Captive Souls

Chapter 15

Fifteen

Knox

S he fell asleep with my cock inside her.

That was the only way I’d allow it.

Once I’d been sheathed in the velvet of her pussy, I understood. This was what it was supposed to feel like. This was why people destroyed their lives over something as simple as sex. I hadn’t comprehended it. I got having a life ruined by the sick desires of others, but I’d never experienced it. That need, that craze. I’d reasoned that the abuse had deadened that part of me, shriveled and defiled it in such a way that I’d never grown a healthy enjoyment for sex.

Not that what I was feeling for Piper was anything but healthy. Her pussy was so sacred to me. I wanted to hunt down every person who had ever been inside it so I could ensure no one else on this planet knew her that way.

Only me.

I’d explored every facet of the sexual experience with cold curiosity, waiting for something to awaken inside me.

When nothing so much as twitched, apart from the need for bloodletting, to get out the dirt that piled up by engaging in such acts, I assumed I was dead.

Then Piper found me and brought me back to life.

I stared at her flushed, exhausted, peaceful face, hair splayed on the pillow, trusting enough to fall asleep like that, with me beside her. Inside her.

It defied natural law, her giving herself to me. That I got her.

My mind screeched with pain, with all the ways I could lose her.

Lose this.

No way was that happening.

So I began to make arrangements in my head.

To ensure that Piper would never be anyone’s but mine.

Piper

I woke up alone.

My body ached from the exertion from the night before, more sex than I’d ever had in a single night. The best sex I’d had in my life. The best sex anyone, anywhere had had in their entire life. I felt changed from it. Unraveled then put back together in a different way, a way that only Knox had the key to.

The reality of that didn’t scare me. It wrapped around me like a warm blanket, even though the bed was cold without Knox.

I got out of bed without bothering to cover myself. A trip to the bathroom was probably the smartest thing to do since I really didn’t want a UTI, but I changed my course when I saw him on the sofa.

It wasn’t a surprise to see Knox sitting there, tense, hunched over, his eyes vacant. I’d expected this. Him to be closed off. I understood it. With someone like Knox, life wouldn’t be easy. He wouldn’t give in to me easily. Wouldn’t open up completely. There were too many demons nipping at his door.

Sex, even the most mind-blowing sex in the world, wasn’t a cure for everything.

I wasn’t mad or hurt to find him there, to feel the coldness and the distance from him. It was intended to scare me away. Not intentionally, I knew that. It was survival instinct for him. I pushed past it without hesitation, running my hands through the inky locks of his hair. How long had I been itching to do that? I wasn’t going to let him erect walls between us. Not now that I knew what I‘d been missing out on. It was the greatest treasure to have the ability to touch this man, have his arms around me, be coated by him from the inside out. I wasn’t letting that go.

He glanced up, his movements stilted as his obsidian eyes caught me. I didn’t miss the way they floated up and down my naked body. It was purposeful, not covering myself. It was my way of showing him I was unarmed, vulnerable.

Though I hadn’t had a whole bunch of time to think about what he might say, I had garnered a guess it would be something along the lines of, This was a mistake. I’m an evil miscreant, and I won’t maim you with my wretched soul . Nobility from the man who thought himself to be the villain.

But that wasn’t what he said.

“It can come back,” he said.

I frowned at him in question, my hand still in his hair.

He turned in the chair, catching my wrist in his grip. It was tight. Too tight. It wasn’t a pleasant pressure and would surely leave a bruise. I ground my molars and didn’t make a sound because part of me liked it. Knowing that he wasn’t in control around me, that I made him slip.

“The cancer,” he said, bringing my wrist to his lips, instantly gentle after the brutality of his prior touch. “It can come back.”

He didn’t exactly structure it like a question, but it seemed like it was since he wasn’t a doctor with extensive knowledge of my medical history.

The panic in the air was palpable.

“It could,” I said carefully. “There is a small chance it could. Slightly higher than anyone else without it, but the risk isn’t high.”

