Chapter 17
Seventeen
Piper
M y toes curled into the damp grass, head tilted upward at the gentle breeze.
I hadn’t been able to sleep. There was no way I could sleep. Not with the energy thrumming through me. Even though Knox had thoroughly tired me out, my limbs heavy and my body sated.
He was sleeping, his arms tight around me like they always were. He didn’t exactly cuddle me; he encased me in the vice of his arms as if someone might try to take me in the night.
As someone previously accustomed to their own space, with strict no sleepover rules, initially, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sleep like that. Turned out I could. I slept deeper than I had in my adult life.
But not on this night.
Not with the looming pressure of the outside world, oppressive like a weight in the room, pushing at the walls, the ceiling. Not with the exquisite painting sitting in the room like a living thing, staring at me.
My body was still stained with the paint smeared from Knox’s hands, and the paints cluttered on the dining room table. Knox didn’t seem bothered when I refused to let either of us shower. He was trapped in a hungry trance for me. As if he needed to fuck himself into oblivion in order to distance himself from whatever had opened up inside him as he painted.
I hadn’t complained.
The door to the cabin opened and closed. I’d anticipated it, though he took longer than I’d thought. I’d expected him to wake the second I crept out of bed, his arms locking around me. But he’d been in a sleep so deep, I hadn’t roused him when I extracted myself from his brutal grip.
The deepness of his slumber spoke to just how exhausted he must’ve been. How special it was for him to give away completely to slumber, be that vulnerable with me. It was something beyond extraordinary when a man who defined himself by his strength let himself be ‘weak’ in front of you.
I’d wanted him to sleep. But my absence must’ve roused him.
Arms went around my waist as he pulled me to press against his torso, mouth nuzzling into the curve of my neck. His teeth brushed the skin, sending a delicious shiver down my spine.
“I don’t like waking up to you being gone.”
“I didn’t go far,” I told him, my body prickling in awareness of the threat in my midst, my skin tight with excitement.
His hold on me tightened. “Anything outside of the bed is far.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s a full moon,” I pointed out, though I didn't need to since the moon was shining in our faces, refusing to be ignored.
“I like to bathe in the moonlight,” I whispered. “Though it’s a little more difficult with the city lights battling against it. And I doubt I’ll be here for another one. So I wanted to … make the most of it.”
I trailed off as I spoke the words, cloaked in anxiety, stifled by it. It was highly unlikely we’d be there much longer, I didn’t think Stone would allow it. The moon pressed against me, a firm reminder of action required. Change required. The power of it all shifting me.
Knox didn’t speak for a long time. I yearned for words of reassurance. For promises. Plans. Anything to give me hope for a way out.
He didn’t give me any of those.
“I’ve always wanted to fuck you in the garden under the moonlight,” he said against my neck.
My skin erupted in exquisite chills, and my body buzzed with need at the words.
“Why are we still standing here, then?”
The words were barely out of my mouth before Knox lifted me, spinning me. My legs wrapped around him as he carried me with considerable strength to the garden.
Our mouths fused together, the kiss carnal, animalistic. He didn’t waste time, quickly lowering me onto the dirt, prying the blanket away from my naked body so my skin pressed into the soil, the earth, the plants. Soil I’d turned over, life I’d created crushed beneath me, surrounding me, us.
Knox knelt above me, cut against the moonlight in a brutal glow, like some kind of dark god.
His eyes roamed over me hungrily, his erect cock twitching with need.
My own body overcome with desire, I opened my legs to him, willingly inviting his gaze to where I knew I’d be glistening for him.
It felt lewd to be naked out there like that, lying in the dirt. Forbidden yet natural all at once.
Knox looked at me a moment longer before his body covered mine, hooking one of my legs around his hip before he entered me inside.
I clawed at his back and cried out as his brutal strokes didn’t slow, as the ground, rough and soft and gritty, pressed into my back.
I thought that he’d already marked me, claimed me as his. But that was it. That act in the dirt, underneath the moon, that was Knox claiming me down to my soul.
In view of the Appalachian wilderness, under the glow of an ageless moon, that was it. The world witnessed to us, no going back. Only forward. Only through.
Whatever darkness might come.
Later, once we were sticky, sated and covered in dirt, Knox carried me inside and right to the shower where the hot water cascaded over us. There he took me again, coaxing more orgasms out of my spent body to the point that every ounce of pleasure and energy was drained out of me.
My legs couldn’t hold me. Not that they needed to. Knox carried me from the shower back to the bed where he dried me then proceeded to brush my hair. Soft, careful, rhythmic strokes. I drifted off just like that, enjoying such an unexpected showing of caretaking, of love.
It was the best night of my life. I felt loved, worshipped, owned and devoured. Knox took every part of me, and I would’ve given him more if he’d asked.
It felt pivotal. It felt permanent, something between us. Not that it hadn’t been from the start. But there was no denying it after that. My world could not have kept spinning without Knox. I couldn’t have breathed without him.
Again, toxic. Completely untenable. Something I should’ve guarded myself from. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to be loved the way he loved me. Too much. Enough that he would’ve burned the world down for me.
