Chapter 9
nine
Knox
I grind my planted fists into the table when I hear the soft knock on my door.
It’s her. It’s Billie.
Here to give me my daily fuck.
That’s what this arrangement was supposed to be. That’s what it was.
Until she started dismantling me, brick by brick.
I’ve never had anyone introduce me to their parents before. I’ve never been a man that anyone claimed in the light of day. Why does this girl insist on looking at me like she believes in me? Why does she insist on demanding better of me? Who the fuck does she think I am?
Wasn’t she paying attention when I killed that man?
Wasn’t she listening when I agreed to bang her for the mortgage?
Did she not hear me when I told her I’d gone to prison? Broken a man’s neck?
My soul is pitch black. There is nothing redeemable about me.
I’m going to have to remind her. I’m going to have to show her, once and for all.
I shove off the table and stride to the door, throwing it open to reveal Billie…
In a dress.
She’s in a white dress with little blue flowers.
It fits her like a dream, molding her breasts in the neckline, the hem fluttering high against her thighs.
Her legs are bare all the way to her cowboy boots—and she’s worn her hair down.
It’s long and wavy. Lips pink with some kind of gloss.
God help me, no artist would have a hope in hell of painting this kind of beauty accurately.
The swell of hope in her eyes. Her naivete.
She is innocence personified.
What if I just carried her inside and made love to her? Made promises in her ear?
What if she believed them and I…lived up to whatever ridiculous expectation she has of me? What if?
You can’t think like that.
You were born to be alone.
You’re safe from pain and betrayal alone.
Don’t buy into the fantasy.
“I’m not coming to your little birthday party, Billie, just so we’re clear,” I say.
Her chest dips low and lifts just as quickly. “Yes, you will.”
Goddamn the nerve of this girl. I admire it, I’m drawn to it, but it’s the opposite of what I need right now to stay resolved. “No, I’m not.”
She blinks. “You can decide closer to the date.”
“I’m deciding now.” I snag her wrist and draw her into the house, slamming the door shut behind her, loathing myself for making her flinch. “And I don’t give a rat’s ass about being neighborly to your parents. What exactly is it about me that made you think otherwise?”
She looks up at me, searching my expression. “What m-made me think otherwise?”
I give her an impatient look. “That’s what I asked you.”
“But I don’t want to answer.”
“Too bad.”
A flicker of temper goes off in her blue eyes, but she douses it. Now, she just looks vulnerable. Nervous. Why? “Well…” She rolls her lips inward to wet them. “I thought maybe…you’d come meet my parents because you…”
“Because I what?”
“…because you like me,” she whispers, looking me in the eye. Bravely.
A fine time for my heart to pound of out of my fucking chest. Am I having some kind of panic attack?
The room is spinning and the only thing keeping me grounded is denial.
No. No, no, no. I can’t let this happen.
I am not falling for this girl. Everyone I’ve ever loved has taken a pound of my flesh and I won’t let her do it, too.
“Because I like you?” I snarl.
“Uh-huh.” She ducks her head, briefly. “I like you.”
I’m dizzy. There’s a wedge in my throat with the sharpest of edges.
There’s a side of me that longs to kneel in front of Billie, wrap my arms around her and never let go, but that would be it.
I’d spend my life waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Can’t do it. I swore to myself that I would never trust another soul as long as I lived.
Letting myself be with this girl would take all my trust.
“You like me?” I scoff. “What is this, second grade?”
I hate how that embarrasses her, those cheeks smarting with pink. On account of my biting words. I am a snake. “Don’t be mean to me because you’re scared.”
Bullseye. “You’re here to get on your back and let me fuck you. That’s it.”
“Well, I think you’re a liar. You put up with me when I yell and throw boots. You ate my pie. You kiss me with your eyes closed all tight. I think you’re lying to yourself and me if you think there’s nothing between us but a deal.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” I rasp, wrapping an arm around her waist, snatching her off the ground and carrying her across the room. “Get your panties off and go bend over my kitchen table.”
She struggles in my hold. “No.”