I downplayed it like it hadn’t been an axe hanging over my head my entire life. Every physical twinge, every bout of the flu, every test I had, I braced for the bad news. Because I knew that it could happen to me. I wasn’t insulated by ignorance, thinking things like cancer happened only to other people.

I was aware that fate was a bitch who’d gifted me with horrible parents, addiction and a genome that tried to kill me. But I also tried not to dwell on those things. Which I was only successful in doing after I stopped trying to drink those worries away. Trying to drown them. I quickly learned that worries could swim, even in bottles of Tito’s.

“You need a checkup,” Knox growled, hoisting my naked body up against him. With his head resting against my abdomen, his hands possessively slid up the backs of my thighs, kneading my backside.

“We need to get you checked out now.”

I wanted to laugh at the urgency, the anxiety in his tone, as if cancer were raging in my body right then, and it was a race against time.

“We don’t.” I ran my hands through his hair once more.

“We fucking do,” he gritted out, his head snapping up.

“I’ve had checkups,” I assured him. “Yearly. Since I went into remission. I keep track.”

Knox was watching me very carefully, as if cancer might’ve just ravaged my entire body at that moment. “Yearly isn’t enough. We’ll get some more. With the best doctor in the country.”

I wanted to smile. Don’t get me wrong, while talking about my cancer and about the possibility of it coming back, there were many times when I did not want to smile. Often, I only did so to make my sister feel less worried or because if I didn’t smile and laugh, I would’ve broken down in tears.

But with Knox, my need to smile was not a mask, nor was it a replacement for sorrow. My lips twitched out of a general feeling of warmth.

If you’d asked me if Knox could give me any kind of warmth when I’d first met him, my answer would’ve been that he could only generate heat inside me if he literally set me on fire. Which wasn’t out of the question, after he murdered me, to get rid of the body.

He ended up lighting a different kind of fire in me. My body. Last night. And sure, that was life-altering and mind-blowing. But this gentle warmth, like a mug of tea that was the perfect, cozy temperature, simmering inside of me… That was a lot more profound.

“Sure,” I told him. “Once we get out of this situation.” I waved my hand at the cabin, a sudden feeling of dread overtaking me at the thought of ever leaving it. I pushed that apprehension down, clearing my throat. “We can go see a doctor to get me checked. It doesn’t need to be the ‘best’ doctor in the country, though. Any MD can read the results of the test.”

Knox’s gaze hadn’t wavered, but I’d seen a slight twitch in his cheek when I mentioned getting away from the cabin.

I wondered if he was reassessing his entire plan. He must’ve been. The previous plan was to keep me here under threat of death for my sister then deliver me to his boss to be married once I was sufficiently broken and terrified.

I waited for him to speak about the elephant in the room, for him to make pragmatic, realistic plans. I ached for that. For him to take care of this. Give me hope that we had a future.

He didn’t do that.

“I’m a monster,” he said plainly. “I wasn’t born this way, though I know some are. Born without feelings, with a penchant for cruelty. People who dissect animals for fun when they’re kids then move on to people when they have the ability to.” His eyes bore into mine. “I was made into this. By my childhood and the way I chose to deal with it. I moved away from the sunlight where my scars were visible, hiding in the darkness where I could make more. I’ve killed people, Piper. Plenty of them. Fathers, mothers, daughters, sons.”

He moved from where he had been pressed against my torso, letting me go completely to lean back on the sofa as if to create distance from me.

“Almost all of them deserved it, but they weren’t all irredeemable.” He never broke our gaze. “Some might’ve found their way back, might’ve turned away from the lives they’d been living. What I’m trying to explain to you is that there’s no justification for who I am, for what I’ve done. I don’t want you to romanticize who I am. Because that would be a mistake. This isn’t romantic. I’m not going to change the way I work in the world. The killer that I am. But for you…”

He leaned toward me, as if he wasn’t able to help himself, his fingers barely grazing the skin of my stomach, circling my belly button. Shivers reverberated in my bones from the touch. It was delicate, but it felt like a thousand tiny needles were puncturing my skin. “You are the only person on this earth I become human for,” he murmured. “I will always be evil according to everyone else, Piper. You can’t change that. Not with your smiles, not with your laughter, your gardens, your cooking, your stories.” His fingers dipped lower, slipping into my soaking-wet pussy, making me gasp in pleasure. “Not even with your cunt.” He dragged his tongue along my bottom lip. “It’s important you know that. I’m a human for you and you only.”