After last night, I was sure that was the way he loved me.
Until I woke up in the cabin.
Alone.
The SUV was gone.
Knox was gone.
Knox
It was a long way to Maine. Around sixteen hours of driving. Each way. Too long to leave Piper for. But I had no other choice. Not only did I have to get out of that cabin, but I had to talk to my brother. I reasoned that the drive would also serve to give me distance, help clear my head of whatever fucking enchantment had been put over me.
Away from her smell, her smile, her soft body and the little mews of pleasure she made as my lips explored her body. Yes, that would turn me right. Or turn me wrong. Back into the cold, unfeeling, familiar creature I had been quite comfortable being.
That was the only way to ensure my survival. Both of our survival.
That’s what I told myself the entire drive to Jupiter, Maine, where my brother lived.
I’d visited three times. Once to deposit the battered body of my brother’s piece of shit agent for his punishment, another time to meet Mabel, my niece, and the final time to plant a bullet in the brain of the piece of shit agent who almost killed my six-month-old niece and sister-in-law.
Neither Avery, my sister-in-law, nor my niece seemed scared of me, even when I murdered a man in front of them. Avery was nothing but thankful, welcoming. Mabel, well... Mabel was perfect. The embodiment of it. A small person I would do literally anything to protect. That included keeping my distance from her. Which she didn’t seem to understand, since her chubby fingers reached for me whenever they could.
A long time had passed since my last visit. Mabel would look completely different. I ached to see her, watch the changes, see how she’d grown. But I knew the best thing I could do for that child was to be nothing but a shadow whenever possible.
I watched them from a distance for hours. They had their lights on, no curtains. I shook my head at that. My brother was famous, his relationship with Avery Hart had made headlines, was a fucking sensation in the past. Paparazzi had once stalked along this beach in order to get one photo of Kane, Avery and most importantly, Mabel.
My fists clenched at the thought. I couldn’t protect them from that. I couldn’t kill every asshole with a camera. Couldn’t dispose of a body without it never tracing back to me like I had with the piece of shit who’d tried to steal Mabel.
But I hadn’t needed to. Their town, Jupiter, had closed ranks. They’d accepted Kane and Avery as their own and protected them from the media. There were still stories, ongoing interest, but no one dared to breach the limits of their beach.
Kane had a family there, friends. Good ones. I’d done the background checks on them myself to ensure they weren’t threats.
Rowan Derrick and Kip Godman were threats if they chose to be. Former SEAs. They were honorably discharged, despite some of the Black Ops shit they’d been a part of. They weren’t squeaky-clean heroes by any means, which was why I liked them. Because anyone who looked squeaky-clean, like a hero, was likely the worst villain underneath it all.
I shouldn’t have even been there, on that beach, watching my brother kiss his wife as she cooked dinner, holding their daughter. Shouldn’t have been intruding on the life he deserved, polluting it with my toxic presence, poisonous problems. It had been my job since before I could remember to protect him from everything, including myself. I’d never resented it, not once.
It seemed like he might not have needed me to protect him any longer, and the loss of that role felt unsettling, even if it was a good thing.
Though it wasn’t actually the loss of that role that unsettled me. It was the fact that I had come to him for help. Fuck, did I hate myself for it. I’d spent the entire evening on the beach for a reason, full of shame, unable to move toward the house. But I couldn’t leave either, not without some sort of guide for how to survive this.
How anyone survived this.
I couldn’t believe that people who declared themselves ‘in love’ felt the way I was feeling. How they said things like that then went about their lives as normal, as if they weren’t crippled by the sheer weight of the emotion inside them. As if they weren’t half mad with their need for her and the need to have eyes on her, hands on her at all times to ensure nothing happened to her.
What I was doing went against every single cell in my body. To be so far from her. Leaving her so vulnerable. But surely, there was no way walking around like I was could’ve been sustainable.
The reason I came there—beyond the fact that I had no one else to go to—was I’d seen it in my brother’s eyes when I’d delivered Brax to him—the fuck who had almost destroyed them, almost robbed him of his pregnant woman and then tried to kidnap his daughter.
But on that day, I’d seen it in my brother’s eyes. A darkness that hadn’t been there before. A resolution that he’d slay any and all dragons for Avery. I saw the way he looked at her, even before their daughter was born. It was a look that said his heart beat for her. His previously aimless, wild existence had become nothing to him. There was something so fierce in my brother’s eyes, I couldn’t look at them. Something that stretched the chasm between us even further. He presented to me what I’d never be capable of, and I was glad for it because there was nothing in the dedication in my brother’s eyes that was appealing to me.
To be so chained by a feeling, by another person, breakable and mortal and temporary, was beyond comprehension to me.
Until Piper.
And there I was, sitting in the sand, unravelling as nighttime cloaked the world.
There was no way I could talk to Kane at that point. That would require waiting until the sun rose. More time away from Piper. I was already at my limit, my skin prickling with unease caused by the distance between us.
Luck, for once, was on my side as I watched the door to the house open and my brother walked through it, coming to sit on the back porch.
