Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Piper
I was covered in blood.
I hadn’t considered how messy killing someone would be.
“White was a bad choice,” I muttered. Another thing I’d tell Elizabeth. Ensure your next ward is sent off in comfortable shoes and in shades of black when planning on killing someone.
I looked down at the lifeless man in front of me, blood everywhere, his flaccid cock hanging out of his pants like a sad worm.
I expected feelings of sickness to overwhelm me. After all, I’d just ended a life. A human life. No matter his sins, he was human. But I didn’t feel any of the regret or self-hatred I expected. Instead, I felt satisfied. He was gone from my life. This man who’d felt entitled to women, to control over bodies and lives, who had likely terrorized countless people, ruined lives. His reign of terror was over.
One in the sea of many wasn’t much, but it was one less. And I’d done that.
It felt good. Empowering.
That power didn’t last for long, though, a low pop of gunfire sounding in the hall. My gaze whipped toward the closed door.
Screwing up my face in disgust, I leaned down to search Stone’s body for a gun. Surely, this guy was wearing a shoulder holster. He was a mob boss, after all. But nothing.
“A disappointment, even in death,” I grumbled as more pops sounded.
I tried my best to brush the blood off me, which only served to smear it more.
My time was limited, that much I knew. Knox had obviously not gone quietly like I’d wanted, which had surprised me. It didn’t surprise me that he was coming back for me, even after I’d hurt him so badly. But it did surprise me that he was signaling it. It was taking a risk with my life. He had no way of knowing I’d killed Stone, and he would’ve considered what Stone might’ve done upon hearing sounds of conflict outside.
That was, kill me.
Even though I’d gravely wounded Knox, I knew he wouldn’t take such a risk with my life.
Something must’ve gone wrong.
Or one of Stone’s other enemies had picked a really inconvenient time to attack.
It didn’t matter which it was. All that mattered was that I needed more than a knife if I planned on making it out of there alive. Which I did. How horribly ironic would it have been if I made it through all that just to be killed by some nameless henchman in the end?
It would make for a good tragic love story, at least. Hadn’t I thought, in my heart of hearts, that Knox and I weren’t going to have a happily ever after?
“Enough of that shit, Piper,” I hissed at myself.
I clutched the knife I was holding as I searched the room for a weapon. The space was expensively appointed–no handguns hanging on the walls as I’d expected for a supervillain.
Inconvenient.
The sounds came closer, then the door burst open.
I froze where I was standing, with the bloodied knife in my hand and Stone’s corpse at my feet.
I didn’t recognize the man in front of me, but he had a gun, and he raised it toward my head the second he understood I’d shot his boss.
Though I wasn’t one to give up easily, I squeezed my eyes shut and waited. I couldn’t outrun a bullet, after all.
Knox, I love you , I silently called into the ether.
I flinched at the sound of a low pop. But it wasn’t followed by pain or any kind of impact.
I didn’t feel anything at all.
Maybe it was a headshot. Maybe I was already dead, that it happened that quickly. But no, the afterlife wouldn’t smell of coppery blood, excrement and expensive cologne.
My eyes eased open, and the man who had previously been holding a gun to my head was sprawled on the ground, red pooling underneath his head.
And the man standing there, who had obviously shot him, to my complete and utter surprise, was Lukyan.
Not a hair was out of place as his eyes flickered to Stone’s corpse, and he nodded once. I supposed he was impressed, though he didn’t say it.
“You ready to go?” he asked me blandly when I didn’t say anything.
The request was ordinary, as if he hadn’t just fought his way through however many people in an effort to … what? Save me?
I looked around. “Um, yeah.” I stepped on unsteady feet around the corpses to approach him.
“I thought you said it wasn’t your job to come in and save the day?” I asked him, breathing heavily.
Lukyan didn’t smile so much as grimace. “My wife convinced me to try on the hero’s cape. I don’t think I’ll be putting it on again.”
I swallowed a hysterical giggle. “You should. It suits you.”
He gave me a look that could melt paint and that might’ve flayed the skin off my bones if I hadn’t gone through everything I’d just gone through.
“I won’t. Consider yourself the luckiest woman in the world. And if you see me after this, run because it means someone paid me to kill you.”
I blinked at the line delivered so flawlessly that it sent cold terror clutching my throat like a vice. But I’d just killed someone. I was in love with an arguably scarier killer. I wasn’t so easily afraid those days.
"Dude, someone needs to write a movie about you or something,” I wiped some blood from my cheek. “You’re like John Wick, but you killed your own puppy .”