It took me a second to get my bearings with his glorious intrusion into my tender insides. He rubbed carefully, teasingly, exquisitely.

With great effort, I took hold of his wrist and carefully pulled, making my intention known.

When Knox let out a low rumble in the back of his throat, eyes narrowing on me, I wondered if he wouldn’t take his finger out of me. I wouldn’t be mad at it, to be fair.

But he gave in to my delicate request, fingers leaving me empty.

“Take off your boxers,” I told him, intending my voice to be sexy and authoritative. It ended up being breathy and thin.

Knox raised his brow at my making the demands, but with an uptick of his mouth that was incredibly sexy, he obeyed, lifting his body so he could take off his boxers to reveal his magnificent, hard cock.

I smiled at him and licked my lips.

He let out a low hiss of breath as I knelt down on the rug, using my hands to push his knees apart.

My hands met resistance as he leaned forward to tilt my head upward.

“No, Petal,” he shook his head. “You will never be on your knees in front of me.”

I smiled against the feral command, not moving or so much as flinching.

“You get to worship me, I get to worship you.”

I saw the ghost of desire on his face, but it was mostly overlayed with hardness. “I do not deserve to be worshiped, Petal.”

Though the words speared my soul, I kept my sensual, playful expression in place. This was not the time to heal wounds. To convince him otherwise. It was time to show him.

I lifted my finger to place it on his chest, pushing. “I get to be the judge of that, honey.”

He flinched at the term of endearment, his body as rigid as stone. I didn’t think my chances were entirely good at winning this fight, but I wouldn’t back down.

I was shocked and delighted when, after a withering glare, he let me lightly push him back onto the sofa.

I pushed his knees apart to glimpse his impressive length.

“You know, I made myself come on this very couch.” I grabbed the base of him in a firm grip, looking up at him. “Thinking of you. Coming in and finding me. Bending me over.” I thought the admission would be embarrassing somehow, but it was liberating to share sensual secrets with Knox.

His eyes were clouded with need, his body taut. “I know,” he bit out. “I saw you.”

My grip slacked in surprise. Didn’t see that one coming. Hot embarrassment crawled up my neck.

“It was the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen,” he continued. “I watched you. From the window.”

An admission of his own. Though his voice was strong and masculine, I swore I sensed a little shame in it.

I smiled, my embarrassment gone. “Maybe next time I do it you won’t be watching from the window,” I told him, feeling bold.

His cock twitched in my hand. I was guessing he liked the sound of that.

“You better do something soon, Petal,” he ground out. “Because I’m seconds away from burying myself so deep in you, you’ll feel me in your throat.”

My insides dipped and my mouth pooled with saliva. I quickly leaned forward and took him in my mouth. Fully.

I’d had intended to go slow, teasing him, torturing him. But I no longer had the patience, the willpower for that. I felt rabid, desperate to show him how much I wanted him.

He was too large to take entirely in my mouth, but I took as much as I could, moving up and down his length, my hand following my mouth, tasting his salty precum.

It wasn’t long before his hands went to my hips, and I was up. Kneeling at the feet of a man who considered himself evil, tarnished, had been wonderful. Erotic. Especially since he was the most dangerous man I’d ever encountered. Best of all, though I was the one on my knees, he was the one submitting.

“Bend over,” he demanded, setting me on unsteady feet.

I clung to the arm of the sofa, gaze blurry from the rapid change in perspective, from the lust clouding my vision. My pussy had a heartbeat.

“Like you imagined.” His voice was so hoarse, I barely understood him.

