4. Knox
KNOX
I can't stop looking at her.
Three in the morning and I'm wide awake, lying in my own bed with Ivy Calloway curled against my side, and sleep feels like something that happens to other people.
My arm's gone numb under her weight but I haven't moved it. Won't move it. Not when she's finally still, finally quiet, finally letting me see her without that chin-up, ready-for-a-fight energy she wears like armor.
Her breathing is slow and even, the kind of deep that only comes when someone's truly under.
The sheet's tangled somewhere around her hips, and the moonlight filtering through the window paints her skin silver-pale against the dark fabric of my bed.
She takes up almost no space—five-four and petite, barely a dent in the mattress—but somehow she's rearranged the entire room just by being in it.
Her hair's everywhere. Long, dark black, fanned across my pillow like spilled ink.
A few strands have caught on her cheek and I reach over with my free hand, brushing them back without thinking. Her skin's soft under my fingertips, still warm from everything we did earlier, and I let my thumb trace the line of her jaw just to feel it.
Green eyes, when they're open. Sharp and quick and ready to cut you if you push too hard. But closed like this, with her lashes dark crescents against her cheeks, she looks younger. Softer.
The tension she carries in every waking moment has smoothed out, left her face open in a way I don't think she'd allow if she knew I was watching.
Her lips are parted slightly, swollen from kissing. From my mouth, Roman's mouth, West's mouth. The thought should probably bother me more than it does—sharing her, watching my brothers touch her, knowing they want her the same way I do.
But it doesn't. Never has.
We've always worked like this, the three of us. What's mine is theirs. What's theirs is mine. It's not a compromise. It's just how we're built.
But this—her—feels different in a way I'm not ready to name yet.
Her hand rests on my chest, fingers curled loose like she grabbed onto me in her sleep and forgot to let go. I can feel her pulse against my ribs, steady and sure, and something about it makes my throat tight.
She came to us. All three of us. First time for everything and she walked into that living room in nothing but silk and said yes.
That means something.
Not because of ego. Not because we're the first. Because she trusted us enough to make that choice, and trust from Ivy doesn't come easy.
I've seen the way she moves through the world—guarded, quick to deflect, always two steps ahead of whatever she thinks is coming for her. She doesn't let people in.
But she let us in.
I've been carrying that truth around since the moment I set her down in my bed and she curled into me like she'd been doing it for years. Like my arms were the place she was supposed to end up.
Three months ago, I didn't even know her name.
Three months ago, I was standing in the back of a garden reception watching my stepfather marry my mother, making small talk with Roman about how long we had to stay before we could leave without being rude. Then my new stepsister walked in.
She was late. I remember that. The ceremony had already started and she slipped in through a side door, trying to be invisible.
Dark hair pinned up, green dress that matched her eyes, heels that made her wobble slightly on the grass. She found a seat in the back and folded her hands in her lap like she was apologizing for taking up space.
I watched her the entire ceremony.
So did Roman. So did West. We didn't say a word about it, but I felt the shift—three sets of eyes tracking the same woman, three versions of the same realization settling in our chests.
Then she laughed at something during the reception. I don't even remember what it was—some joke her father made, maybe, or something one of the guests said. But her whole face changed.
The careful, polished mask dropped for half a second and she was just a girl laughing, unguarded and bright, and I felt something in my chest rearrange itself. Quietly. Permanently.
I didn't tell my brothers.
Didn't need to. They saw me looking. I saw them looking. We've been close long enough to know when someone's in deep without them having to say it out loud.
But the specific shape of what I feel—that's mine. I've kept it quiet. Not out of shame. Out of patience. Either it would happen or it wouldn't, and either way, I'd deal with it when the time came.
The time came tonight.
Roman first. I watched him with her, the way he coaxed her into saying what she wanted, the way he made her work for it.
Then me, with both of them watching, her body already loose and trusting under my hands.
Then West—quieter, steadier, taking her apart with his hands like he had all the time in the world.
And then this. Carrying her to my bed. Feeling her settle against me like gravity had rearranged itself and this was the new center.