Lukyan looked at me like I had grown another head, not my question with an answer as he turned down the hall, not looking back to see if I followed.
Which I did.
I was not blindly deluding myself into the whole femme fatale thing. It was mostly dumb luck that had me accomplishing my goal, that and a whole lot of feminine rage. But that would only get me so far. And I wasn’t so much of a feminist that I wouldn’t hand the reins over to a very capable, ruthless hitman willing to do the rest of the work.
So through the horrifying maze of bodies in his wake, I followed him.
We made it out of Stone’s place alive.
Not alone either.
I’d been surprised and delighted to meet up with Elizabeth in the foyer. She was holding a gun and had bodies of her own at her feet. Clad sensibly in black, no summery sundress to be found, her hair pulled off her face, making her look sharper, more severe. A predator. That was a femme fatale .
Feminine rage honed, sharpened and fashioned into a weapon.
Lukyan didn’t hesitate to abandon me, walking over to his wife, capturing her in his arms and murmuring something in her ear She replied too low for me to hear.
They were a sight, the two of them, armed and beautiful, entwined in the foyer of a grand mansion surrounded by bodies…
They brought a new meaning to the term ‘power couple.’
Melancholy slammed painfully into me at the sight of them, yearning for Knox while also understanding this was not my new identity, clad in designer clothing, covered in blood. I would never be his equal.
If he even still wanted me.
With a desert in my throat and an emptiness in my heart, I’d followed Lukyan and Elizabeth to the waiting SUV. Elizabeth surveyed me with a pride that felt sacred. She didn’t say anything, but I somehow felt we’d been connected for life.
Not exactly girlfriends or even kindred spirits, but women who loved men on the fringes of society.
I didn’t even ask where we were going. I’d guessed back to the city, hopefully to Knox. But we pulled off onto a long driveway toward a small, nondescript house.
A ‘safe house’ Lukyan had explained. And then they’d told me Knox was on his way, and we were to wait there for him. Elizabeth had presented me with a small bag—a change of clothes and toiletries—then Lukyan showed me to the back of the small house to a bedroom with an adjoining shower.
His sheer energy was overwhelming as he lingered in the room, taking over it with his presence. I’d expected him to leave as soon as possible, since he did not seem overly fond of me.
“You’ve still got a choice,” he said instead of going anywhere. As always, his voice was low. Harsh.
I glanced up at him after eyeing myself in the mirror for a long time. I barely recognized myself.
“You’ve done things, seen things that are everyday events for people like me, Knox,” his gaze skirted to the hallway. “My wife. But you are not stuck on this path. Not yet at least. You can still go back.”
I stared at him, shocked at what he was saying. It felt like mercy, like he was offering empathy. A kind word from a killer. An opportunity to go back to a life that felt as if it were on another planet.
“It will be a variation of this.” He motioned to my blood-soaked body. “Not every day. Not all the time. But you won’t escape it. He cannot escape it. His world. You still have the chance.”
Did I want to go back to my life before Knox? After seeing the horrors that human beings were capable of? The very real world operating beneath the surface? There was none of the romance popular culture injected into it. It was dangerous and vile and terrifying.
“Why are you saying this?” I asked Lukyan.
His eyes once again went to the hallway. “Because I often wish someone had said it to my wife.”
I stared back at him, the tortured villain, pain clear in his words if not in his face. The sheer magnitude of love he felt for his voice was overwhelming.
“If they had, she wouldn’t have taken it. Not for the world,” I told him.
His head snapped up. “You don’t know her.”
“Don’t I?” I asked, unafraid of the brutality in his tone.
We stayed like that, standing there in some sort of standoff.
That was until Knox pushed through the door so hard it came off its hinges. I flinched in shock at his entrance, my heart hammering at his presence. First relief, then fury coated his body like armor, eyes wide, nostrils flaring, hands fisted at his sides. His advance toward me was nothing short of ferocious.
“What the FUCK was that?” he roared. Right in my face.
I had envisioned somewhat of a more tender reunion.
Then again, I deserved his anger, didn’t I? How quickly had I forgotten those hateful words I’d spoken to him. My brush with death had infused me with too much hope for romance, it seemed.
I was shocked at Knox’s savage bellow. At his abandoning of the control I was used to seeing in him. It wasn’t just the door that was unhinged, it was him.
My pulse thrashed in my ears as I struggled to steady my breathing.
“I was—”
He cut me off with a hand at my throat, pushing me backward so my back slammed against the wall. My body cried out in pain, still recovering from a beating … how long ago now? Knox had been so mindful with my injuries, careful. Right then, there was no care in the way he handled me.