“Do it now or the deal’s off,” I push through clenched teeth.
“You don’t want to do this,” she says, continuing to fight in my arms. “You don’t want to treat me like this.”
“My stiff cock begs to differ.” I’ve only just settled Billie on her feet when I push her face down onto the table, flipping the hem of her skirt up to expose her tight ass.
Goddamn. Son of a bitch, she’s sexy. She’s in a pair of white boy shorts that are so snug, they cut into her juicy ass cheeks and it’s everything I can do not to erupt, then and there.
Not only because the dress and panties are a turn-on, but because she isn’t fighting now.
In fact, there’s moisture seeping onto that swathe of material shielding her cunt.
Her ribcage heaves in and out, her panting lips parted against the surface of the table.
She’s horny for it.
And thank God.
Thank God, because if she’d fought me any more, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up this punishment for…believing in me. That’s what I’m doing, isn’t it? Punishing her for thinking I’m anything but an irredeemable asshole? Yes.
I’m doing what needs to be done.
Pushing her away. But…keeping her connected to me, at the same time.
Like the snake that I am.
“How much to breed you?” I bark.
She stops breathing. “What?”
“You heard me. How many months of mortgage on the ranch will I need to forgive to breed you, little girl?” I pull her underpants down to mid-thigh, taking a handful of her right cheek and kneading it like she’s my property.
“I don’t want to be your fucking boyfriend, but I’ll need a son to take over my land one day, won’t I?
” I haul back and spank her, her resulting gasp echoing around the room.
“I’ll ask again. How much to breed you?”
For several seconds, there’s nothing but her wheezing breaths.
Then, “The land. Free and clear.” Her fingers curl on the table. “We’d own it.”
Smart girl.
She’s so brave and smart.
Even in the middle of whatever heaven/hell is happening here, she’s thinking on her feet, refusing to be intimidated by me. Lord, I’m in love with her. There. I have admitted it. I am beyond loving her, even. This is tantamount to obsession.
“Done,” I say, lowering my zipper. “You’ve seen this done on the ranch, haven’t you?
” I guide my cock to her sweet, slippery entrance and thrust myself in deep without preamble, all the way up to my balls, gritting out a vile curse while she screams, her fingernails raking the table.
The tight silk of her arrests every muscle in my body, the beautiful profile of her face ripping at my heart.
“Just a quick, crude fuck to breed a female. Nothing more.”
I gather her wrists at the small of her back, manacling them, and I pound into her dripping little hole, my head falling back on a silent, strangled moan.
After a full minute of slick rides through her snug passage, I am choking with the need for skin-to-skin contact with her.
I am sick without it. I can’t continue robbing such immense pleasure from her body without loving and praising her in some way. It’s as if my soul won’t allow it.
I take her pinned wrists and move them on the table, holding them down on either side of her head.
Leaning over her fully, my hips never cease their rut, but my heart sighs over the feel of her back to my chest, her taut ass cheeks tucked into my abdomen.
And I can hear her breathing now, from this closer position.
I can hear her halting mewls of enjoyment.
“I bet you thought that dress was pretty when you bought it.” I pummel her little cunt against the hard edge of the table, rocking the legs of the furniture on the floorboards. “All it did was make you look young and ripe for breeding.”
I’m studying her profile, watching her bite her bottom lip until it bleeds.
But I know she’s not in pain, because the squelching sounds are proof that she’s aroused, as is the eager tilt of her hips, the separation of her thighs. They’re her wordless ways of asking for my dick to go deep.
“Go on,” I rasp, raking my mouth up and down her ear. “Tell me you don’t want to carry Daddy’s baby.”
She refuses to speak, so I get rougher, entering her with increased force.
“I want Daddy’s baby!” she screams.
There it is. That’s why her lip is bleeding. She was biting back that confession.
Her voice is ringing with truth. She wants this. She wants to get pregnant by me.
She wants this aggression. The way she’s creaming on my cock tells the tale.