I did as he asked, resting my forearms on the sofa, tilting myself up to him. He didn’t make a sound as he approached me from behind.

My knees trembled when he didn’t touch me right away, his penetrating gaze falling upon the part of me I was exposing to him. Presenting to him.

A single finger trailed down my spine, and I shuddered with pleasure.

It slid down my lower back to my ass, delving into the sensitive, forbidden area.

My teeth sank into my bottom lip as he teased that entrance.

“I’ll be taking every hole you have, Petal.”

My insides lurched at how coarse and crude and brilliant those words were. I’d never done … that before. I’d been with sensitive, missionary men, after all. And I had convinced myself I didn’t want to venture anywhere beyond that.

But I ached for Knox to take me there, even if it scared me just a little. Especially because he scared me a lot.

His fingers resumed their journey to where I was weeping for him, spreading my lubrication up and down.

My body was shaking, already on the edge of orgasm, nervous expectation pulsating through me. Was he going to take me there … now?

His hands bit into my hips as I forced myself to relax, his cock pressing into my entrance. Again, he teased it back-and-forth with a restraint that I hadn’t thought he possessed. I could feel his vicious need to claim me painted in the air.

His grip tightened, and I braced myself, ready for whatever intrusion he dictated.

He slammed into my pussy so hard I saw stars and almost instantly came. I would’ve, if he kept moving. But he remained still, fully seated, grasping my hips, taunting me.

He bent over, his lips at the back of my neck.

“Will you let me take your ass, Petal?” he asked in a menacing whisper.

“Yes,” I cried without hesitation.

I felt his smile as he stayed there, completely filling me, holding me on the edge of orgasm.

Then he was moving, slamming in and out, brutally, painfully, perfectly. I came apart, barely able to comprehend that he was still moving, still fucking me into a second orgasm.

His hands tightened at my hips as he let out a low roar and emptied himself into me. My body shuddered with his pleasure, enjoying every stroke he gave me.

We stayed like that for a while, me clutching the sofa for dear life, Knox still inside me, grip not slackening any.

“Was that as good as you imagined?” His deep voice punctured the thick cloud of satisfaction I was covered in.

I turned around to smile at him, sweat making my hair stick to the side of my head. He was the picture of perfection, glistening with perspiration of his own, hair mussed and his electric gaze on me.

“With you, I cannot imagine the amount of goodness you can make me feel,” I whispered, as close as I could be to admitting it.

That I loved him.

Because I was too cowardly to say it out loud. Even with everything Knox had given me, something in my soul told me he’d never say those words to me.

And though I couldn’t have imagined how the warmth of this new dynamic would make me feel, that realization kept a chill in a place the sun could never touch.

Knox

She went out for a run.

I wanted to follow her. No, first I wanted to chain her to the fucking bed and refuse to let her go out running. Not out in the woods where a rogue tree trunk could trip her and make her snap her fucking neck. The exertion of the run could give her a heart attack. She’d had cancer for fuck’s sake.

Cancer.

A foreign invader that was invisible, impossible for me to fight against, that could suck away at her life force. With absolutely nothing I could do about it.

She was suddenly so impossibly fragile, the sheer amount of things that could take her from me making my need to have her in my sight, my hands on her at all times, almost overwhelming.

If I didn’t chain her to the bed, then I’d follow her on her run.

It was what I’d intended as I watched her move around the room, tying up her hair, lacing her shoes. I was greedy to watch her, to drink up every movement her body made.

Though it was physically fucking painful for me, at the last minute, I’d refrained following her on her run. I was mindful of just how quickly I’d become infatuated with her. Obsessed. She was suddenly the reason for my inhales and exhales.

Not just dangerous anymore.

Deadly.

Giving her the run alone in the woods was a punishment for myself. A test. I could not give in to this obsession.

I’d stayed, my hands finding their way through her bag, if only to touch everything that was hers.

When I found it, I’d sat there, holding it, chain-smoking until she emerged from the trees, cheeks flushed and looking so fucking sinful I almost had to tear across the space between us to take her against a tree until bark embedded in her back.