I smooth my thumb over her shoulder, just to feel her skin. She stirs slightly, a small sound catching in her throat, and my whole body goes still.
Her eyes open.
Not all the way. Just enough to find me in the dark, her gaze hazy and unfocused. She blinks once, twice, like she's trying to remember where she is.
"Knox?"
Her voice is rough with sleep, barely more than a whisper, and the sound of my name in her mouth does something to me I wasn't prepared for.
"Right here, sweetheart."
She shifts, her hand sliding higher on my chest, and her eyes clear slightly. "You're still awake."
"Can't sleep."
"Why not?"
Because I can't stop looking at you. Because you're in my bed and I don't know how to process what that means yet. Because three months ago I saw you laugh and something in me decided you were it, and now you're here, and I'm not letting go.
I don't say any of that.
"Just thinking."
She props herself up slightly, the sheet slipping lower, and I have to fight the urge to pull her back down and pin her there. Her hair's a mess, falling over one shoulder, and her lips are still swollen. She looks at me for a long moment, her gaze sharper now, more awake.
"About what?"
"You."
That makes her pause. Her eyes search mine, looking for the joke, the deflection, the easy out I usually give her. But I don't give it to her this time.
Her breath catches. Just slightly. Just enough for me to hear it.
"What about me?"
I reach up, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, letting my fingers linger against her neck. Her pulse jumps under my touch.
"How you ended up in my bed. How I'm not letting you leave."
Her lips part. She's about to say something—something sharp, probably, something to put distance between us—but I don't let her get there. I pull her down and kiss her, slow and deliberate, tasting the lingering sweetness of her mouth.
She makes a small sound against my lips, her hand fisting in the sheets beside my head, and I take my time with her. No urgency. No rush. Just her mouth and mine and the dark room around us.
When I pull back, her eyes are wide and glassy, her breathing uneven.
"Knox—"
"Tell me you want to go back to your room."
She stares at me. Her chest rises and falls, her lips parted, and I can see the exact moment she decides.
She doesn't tell me to stop.
She kisses me instead.
It's different this time. Slower. The adrenaline from earlier is gone, the charged energy of three men and one woman learning each other for the first time stripped away.
What's left is just this—her and me, alone in the dark, with nothing between us but want and the strange, quiet intimacy of three in the morning.
I roll her onto her back, settling between her thighs, and take my time. My hands map her ribs, her waist, the curve of her hips.
She's small under me, delicate in a way that makes something protective flare hot in my chest, but when I kiss her throat she arches up and digs her nails into my shoulders and I remember she's not fragile.
She's just mine.
"Knox." My name again, breathless this time, and I kiss the spot where her pulse hammers under her jaw.
"Right here."
Her fingers twist into my hair, the sharp pull sending sparks straight down my spine as she tugs me closer, bolder than before.
The hesitation from earlier has burned away, leaving only raw certainty in the way she rocks against my mouth, chasing what she needs without apology. The scent of her arousal fills my lungs with every breath, thick enough to taste on the back of my tongue.
I drag my lips lower, savoring the salt of her skin, the rapid flutter of her pulse beneath my mouth as I map every curve and dip.
Her stomach tightens under the slow scrape of my stubble; her hips jerk when I nip at the crease of her thigh. By the time I settle fully between her spread legs, her breathing has turned ragged, desperate little gasps that make my cock throb against the sheets.
She reaches blindly for the headboard, knuckles whitening as her small hands grip the cool wood.
“Let me hear you, sweetheart.”
The first swipe of my tongue over her slick folds draws a sharp cry from her throat, raw and unguarded, echoing softly in the dark room. I groan at the taste of her—hot, velvet-wet, and so sweet it makes my head spin.
Every broken moan, every shaky curse that falls from her lips when I circle her clit or fuck my tongue inside her, etches itself into my memory.
Her thighs clamp around my shoulders, trembling violently, the smooth skin slick with a faint sheen of sweat that tastes like salt and sin when I turn to bite the inside of one.
I pin her hips down with both hands, fingers digging into the soft give of her ass to hold her open for me. She’s dripping, coating my chin, and the obscene sounds of my mouth devouring her fill the quiet space between us.