“You were stupid. And reckless with the only thing that matters,” he snarled. “Your life .”
I blinked rapidly, trying to weather the sheer weight of his anger, nothing like he’d ever unleashed on me before.
“Knox.”
When a voice shattered through the cloud of his ferocity, I realized that Lukyan was still in the room. I’d truly forgotten about his presence, something to note since Lukyan’s presence was almost as all-encompassing as Knox’s.
In a smooth move that seemed to take a single blink, one of Knox’s hands left my throat as the other took the gun from the holster underneath his jacket, pointing it in Lukyan’s direction.
“Say another word in a situation that involves me and my woman,” he dared.
I tore my gaze away from Knox, horrified that he was threatening Lukyan after he’d helped us. And not just threatening him; I got the distinct impression that Knox wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. He was balanced on a knife’s edge, savagery clawing at the edges of his soul. I could see it. His thirst for death.
Lukyan, for his part, did not look the least bit afraid that he was quite possibly seconds from death. In fact, he raised an eyebrow, as if amused. “The thanks I get for saving your woman?” He shook his head, then all amusement left his face. “I’ll give you one pass for this.” He waved toward the gun. “Once. Because I understand the pull of the underworld when your woman is in danger. But this is not a grace I will give you again.” His eyes bounced to me, to the hand at my neck. “Good luck, Piper,” he said before he turned his back to leave.
Arrogant or brave or delusional, to turn his back on Knox with the gun still pointed at him.
Admittedly very badass too.
I’d held my breath because I really did not need to witness another murder. Especially of Lukyan. I might not have liked the man—he was impossible to like—but I liked his wife a great deal. I felt a kinship with them, had an affinity to the intensity of the connection they shared. I understood what Knox would be obliterating if he had pulled the trigger. It would be destroying something truly sacred, and if he had shot him, I didn’t doubt karma would find us—if there was an us—to return the favor one day.
Luckily, he didn’t.
But he didn’t lower the gun until long after Lukyan had closed the door, Knox’s chest rising and falling quickly.
Nor did he let me go from where he had me pinned against the wall.
My breathing wasn’t entirely obstructed, but my lungs were beginning to burn from the effort it took me to suck in air. My ribs throbbed, and my muscles groaned from the exertion I’d put them through these past few days.
I wanted to call out to him. Wanted to lift my arm to touch him, embrace him. But all of my instincts were telling me to stay still, to wait.
Slowly, Knox put the gun back in its holster then returned his attention to me.
Rage was an inferno in his eyes, but it seemed somewhat contained now. But I didn’t miss the cruel, angry shine that seemed to cover him like armor.
Fair enough.
I’d shown him that he needed armor around me now. It didn’t matter that I’d done it for the right reasons. With the best of intentions. The road to hell was paved with all those good intentions, after all. And that’s where I walked. For Knox. Into hell. I would’ve lived there, as long as it was with him. A fool’s hope, maybe.
Knox searched my face. Every pore. Every crevice. For what, I didn’t know. Maybe marks? Bruises?
The pressure at my neck remained, but now his thumb brushed against my artery with a gentleness that was a balm to my soul.
Knox exhaled roughly and slowly as he leaned forward, his forehead resting against mine.
My frayed nerves were unable to turn off entirely, but I slumped at the touch, my body reveling in the intimacy of his touch.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “For saying those things. Those horrific, untrue things. I didn’t mean them. I know it’ll take more than that for you to forgive me, but…”
Knox brought his head back up so he could regard me with a crystal-clear gaze. No hurt swam in it. “I do not need to forgive you for what you said because I knew you didn’t mean them, right when you said them.”
His tone was harsh, still laced with anger but not for the betrayal of using his most intimate trauma against him.
“Piper, do you believe I think so little of you that I would let words, foolish words used as an attempt at a rescue so much as scratch my feelings for you?” He continued rubbing my neck. “I do not devalue what we are so easily. I do not devalue you so easily.”
“You’re not mad at me?” I asked, breathy at the gravity of his words.
“Oh, I’m fucking livid at you,” he gritted out, eyes glowing with that lividity. “Not for that, though. For putting yourself in the line of fire in the first place. For not trusting me to take care of you.” There it was. Hurt. He was hurt that I hadn’t trusted him.
“I trusted you to take care of you,” I quickly countered. “I didn’t want you to have to. I wanted to save you .”