Later, I promised myself.

She smiled when she saw me. Easy. Lighting up her whole face. An expression that paralyzed me, freed me of every coherent thought.

That smile. So vulnerable. So gorgeous.

And it was for me.

It was fucking mine .

I’d somehow found myself with a woman who smiled without fear, without disgust. For me.

Something cracked inside of me with that smile, opening up a well that I was not going to focus on.

“What is this?” I asked, holding up the small drawstring bag.

Her brows knitted together, smile disappearing. “Were you going through my things?” Her tone was saturated with annoyance. I loved it. Her ability to easily get mad at me, show me her anger without fear of retribution. No one in my previous life dared to show me that. Men who killed for a living were scared to act so much as irritated at me.

But her... My woman wearing flowers and hot-pink yoga pants threw her sass easily and without fear.

My previous life.

That’s what it was. If you could’ve called the barren wasteland of blood and corpses a life.

I’d left it behind the second I picked up Piper. I’d never be able to go back to that, not now. Not while blood and oxygen flowed through Piper.

“Yes,” I admitted to going through her things without shame. She was mine. That meant everything she owned was mine too. Not healthy nor normal. I knew that would annoy her, put her off—just how intense and unyielding my ownership would be. But I didn’t care.

She put her hands on her hips. I wanted to slam against her from behind, seat myself inside of her until she screamed. I’d done that hours ago. But I wanted it again, and to take her ass as she’d promised. My cock swelled at the thought of having her in every way I could. It was a greedy, desperate part of me that would never get my fill of her.

“That’s an invasion of privacy.” Her tone wasn’t as sharp, presumably because she’d noted the lasciviousness on my face.

I was sure my tells were small. I’d schooled any and all reactions my entire adult life. It wasn’t something I’d thought I could change, but Piper was changing me. Learning me in a way that no human, not even my brother, had been able to do.

She saw that I was imagining fucking her, and she reacted with a flush to her cheeks, a hitch to her breath, and I would bet, a wetness between her legs I itched to coat my lips with.

“I don’t want you to have privacy,” I replied, not opening the bag. “I want to know all of you. Every inch.”

When she plunged her teeth into her pouty bottom lip, I wanted her to break the skin. I wanted to taste the copper of her blood when I claimed her mouth.

“That’s a little toxic,” she replied finally.

I shrugged in response. What did I give a fuck about toxicity? Me merely breathing, touching her, fucking her was toxic to her.

“And also incredibly romantic,” she added.

“This is not a fucking romance, Petal” I scowled.

My tone was brutal, mimicking my reaction to her words, violent and angry.

She didn’t even flinch.

She fucking smiled, crossing the distance between us to smoothly take the bag from my grasp. The brushing of her fingers against mine sent shockwaves to my dick, even though I’d touched and licked and tasted every inch of her. She was different now. Had new sweat covering her body, more life. I needed that.

“I beg to differ,” she said quietly. “Hold out your hand.”

Though I stiffened at the order—no one ordered me around—I replied on instinct.

She tipped the contents of the bag out, then I stared at what lay in my palm.

Cigarette butts, a bullet, a Tarot card depicting The Devil.

I’d already looked at what was inside the bag. I’d inspected each of the butts, understood that she’d collected and kept them from what I’d smoked, the bullet. This was the bullet her sister shot me with. The one she dug from my skin.

And The Devil.

Kept with things that were mine. It boasted what she thought of me.

That I was evil.

And she wasn’t wrong.

Piper

It didn’t bother me like it should’ve when he revealed he’d gone through my things. That he didn’t think it was wrong because he considered me his. And that I had no privacy with him.

Things that should have inherently unsettled and angered me about him and warned of the dynamics of a relationship that was already doomed.

Yet like any and all other behavior that should’ve and would’ve served as a red flag with anyone else, it only served to wrap me tighter in a feeling of safety.

“The Devil is a misunderstood card,” I told him, taking the card and looking at the illustration. My gaze went upward to where Knox was watching me with an iron jaw.

