CHAPTER FOUR
FELICITY
Knox’s bed was too big. Well, too big for me, anyway.
I floundered between the sheets, hot and cold at once.
“How do you work this thing?” I grumbled, floundering in an excess of negative space.
This bed was never intended for one person alone.
And yet, he slept here each night, just him.
But of course, Knox was double my size. Triple.
He probably didn’t get lost between his own blankets.
Somehow I found myself at the edge of the bed and had to worm my way back to the middle.
“I can hear you fighting with nothing but air, Flick,” Knox muttered from the sofa, a few dozen feet away.
He’d told me this was his smaller place before he turned the lights out—a slip, I suspected—because he took the words back pretty fast, but I caught it.
I mean, who didn’t know Knox Vandevere? He had a blessed career as a hockey player.
As everything he did. And he didn’t start life broke like most of us, anyway.
His family always had money. And me… I was just a regular person with an average job and an average life.
Who decided tonight was the night I’d stay and watch a Chimeras game.
Sorry, Garrett.
But the truth was that Garrett and I hadn’t been right for each other for a long time. Not since the argument where he told me to ‘act my wage’. And if I’d been able to afford to walk away from everything right then and there, maybe I would have.
But I couldn't, and Garrett knew that. Held that one little fact over me, right up until he found the perfect place to pull the rip cord.
In the middle of a parking lot. On a storming night.
Asshole.
Asshole ex.
If Knox hadn’t been there, I would have had to walk—who knew how far—to find a bus stop or train station and pray it was a safe trip home. If Garrett even let me back in. I had my doubts.
Not once this evening had my phone gone off. He never checked where I was, if I was safe. Garrett never came looking. He discarded me. Now I slept in another man’s bed.
And I very much wanted to be here.
I wrapped the sheet around my fists, pulling them tight.
The tiniest, strangled sound tore from my lips at the pain that lanced across my heart, at the mess I’d made of my life that I couldn’t escape.
And in the darkness, in the silence of Knox’s condo in the hills above the city, that tiny, vulnerable sound was horrifically loud.
I pressed my sheet-wrapped fists to my mouth, biting down.
Pain stung my knuckles even through the thin barrier.
The night blotted out as I squeezed my eyes shut, avoiding everything.
The reflected city lights below us, the star studded sky outside his windows that blurred through endless sheets of rain that never let up.
The mattress dipped under a weight that wasn't mine and I curled tighter into myself. Maybe If, like a child, I pretended I wasn't here, in his place, then he wouldn't see me. That I could hide from him, and myself. From all the fantasies I’d had of him that I pretended I hadn’t all this time.
A stupid, stupid wish, because the man who reached for me, tugging me into his embrace was very much real, and not the figment of a dream or a memory at all.
“Felicity.” My name dripped from his lips like thick honey.
Heat that matched that image pooled between my legs.
God damn this man. He said my name once.
A single time, and I ached. Dripped for him.
My legs pulled up to my chest, forming a physical barrier even as I tried everything I could to ease the pressure building between my thighs without touching myself.
Then he’d know, and that would be worse.
So much worse.
“Flick.”
I closed my eyes. Squeezed them shut tight like I used to do when we played games when we were just kids. The sweet sort of games that always had a sense of underlying tension that Knox never crossed. Back then he was a gentleman.
Who had he become?
“Stop,” I whispered, but I didn’t mean him.
I uncurled when thick, roughened fingers caught my chin.
Knox was relentless, refusing to acknowledge my reluctance, tugging my face up to his until I gave in.
Warm breath brushed across my lips, his so close that the tingles I remembered from our first dates started, dragging across sensitive skin though he’d barely touched me.
And that heat below pooled and pooled and pooled.
My lips parted and all the usual lies tumbled out. “I shouldn’t be here. I should be—”
Home. But I wasn’t sure I had one of those any longer. The Ex—I didn’t want to even think his name—had probably tossed all my things out of the house we shared in a tantrum of epic proportions. G— He was good at those.
It’s all replaceable. I can fix everything tomorrow.
But tomorrow was an abstract concept that would come with the rising sun, so many hours from now. Both were too far away. Not close at all. Not like the Chimera sharing the only breathable air in the room with me.
