Chapter 42
Knox
Jacob slowed the SUV as they turned onto the private road leading to the house, headlights cutting toward the iron gate. There was a car parked directly outside it. Black. Engine off.
And a man leaning against it.
For one suspended moment, Knox only stared, not understanding what he was seeing. The image refused to make sense—too impossible, the kind of thing you conjured after midnight when missing someone became unbearable and your brain offered hallucinations as mercy.
Jacob stopped the car. “Who the hell is that?”
Knox was leaning forward between the front seats, his eyes locked on the figure beyond the windshield. “It’s Dominic,” he whispered.
His voice didn’t sound like his.
Liam twisted around. “That’s him?”
Knox couldn’t answer. His pulse slammed so hard it made his head spin. He was caught on the shape of Dominic in the dark, the familiar breadth of his shoulders, the way he stood as though the night itself had bent around him.
Waiting.
He’d been waiting for him.
The realization hit with such force Knox’s throat burned. He was out of the car before he knew he’d moved, gravel crunching under his shoes.
“Knox—” Jacob started.
He looked back just long enough to say, “I’m fine. Go to the house.”
It was a lie. His heart was hammering so hard his hands felt numb.
Jacob must have read something in his face, because after a long, searching look, he drove through the opening gate and the SUV disappeared up the drive.
Then Knox was alone.
Alone with the man he’d run from.
Four weeks he’d imagined this moment in a hundred different ways. None of them had prepared him for what it actually felt like to stand in front of him again. Every instinct told him to move closer; every fear begged him to run.
Twenty feet separated them, and he was afraid to take a single step. Afraid distance hadn’t lessened this thing but driven it deeper. Afraid one touch would unravel him so completely there’d be nothing left.
The quiet stretched until he could hear the blood moving in his ears. He swallowed and forced out words. “What are you doing here?”
Dominic pushed off the car and came toward him. Each step altered something in Knox’s body. His lungs forgot rhythm. His pulse stumbled. It was humiliating—how quickly his body yielded to the mere act of Dominic approaching.
“I came for you,” Dominic said.
“Why?” The word came out trembling and he hated it.
Dominic stopped close enough for Knox to see what distance had hidden. There were shadows beneath his eyes, fatigue at the corners of his mouth, a roughness Knox had never seen before. He looked… worn.
Words slipped out before he could stop them. “You let me go.” The hurt in his voice made shame follow instantly, the old insecurities rising ugly and fast.
“You foolish, wounded boy,” Dominic murmured. The tenderness in it was somehow more terrifying than anger would have been. “You really believe that?”
Knox’s pulse spiked. “What else am I supposed to believe?”
Dominic barked out a laugh. “You think because I didn’t drag you back immediately, I released you?”
Knox frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Dominic said, each word deliberate, “that I know the route you walk every morning. The bench you sit on by the cliffs. The market where you wander when you can’t sleep. The old man you spoke to outside the bakery.”
Knox stared, unable to breathe. “You had me followed?”
“I protect what belongs to me.”
“You’re insane.”
Dominic looked utterly unbothered. “I know.”
Knox shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
Dominic stepped closer. “Yes, you do.” And then the darkness in him showed its teeth.
“If you run again, I will follow. If you hide, I will find you. And if you try to convince yourself you belong anywhere beyond my reach, I will ruin that illusion too.”
Knox should have been horrified.
Maybe he was.
But standing in the dark, held in a pull that was monstrous and intimate at once, he understood that the most dangerous thing wasn’t Dominic’s possessiveness. It was how every hidden, starving part of him responded to it. “What do you want from me?” he whispered.
“Everything.”
Knox gasped as the word settled between them.
“I want your fear,” Dominic continued. “Your hunger. Your devotion. Your surrender. Every part of you that still believes it can remain separate from me.”
Knox’s knees felt weak. “That doesn’t sound healthy.”
A dangerous smile touched Dominic’s mouth. “I don’t care.”
Dominic shifted and the gate light slid across his throat.
Knox froze.
There, beneath Dominic’s ear—a dark mark. Without thinking, Knox lifted a trembling hand and touched it.
Ink.
A clover.
In the exact place the brand had been burned into Knox’s own flesh. His breath caught. “Why would you…”
Dominic didn’t move under his touch. “He hurt you because of me. I won’t let you carry that mark alone.” His voice sounded almost reverent.