“It signifies feelings of obsession,” I whispered. “Also entrapment.” My fingers trailed along the edges of the card. “In the entire deck, The Devil is one of the few cards with two people on it.” My fingers ran along the figures on the card. “I believe it means those people are energetically linked. For better or for worse. It’s up to us. And if you want to get astrological, which I’m sure you’re going to turn your nose up at, The Devil is connected to Capricorn. Which I’m betting you are.”

Knox’s face remained impassive, neither agreeing nor denying. He probably didn’t even know his sign.

I’d ask for his birthday at a later date.

“Capricorns are perfectionists. Can be cold. Can give off a … daddy energy, for lack of a better term.”

My cheeks warmed as I said that, not entirely intending on it. But I wasn’t wrong, was I? Knox was ultimate daddy energy.

Knox’s brow lifted just a hair, and I swore I saw his mouth twitch.

“I may have daddy issues,” I blurted. “A lot of them. But I don’t mean it in that sense. I mean it in the sexual sense. I’m just going to stop talking now.”

I hadn’t intended on rambling for so long about a subject that many people rolled their eyes at and dismissed. Someone so rooted in logic and control didn’t likely take stock in Tarot.

“It’s silly—"

“Nothing about you is silly.” Knox circled my hand holding the card. “Nothing you hold dear. Nothing important to you.” He looked down at the card then back at me. “It’s you, Petal. You can’t just see a Devil card. You make it more.” He paused, dragging his thumb along the thick veins in my wrist. “You make me more. And that scares the fuck out of me.”

It was as if I’d been punched in the stomach, all the air bursting from me. I knew what an admission that was for him.

Knox.

Afraid. Of me.

“You’re not going to break my heart, are you?” I asked, fear of my own clawing up my throat with barbed talons.

“I want to say no.” Knox regarded me with a calculating gaze. “But I can’t. My nature is to destroy things. Bury things. I’ll promise you that if I do break anything in you, I’ll be the one to put it back together.”

I sucked in a deep, ragged breath.

No promises.

He could hurt me. More completely than any man would or could.

But I’d risk the prospect of being broken, ruined by him, for the complicated joy of being his. Of him being mine.

Knox and I were a couple.

The ground shifted from underneath me. The air changed around me. My heart seemed to beat at a different rhythm.

Knox was a force of nature. He had the power to destroy. That much was evident right off the bat. Just glancing at him on the street, you’d get the inkling he had that power.

But he also had the ability to make things grow.

Make me grow.

His presence had always been intense, but the weight of it had become something else. Every inch of my skin felt Knox’s attention. He watched me in a different way. As if a hole in the ground might open at any moment to swallow me up.

His hands were almost always on me. Possessive to the point of pain. Not just bordering on toxic.

I knew his attention might’ve stifled and suffocated anyone else, but not me. I liked it.

We were in a bubble. Stretched to its limit. I could feel it. The tautness of every moment, balancing on a sword, wondering what would puncture it. I could feel the tick of the metaphorical clock that was counting down our time there.

A whole other world was thriving below us. One that included Stone, my sister—who I worried about constantly and who I considered myself having betrayed for being so happy.

Though happy was far too simple and pedestrian a word for what I was with Knox. It wasn’t exactly true happiness. The dynamics between us were far too gnarled and complicated and threaded with trauma to make our relationship happy.

But those dynamics were the very things that tangled into the core of me, making me understand that no matter what inevitably happened when the world rushed in, I would always be Knox’s.

Though it couldn’t be that simple below this mountain. Even without the pressing threat of Stone—which was pretty hard to think of a solution to—I was a kindergarten teacher with a normal life. Knox was a killer and a man who I knew would be unable to fundamentally operate in the normal world. What would introducing him to my friends look like? Dinners? Takeout and Netflix? Could he be satisfied with a life free of what fed the darkest sides of him?