“Open your eyes.” Knox’s command washed over me, soft and brief and easy.
I sucked in a shattered breath and shook my head, unable to speak.
His deep laugh brought me back to the now. A concept I could grasp with all the chaos fracturing and reforming only to shatter again in the next moment, all inside my head. The overload on overload.
“I know what’s happening in there.” Light fingers tapped my temple, then withdrew. “I know you. Come on, Flick. It’s me. I want to see you,” he coaxed. “Let me see those pretty sky eyes I adore. Eyes I’ve dreamed about. Fantasized about every night. Please. For me?”
Warmth that had nothing to do with his body pressed knee-to-knee with mine and everything to do with his proximity simmered low in my belly.
I bit my lip as his hands found mine and began to unwind the sheets from their knot between my fingers.
I clung to the soft threads in a death grip, refusing to let go. They were my anchor.
If I opened my hands, I might fall off the bed, or stay on it. The center of gravity that was Knox would take me right into his arms. Then I’d be his again, without him asking, because he was a Chimera. And then…
I didn’t know what tomorrow would look like at all.
A controlled breath gusted against my cheek. Another laugh, self-depreciating this time. “You can pretend I’m not here. I’m not gonna do anything you don’t want. I promise.”
“That’s the problem,” I grumbled.
“I’m the problem?” Teasing, this time. Light.
I wanted to smile. Almost. Of course he wasn’t the problem. Knox never was the damn problem. But the good old it wasn’t you, it was me would never fly with this man. The sheet slipped from my hands, and his larger ones covered mine. Slipped between my fingers until I clung to nothing and then—
Warm, larger hands filled mine, instead. “What would you let me do, Flick?”
My breath came faster. Too fast. “Any—” I clamped my lips together before another confession I couldn’t prevent fell free into the aether between us in no Chimeras’ land.
“Yeah?” The timbre of his voice changed, deepening. Breath stilled between us. Long fingers stroked the backs of my hands in soothing motions. “Maybe I’m not going to push you for that tonight.”
“Why not?” My eyes flew open, searching for answers in the shadows of his impenetrable gaze.
Let me in, Knox. Please.
But he wouldn’t, and I’d be just as closed out. Shelved, like everything else in his life. Only what Knox chased in that moment got let in. The high he sought, until that wore off too. Then he chased something else. Another goal. Another high.
While I was left with the addiction of him, unsated.
I bit my lip, praying that none of that fell out of my mouth. But in the end it didn’t need to. The edge of his lips curled up and somehow, without me saying a stupid, single word, he knew.
“Because you need something else tonight. And if I spread those soft thighs and slide inside your heat, you won’t be leaving,” he murmured, stroking the backs of my hands with his thumbs.
“Oh,” I whispered. All other language deserted my brain. Damn you, Knox Vandevere. Damn you and your soft bed and warm sheets that want to strangle me and your good damn manners bringing me out of the rain.
I should have walked home. I should have left his bed.
I shouldn't have kissed him.
Our lips met in a soft whisper, the barest touch of lips on lips. But this wasn’t our first kiss, even if that last kiss had been over a decade ago. I knew this man, who he was underneath all the swagger and pride of who he had become. And him…
He knew me.
Knox’s mouth coasted across mine. Testing.
Teasing. When I sucked in a shuddering breath, his lips closed over mine, and his tongue slid inside.
I expected his hands to fold around me, draw me close, but he didn’t.
No other part of him moved as he kissed me gently.
But that didn’t make it any less all consuming.
I couldn’t breathe for the taste of him, the scent of this man who hadn’t been there for years but who also never left even when I did.
The man who never let me go, holding my hands firmly in his as he explored what he already knew.
What was already his. While I panted and pressed my thighs together, flicking my tongue against his.
Needing something faster, something more.
But Knox never gave that. His kisses remained slow, and constant, sweet and exploring.
And as I thought I might explode I realized I was…
Sinking.
My breaths slowed. My heartbeat too, and I kissed him back gently. No longer rushing or pressing my thighs to his, aching or grinding. My eyes fluttered open when he pulled back and I stared at him, dazed and confused.
“Beautiful, Flick.” The tip of his tongue traced my lower lip and I sighed. “Will you let me reward you? Don’t move. Just, for a moment.”