It took a second for me to work up the nerve to make my presence known. This would forever change the dynamic between us. I’d kept as far away from Kane as I could throughout my life. So I didn’t tarnish him with my presence. Didn’t let him into my world. Nothing existed there but death.
But now there was life.
Now there was Piper, bursting from the seams, driving me fucking crazy.
Making me paint.
The thing I’d done early on, after my first kill, thinking I was done killing once my abuser was worm food. Thinking I could be done. Thinking I could do something more than kill. Be more than a killer.
And it had been proven quickly that I couldn’t. That I wasn’t normal. I was wrong. Killing was my only option.
I’d pushed away any worldly needs or wants and focused on nothing more than that.
There was no way back to my old life, only forward, so I pushed my way through the sand, up to where my brother sat.
The evidence that the demons of his past hadn’t left him showed as he heard my approach. The previously content, relaxed look on his face disappeared, replaced by a cold fury, a readiness to defend and kill that was stony and unfamiliar on my brother’s face as he stood, squinting into the shadows that still cloaked me.
He had softened with his wife and daughter, but toward anyone who would cause them harm, he’d become as hard and as brutal as me.
His sense of threat was honed, every limb in his body taut and ready to attack as he recognized a predator was near.
“Easy,” I told him as the soft light from the kitchen illuminated my form enough for him to recognize me.
The tension didn’t leave my brother’s face completely, his brows furrowing in irritation.
“You gotta stop doin’ that shit,” he growled, hands still fisted.
It wasn’t kind, me creeping out of the darkness, given the experiences he’d had with people threatening his family, but I wasn’t kind, was I?
“What am I gonna do?” I asked him, keeping my gait slow as I approached him. “Ring the doorbell at two in the morning?”
Irritation quickly left my brother’s face. Ugly emotions melted off him as easily as they always had. He shook his head, sitting in the wicker chair he’d burst up from.
I sat in the one beside him, glancing back into the house where I could see little but the large kitchen, a fridge tacked with photos, memories.
“Baby and Avery sleeping?” It might’ve been considered a stupid question at two in the morning, but I knew my brother and his wife still struggled with sleep.
He nodded, rubbing his jaw, looking tired.
“She doing better?” He knew who I was talking about. Avery had witnessed a man killed in front of her, after believing he was going to kill her and kidnap her baby. Not things easily recovered from.
Kane’s face instantly softened with reverence. “She’s doin’ fuckin’ great.” Pride and love burst from his tone.
That pleased me. I cared for Avery. As much as I had the ability to. I’d be forever in her debt for what she gave my brother, a life, a purpose, a child. A way out from our wretched fucking past.
.“Good.” I looked out toward where the ocean was enveloped by the night, listening to the gentle rumble of the waves, wondering if I’d ever have what my brother had. A home. With Piper.
So simple. Yet so out of reach. Even sitting there, my skin crawled with the need to escape, to slink back into the shadows where I was more comfortable. Where I belonged. Alone.
“How do you do it?” I choked the words out as if they were covered in blood and shards of bone. Which they were. I’d wrenched them out of my chest cavity.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my brother’s head turn toward me. I kept looking out at the blackness.
“Do what?” he asked, what I assumed was a forced casualness in his tone. He knew me, which meant he clocked the difference in my words, the cadence in which I spoke them.
My hands itched for a knife to tear through my skin. I let words do it instead. “Love someone.” The words themselves attacked me with pointed barbs, hurting me in the way I deserved for daring to love someone as perfect as Piper, sentencing her to a lifetime with me.
I could fucking taste my brother’s shock. He’d known the road I walked. None of the specifics, but he was smart enough to understand what I did. He was smart enough to recognize the cold creature I was. Endlessly, he’d tried to reach out, foster more of a relationship with me, yet I’d rebuked him every time.
Beyond the shock, I could feel the fucker’s elation. This was what he’d wanted for me, especially since he got married and had Mabel. Wanted to believe it was possible for me too.
He clapped me on the shoulder, and I was surprised I didn’t shatter into irreparable pieces. “It’s not something you do, brother.” There was warmth, and yes, fucking joy in his tone. “It’s something you … surrender to.” He paused, and even though I wasn’t looking at him, I was certain the prick was smiling. As if this were something to smile about. “Know you’re not exactly practiced in surrender.’
A bark of laughter escaped me. Nothing like his. Mine was cold and ugly and resentful. “No, I’m not,” I agreed, mulling over what he said.
Surrender.
Surrender to Piper. The life she promised. The redemption. At the cost of her soul.
“But I can’t,” I added. “I won’t ruin her life.”
It was clear then, crystal fucking clear. The clarity I needed.
I stood, running my hands through my hair, wanting to snatch it out at the root. Wanting to peel my feelings for Piper from my insides. But I couldn’t, they were already connected to all of my organs. Everything that kept my heart beating.
“This was a mistake,” I said, not looking at Kane, knowing that I’d given him something dangerous.
Hope.
“All of it.”
Without waiting for him to respond, without giving him another moment to believe that I was anything more than a subhuman, I walked back onto the beach.
I’d go back to Piper. I’d get rid of Stone. And then I’d leave her life forever. Give her a chance at a happiness that she’d never get with me.