And though I ached to heal him so that he didn’t need to feed himself pain and suffering—I hadn’t missed two new lines of scabbing over cuts that had appeared on his body—I had to admit that I didn’t fall in love with the sides of him that were normal. I fell for him because of his depravity.

It was all much too complicated, and I wasn’t brave enough to face it. Instead, I chose to drown in Knox. For however long I had him.

“What would you have done?” I’d asked the night before, tangled in bed, staring at the ceiling, my body aching from the attention of his licentiousness, which was near insatiable.

He’d been denying himself pleasure for years, so he had a lot to catch up on. Not that I was complaining.

“If you had been given the opportunity to pursue your passions, have whatever passes for a normal life?” I continued my question. He always waited patiently in the silences that I put between sentences, a quirk of mine that annoyed previous boyfriends to no end. Not Knox. He gave the impression that he’d wait in the valleys of my words for a lifetime.

“If someone hadn’t stolen that future from you,” I added through my teeth. I still breathed in venom when I thought of how Knox had been abused. Though I was an expert in knowing no amount of vehemence could change the actions of monsters, especially not dead ones.

It was maybe an unfair question, akin to someone asking me who I’d be if I hadn’t had a father who’d murdered my mother. But I wanted to know Knox beneath his layers of coldness, his bloodthirstiness. I understood there was more to him, a never-ending depth.

He ran his hand along my hip. It was colored with bruises the same size and shape of his finger pads, evidence of the way he held me, as if he wanted to imprint his touch onto my bones.

I truly hoped I wore his bruises for the rest of my life. That every day I’d wake up with a mottling of black and blue in intimate places, proof of just how hard he was holding on to me.

I, too, was learning to bathe in his silences before he answered my questions. If he did. He didn’t always respond to me. Not because he was ignoring me but because he didn’t have words. Usually he did very well by communicating with me through actions.

I thought that he might not answer this time. That I was asking him to be too vulnerable, not just with me but with himself.

“A painter.” His voice was ice cold, a sign that he was covering up his true feelings.

My heart skipped at that large victory he gave me.

“A painter?” I repeated, using considerable effort to keep my voice smooth, even.

He nodded once. I waited for more explanation beyond that, but in Knox-like fashion, he didn’t give me one.

Which was fine because I had all the information I needed.

Later, we were at the bottom of the mountain on a supply run. Together. He hadn’t so much as asked me but made it a forgone conclusion that I’d be coming. That he wouldn’t let me out of his sight. I felt the same.

The warning of The Devil card lingered in the back of my mind, about an intoxicating, addicting attraction that would be my destruction.

I had experience with that. I’d conquered addiction before—as well as anyone could. But Knox was no substance, and there was no way I could quit him.

I pushed those thoughts from my mind and made a plan instead.

“I need you to put some trust in me,” I said when Knox stopped the car.

“I trust you with my life,” he replied instantly. He was still gripping the steering wheel. “But not with yours. That’s too precious.”

My throat seized with his words, both with the value he put on my life and the intensity in which he spoke. It was almost stifling, the new obsession he had with me. Or maybe it was an obsession that had been there all along, a beast only recently let out of its cage.

And I didn’t hate it. No. I was quickly understanding that I didn’t know what I’d do without it. I was swimming in an obsession of my own.

“I’ll be right in there.” I nodded to the building. I’d directed him to the nearest big-box store in the small town that was a thirty-minute drive from the base of the mountain. Which wasn’t actually that far, considering this was America and we lived on big-box stores, franchises and fast food. Among other things, but those were the things you could rely on, even in the middle of nowhere.

“Alone.” I could practically hear his teeth gnashing together. “Not gonna happen.” His word was threaded with authority. His word was law.

“If you’ll remember, I walked around New York City alone for years before you stumbled upon me,” I teased.

“Luck. Dumb luck,” he gritted out. “You may have it. I do not.”

I smiled, unbuckling my seat belt then leaning over to grasp his face to lay a close-mouthed kiss on his lips.

This was where I lost control. Knox wasn’t one for chaste kisses. His mouth plundered mine, a brutal invasion of pleasure to the point that he’d hauled me across the car so I was straddling him, grinding against him like an animal in heat before I knew what was happening.