Knox didn’t belittle me with an ‘oh, you’re so cute, you’re a woman who thinks you can save a man’ type stare. No, his brows bunched as he searched my eyes. “You save me, Piper.” He leaned forward so our lips almost brushed. “By breathing. Existing. You do not save me by giving me the abject terror of watching another man take you from me without the grace of watching that man take his last breath. You stole his death from me. Worse, you marked your soul when it is my job to keep it pristine.”
He lowered his hand to my chest, which was soaked and crusted with blood. I hadn’t exactly forgotten about it, but I hadn’t fathomed the sheer amount of blood I was coated in. I looked like Carrie at the prom.
Knox’s hand skimmed over my body, his face impenetrable. The power in which he was holding himself still made his entire form seem to vibrate. I could feel the furor.
“I should probably change, shower.” I was suddenly uncomfortable, shy under his intense gaze.
“You’re not leaving my sight,” he growled. “I can’t fucking breathe properly until my cock is inside you, Piper.” I gasped as his hand skimmed down my skirt, hiking it up.
“He had you for eight hours and thirty-six minutes.” He fisted my skirt, eyes locking with mine. “What did—”
“He didn’t rape me,” I interrupted him in order to banish the misery I saw chaining his soul.
He exhaled heavily but didn’t relax. “There are other things—”
Again, I cut him off, but I didn’t do it with words; I did it by taking hold of his wrist and pulling it upward to where my pussy was wet and waiting for him.
Knox let out a low snarl as he felt it.
“He didn’t do anything to me,” I told him. “I did it all. I killed him with my bare hands. He didn’t lay a finger in any places that belong to you.”
Maybe a little white lie since Stone technically had touched me, but dead men kept secrets.
Knox’s gaze zoomed in on me as he searched my pussy, finding the string of my tampon I’d hid with an expert hand. Inconvenient to be on my period when I was supposed to be taking down a criminal enterprise. But I’d managed it despite men’s favorite line, using our menstruation as the reason why we couldn’t be trusted with power.
I did it all while wearing white too.
Knox swiftly drew my tampon out, flinging it carelessly across the room. Though I was near mad with desire, I made a mental note to retrieve it after we were done. I didn’t have shame over Knox handling my used tampon, but that’s where my comfortability ended.
Knox rubbed my aching clit, and I let out a strangled moan as I realized just how keyed up I was. How desperate I was for his merciless touch.
“You killed him.” Knox continued rubbing.
“Yes,” I rasped.
“How did you do it?”
I tilted my head at his request, asked in a guttural tone.
He stopped rubbing at my pause, stopped delving into my arousal, no longer coating me with it and blood.
“How did you do it, Petal?” he repeated, teeth grazing my lip.
“I-I ruptured h-his artery.”
Knox’s hand resumed its stroking.
“Which one?”
My eyes were in danger of rolling to the back of my head from this sordid, forbidden, depraved conversation happening in tandem with this overt and delicious sexual act. And I liked it.
“Femoral,” I gasped, my pleasure building, the edge rapidly approaching.
Knox didn’t stop his vicious assault, didn’t take his gaze from mine, yet he slowed his circles, stealing my imminent climax.
“So you had to get close,” he deduced, his words smoke and iron.
I nodded.
“Where were you?” He leaned forward, inhaling my neck, lips grazing the skin.
Even through my haze of feral desire, I knew answering this question was dangerous. Knox was thirsty for information that had the power to unravel him. But also, if I wasn’t mistaken, it was turning him on. A whole lot. I’d never felt such unrestrained, wild hunger from him before.
And that was truly saying something.
“On my knees,” I whispered, barely audible, terrified my answer would make him stop. Make him angry enough to punish me with no release to this almost painful buildup of tension.
He pulled back, jaw marble, nostrils flaring, eyes pits of wantonness. “You brought down one of the most powerful men in the country … on your knees.”.
Pursing my lips, I nodded.
His lips stretched into a large and wicked smile. He lifted his hand to cup my jaw with his large hand.
Then his fingers were no longer working my soaked clit. One of my legs was hitched around his waist, his hand expertly freeing his cock before sending it thrusting into me in one brutal blow. My head would’ve thrown back to hit the wall in pleasure if he didn’t have such a tight hold over me.
Our gazes remained intertwined as he plunged in hard.
“My good girl,” he grunted. “My good fucking girl.”
My world exploded on the next thrust, from the praise, from the expert angle, the pent-up frustration.
All I knew for certain was that against that wall, covered in blood from the inside out, we had the most life-shattering sex I’d ever had in my life
Elizabeth was right.
Humanity was overrated.