Knox touched the clover on his own neck, then the tattoo on Dominic’s. “We match.”
Dominic’s gaze held his. “Yes.”
“That’s kind of fucked up.”
“Obviously.”
Knox surged forward and caught Dominic’s mouth with his own. God, yes—
The kiss wasn’t tentative or careful. It was weeks of hunger compressed into one reckless act.
His hands fisted in Dominic’s jacket, dragging him in, pressing closer as if he could crawl inside his body if he tried hard enough.
The kiss was bruising, desperate, almost violent in its urgency.
He poured every sleepless night and every ounce of grief into Dominic’s mouth.
Dominic took over. A rough sound tore from his throat as his hand moved to Knox’s hair, gripping hard enough to sting. The kiss changed instantly—deeper, darker, no longer Knox’s to control.
Dominic devoured him. There was punishment in the way he kissed. He spun Knox and drove him backward until his spine struck the iron gate. With cold bars at his back and Dominic’s heat in front of him, there was nowhere to go.
He didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Dominic’s mouth left his to drag down his jaw, teeth grazing the pulse hammering in his throat. “Do you have any idea,” he said against Knox’s skin, “what you did to me?”
Knox could barely breathe. His hands were everywhere—clutching Dominic’s shoulders, dragging over his chest. Desperate. Greedy. Shameless in a way he’d stopped trying to fight. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Dominic pulled back, eyes gone black and dangerous. “Sorry?” His hand slid to Knox’s throat. “I spent four weeks letting you pretend to have your precious space. Do you know how much restraint that took?” The hand tightened a fraction. “Every single day I wanted to come here and drag you home.”
Knox’s lips parted. “Then why didn’t you?”
Dominic’s mouth lowered to Knox’s ear. “Because I wanted you to come back to me starving.”
Knox nearly came undone from the words alone. His body betrayed him completely, arching forward, asking for more in every way a body could ask without language.
“You missed this,” Dominic whispered.
Knox nodded. “Yes.”
Dominic’s hand moved from Knox’s throat to his jaw, thumb brushing his lower lip. “Did LA cure you of me?”
For the first time since running, Knox didn’t try to protect himself. “No.”
Dominic kissed him again, fingers digging into Knox’s hips, yanking him closer, while Knox clawed at his back, desperate to feel skin. “Dom—” It came out broken, more like begging.
Dominic growled against his mouth and hauled him tighter, one hand gripping the back of Knox’s thigh, lifting it against his hip. The shift pressed cocks together in a way that punched a moan out of Knox so loud it echoed in the night.
Knox couldn’t be quiet. Didn’t know how anymore. He was shaking, actually shaking. “Please.” He didn’t even know what he was asking for. Just more. More contact. More pressure. More of that thing that had been missing for weeks and was flooding back so fast it was drowning him.
Knox’s hands fumbled blindly with Dominic’s belt. “Need to touch you,” he gasped. “Need—please—”
Dominic hissed as Knox’s fingers wrapped around him. Hot. Thick. Already slick at the tip. Knox stroked him from base to head, thumb circling, feeling him throb.
Then he dropped.
His knees hit the gravel. The bite of it through his jeans didn’t register.
He looked up through his lashes, lips parting as he took that heavy cock into his mouth.
Dominic groaned, fingers tangling in Knox’s hair, guiding him deeper.
Knox sucked greedily, cheeks hollowing, tongue dragging along the underside.
A moan escaped around the length that vibrated through them both.
“That’s it, baby,” Dominic rasped, hips rocking forward. “Suck like you’ve missed it. Like you’re fucking starved for it.”
He was. God, he was. He bobbed faster, one hand working what his mouth couldn’t take, the other cupping his balls. Saliva dripped down the shaft, the obscene slurps filling the night air.
“Fuck. Knox—” Dominic hauled him up before it could end.
He dragged him to his feet by his arms and crushed their mouths together.
His hands worked at Knox’s waistband, shoving his pants down to mid-thigh, freeing his aching cock.
His fist closed around it. Knox bucked and whined into the kiss, pleasure spiking through him. “Nnh—Dom, I—”
Dominic broke away to rasp against his swollen lips. “Fuck. Want to bury myself in that tight ass, stretch you open until you’re screaming my name.” His grip tightened, stroking harder. “But not here. Home.”