“You’re not going anywhere without me, Petal.”

Pulling back and grinning, I rubbed against where he was hard for me.

“Hold that thought,” I told him. Then in a rare act of stealth, somehow, I managed to open the car door and jump out of it without Knox stopping me.

I closed it behind me, finger waving to a furious Knox, knowing I had at least a small head start since he couldn’t go waltzing into the store sporting a giant, visible boner.

Time to execute my plan.

“You are in so much fucking trouble.”

I was yanked away from my perusal of acrylic paints and into a hard, furious body.

I smiled, though his tone was meant to be scary and threatening.

“Worth it,” I snickered. “And I think I’ll like your form of punishment.” My body was already melting into him, singing for him.

Knox stilled for just a moment, his grip tightening. “I’ll tie you to the fucking bed in the cabin and won’t let you come for hours,” he whispered in my ear.

My entire body tingled. “Like I said, not exactly punishment.”

Knox let out a low sound at the back of his throat. “You will ruin me.”

“I’m counting on you ruining me.”

Before he could say anything, he looked into my cart and froze. “What is this?”

“Well, you ruined the surprise, which isn’t surprising.” Fluorescent lighting was no one’s friend, but he managed to look like a dark god in the aisle of Walmart, eliciting stares from the people who passed by.

I ignored them without much effort, since he was my solar system, a whole universe in his gaze. “I want you to paint.”

I’d managed to find a canvas and an easel. I’d been surprised and delighted they had them in stock along with a scant paint selection that I was sure would do for a start.

“I’m not doing that,” Knox’s voice was glacial. He was wearing his mask, all affection gone from his eyes, his features turning sharp.

I’d expected that. Him to close down.

“Yes, you are,” I returned, pulling myself from his hold so I could face him with my hands on his hips. It felt daring and gratifying to be able to touch him like this in public. To show the world he was mine. Maybe I was a little possessive too.

“It can be my birthday present,” I whispered.

Knox blinked once. “It’s your birthday?” There it was again, the male panic he’d had the first night we had sex, with the wine.

I nodded curtly, feeling a teensy bit bad for the lie, but it was for his own good. I was using his one weakness … me. Knox was a lot of things, and he considered himself inhuman, but he cared about me. A lot. He tortured himself over it.

“I’ll buy you a fucking diamond,” he snapped. “Fancy bag.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want a diamond or a fancy bag.” Though I couldn’t help the image of a diamond on my left hand, given to me by Knox.

Such a fantasy could never come to fruition, and thinking of any kind of future, let alone one so normal, was fatal at that moment.

I focused on Knox, the present, showing him I meant business with what I hoped was a dedicated stare.

He didn’t look like he was going to budge. I had to pull out the big guns.

I jutted out my bottom lip and made my eyes go wide. “Please?” I asked in a small feminine voice.

Again, more than a little manipulative, but it was for the greater good.

Knox glared at me, gaze unyielding and frigid.

I worried that even the plea hadn’t melted him.

Then he lunged forward. “For fuck’s sake.” He snatched a handful of the paints I’d been deciding between and a fistful of brushes before hurling them in the cart.

“We’re going,” he ordered, taking hold of me and dragging me along with the cart.

I smiled all the way to the checkout, letting Knox shove all the items on the belt with his surly energy.

I hadn’t even noticed he’d stopped or that his attention wasn’t on me until he spoke.

“You look at her for a second longer, I’ll rip out your eyes and feed them to you,” Knox quietly told the man behind me.

I couldn’t be sure, but it did seem like the man had been looking in the vicinity of my ass that Knox now had his palm on possessively.

I swallowed my smile as the man paled and looked ready to pee himself.

“Let’s fucking go.” He snatched up the bags, flattening his hand on my back as we walked out.

“I like shopping with you,” I said cheerfully as he glared at two men who dared walk past me.

His eyes darted to me. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

I wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe he liked it too.