that I won’t run from you again because I’m not a liar. And because I’m not a liar, I will make you a promise.” I sucked in a deep breath. “Once it’s safe for my sister, I will run from you. And you can make chase, try to catch me, but you won’t. Eventually, you won’t have any power over me.”
Like I had last night, I felt proud that I was able to stand up to what was the most terrifying creature I’d come across in my life. Even if I understood that he wouldn’t let me get away with this. That this wasn’t a victory. It just wasn’t submission.
He proved me right seconds later, leaning in closer. Still not touching, my body betrayed me, arching forward ever so slightly toward him. As if we were opposing magnets, drawn to each other while repelling each other at the same time.
He went rigid as he noted my body’s movement, then he straightened so our bodies didn’t even brush.
“If I so choose, Piper, I will always have power over you. So you better pray to whatever gods you worship that I do not choose that.”
He let the words linger for a second, still as a statue with his gaze scalding my eyes. And there was a moment, a moment when I must’ve been delusional with fear because I was sure that he was going to kiss me.
And what was worse, and infinitely more delusional, was that I was getting ready to kiss him back.
Thankfully, there was one shred of mercy left for me in the universe.
Knox rolled back onto his heels then stalked back into the woods like the wild animal he was. I watched the foliage swallow him up, still pressed against the door, unable to control my breathing.
“Pray to whatever gods you worship that I do not choose that.”
The words echoed throughout the quiet clearing.
I wasn’t a deeply religious person, spiritual for sure, but even I knew that the moment Knox came into my life, the gods—and even my treasured goddesses—had abandoned me.
Only the devil remained.