Knox shuddered so violently his teeth chattered.
Dominic spat into his palm, reached down, and gripped both cocks together.
Oh god.
The friction was savage, slicked with spit and pre-cum, their cocks sliding together in Dominic’s fist. Knox clawed at his shoulders, their foreheads pressed together, panting into each other’s mouths. “Dom. I can’t—I’m going to—” His body tightened everywhere at once.
“Come for me, baby,” Dominic said, biting his neck hard enough to mark. “Show me you’re mine.”
Knox broke, a cry ripping out of him that he muffled against Dominic’s mouth. He was shaking so hard he would’ve collapsed if Dominic hadn’t been holding him against the gate.
Dominic followed a thrust later, holding Knox close as aftershocks rippled through them.
Neither of them moved for a long time, the night air cooling the sweat on Knox’s skin.
Then Knox lifted a trembling hand, pulling their foreheads together. “Take me home.”
Dominic’s eyes darkened, like the devil himself had just been invited in.
* * *
Knox stood in the middle of the living room with Dominic at his side, acutely aware of how surreal this must look.
A couple of hours ago he had been sitting in a bar trying not to admit he’d made a mistake.
Now he had brought the man he’d run from into his brother’s home, looking freshly kissed and visibly disheveled.
Liam recovered first. He was trying not to look pleased. Trying, and failing spectacularly. “Well,” he said. “This is… unexpected.”
Knox nearly laughed.
Jacob hadn’t taken his eyes off Dominic once.
His expression had gone guarded in a way Knox recognized.
Protective. Suspicious. The look of a man evaluating a threat.
Which, considering Knox had arrived in LA crushed and emotionally unraveling over the man now standing in his living room, was entirely fair.
And Dominic—god—Dominic looked exactly like the kind of man a protective brother would distrust on sight. Knox was suddenly very aware that introducing your possessive, morally flexible lover to your newly found brother was not a situation anyone prepared for.
Jacob spoke for the first time since the introductions. “So, you want to go back with him?”
“Yeah.”
Jacob’s arms folded, his gaze fixed on Dominic. “From where I’m standing, my brother ran from you. So forgive me if I’m not eager to watch him disappear back to Stockton with a man who looks like he could break someone’s neck without raising his pulse.”
Dominic looked almost amused. “A fair concern.”
Jacob frowned, perhaps thrown by the easy agreement.
“For what it’s worth,” Dominic said. “I’d kill for him before I’d let anyone harm him.”
Silence settled over the room. Even Liam’s smile faded. Nobody mistook that statement for metaphor.
Jacob dragged a hand over his mouth. “Well,” he muttered. “That is somehow not reassuring.”
Liam laughed, and Knox, despite himself, laughed with him.
Jacob wasn’t done. He looked at Knox again, long and serious. “Are you sure about this?”
Knox opened his mouth to answer, but Jacob kept going. “I’m asking because you came here broken. You paced our house like you were trying to outrun yourself. I need to know you’re going back because you want to. Not because he’s making you.”
Knox’s chest cracked wide open. He looked at his brother, unable to speak around the thickness in his throat. Nobody in his family had ever stood up for him before. Not once. Nobody had cared enough to protect him.
His voice was rough when it finally came. “I’m going because leaving him was the mistake.”
Jacob nodded before stepping toward Dominic and holding out his hand. The handshake was brief but carried more weight than words could have managed. “Come back to visit,” Jacob said. “I just found him. I’m not losing him again.”
Dominic took that in with unusual seriousness. Whatever faint amusement had been in his expression was gone. “You won’t,” he said.
Knox looked away.
He had to, because emotion pressed too violently behind his ribs.
A brother.
He still wasn’t used to the word. Still didn’t fully trust it. But Jacob had just put himself between Knox and the possibility of being hurt, and then—once he was sure—had stepped aside and let Knox choose for himself.
All his life, attachment had felt like a threat.
Something to outrun before it could turn on him.
But standing in this room, with a brother who guarded him and a man who refused to let him go, Knox felt that fear lose some of its authority.
In the space it left behind, something stronger began to take its place.
Perhaps love wasn’t the absence of fear at all. Maybe it was the willingness to let something else matter more.