“Let me ask you a question, little girl.” I release he right wrist from where I have it pinned on the table. I wrap it around her delicate throat, instead. “Do you love fucking in spite of the fact that your pussy pays the mortgage or because of it?”
A moan bursts out of her.
Her back begins to heave underneath me.
The heaven between her thighs cinches up around me in a rhythm.
Her feet start to shuffle around on the floor.
“D-Daddy. Daddy?” she hiccups. “It’s happening again!”
Oh fuck. She’s coming.
She’s coming hard, too, her cunt grinding around me with a pressure that makes me temporarily blind.
“Mother of God,” I belt out, walloping her now.
Thrusting for broke. Entering her with so much aggression, her feet lift and lower to the floor with every stroke.
“You make me a son with this load, little girl. Do you understand me?”
She tightens another millimeter. Screams. “Yes!”
And then I’m flattening her to the table to surface to keep her from flailing, her throes are so intense.
Wetness rushes around my cock, squishing and dripping from her occupied hole, splashing onto me, and hell, the physical proof of her ecstasy makes me pop, my whole body convulsing and shaking as I spray down the walls of her womb with my sperm, rolling and grinding my hips to make sure every droplet finds the deepest regions of this angel.
My angel. By the time we’ve both spent ourselves, I’m hoarse from shouting and every muscle in my body is strained, sore.
I remain on top of her while we catch our breath, sweat drying on our bodies.
I turn my face into her fragrant neck, my lips begging to rub in her texture, but…
Do I deserve that?
Do I deserve to kiss and cuddle Billie after the way I’ve treated her tonight?
She might have found pleasure, but I reduced her to an object. A payment. And I get the sense that her body, and her attraction to me, betrayed her.
I swallow hard, not knowing what to do.
Do nothing, that’s what.
You wanted to put the girl in her place? You’ve done it.
Mission accomplished. Right?
When she starts to tense beneath me and a single teardrop roams down her cheek, the whole fucking world starts to crumble around me. In one unexpected motion, Billie jerks her body out from beneath mine, turns, and slaps me hard across the face.
I stand frozen, absorbing the blow of her hand.
The blow of seeing heartbreak in her eyes.
Oh God, what have I done here?
“Billie, I’m sorry.” The apology leaves my throat like broken glass.
“I never want to speak to you again,” she says in a halting whisper. Dizzy with denial, I reach for her, but the very possibility of being touched by me seems to horrify her and she flinches away. “Don’t ever put your hands on me again, either.”
“I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to…”
“Supposed to what?” she sobs, pissed and devastated at the same time.
Seeing her like this is like having my throat slashed.
Who could hurt this incredible girl so badly?
Am I really such a fucking monster? Could a monster feel so broken in the face of what he’d done? The destruction he’d caused?
I’m not coming to your little birthday party, Billie, just so we’re clear
You like me? What is this, second grade?
How much to breed you?
Echoes of the horrible shit I said to her stab my ears like daggers.
“You weren’t supposed to get to me. That’s not what this was supposed to be.”
“No shit,” she whispers. “But that’s what it was.”
Panic grabs me around the throat. “Not was. Is.”
“Was!” she shouts, voice cracking, stomping away from me, her shoulders shaking with sorrow. “I hate you. I hate you.”
I’m stumbling after her, breaking in half. “No, you don’t. Please don’t.” But she’s already out the door and running for her horse on unsteady legs. “Come back here.”
“I’ll never come back here,” she says, mounting her horse and wheeling around, preparing to ride away from me. For good. “I was wrong about you,” she whispers, her damp eyes looking down at me.
I go numb.
She was wrong about me.
She saw something that wasn’t there. I could never have been good enough for her.
As Billie rides away in a cloud of dust, she drags my black heart out of my chest, still beating, but damaged beyond recognition. She was willing to heal it for me and I just lost my chance to find out if she could.
Of course she could.
It belongs to her.
Do I have a chance in hell of convincing her to take it back?
To…try to see the good in me again?
I don’t know. But I have to try.
Because now that I’ve been graced by her light and honesty and goodness, I can’t live without her. Billie, come back.