Chapter One #2
His eyes darken. “I know enough.”
“No, you know what they told you.” My voice sharpens before I can leash it. “You know I was taken. You know vampires drank from me. You know Akasha, Korvin, and whoever else pulled me out. You know I was weak and unconscious and probably pathetic.”
A low sound vibrates in his chest. Not human. Not even close. And the hairs on my arms rise.
Knox’s face goes still, but the shadows behind him seem to breathe. “You were not pathetic,” he says.
The words are soft, but the fury beneath them is not. My throat tightens, and I hate him for that too—for sounding so certain. For standing there like his belief is a thing I can borrow if mine runs out.
“You weren’t there.”
His nostrils flare. “No,” he says. “I wasn’t.”
There’s something in his voice I don’t understand. Something ragged and buried deep. Guilt maybe. Which is ridiculous. Knox doesn’t owe me anything. None of them do.
That makes their kindness harder to stomach.
I look away first, focusing on the bottles lined behind the bar. Gin. Vodka. Whiskey. Labels shining in neat rows. Order pretending chaos doesn’t exist.
“I needed air,” I say.
“This is a bar.”
“It contains air.”
“It contains shadows. Doors. Too many ways in.”
I turn back to him. “And there he is.” His brow lowers, confusion shining through. “The guard dog,” I say, because anger is easier than whatever else is clawing up my chest. “Do you follow everyone around after midnight, or am I special?”
For one second, his control slips. It’s quick. Just a flash across his face. Pain. Hunger. Something too intense for the dim room and my tired heart. Then it’s gone.
“You’re special.”
The words land like a match in dry grass, and my mouth goes dry.
Knox looks as if he wants to drag the sentence back and crush it between his hands.
Good. He should. Men like him shouldn’t say things like that to women like me in empty bars while the city sleeps above us.
It makes the room too warm. It makes my skin feel too tight.
It makes some reckless part of me lift its head and listen.
I swallow. “Don’t.”
His voice drops lower. “You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep getting close to things you have no right touching.”
“I haven’t touched you.”
No, he has not. That’s the problem. Or not the problem. I don’t even fucking know anymore.
I should be grateful. I am grateful. Knox never grabs. Never crowds. Never puts his hands on me without asking. Even now, with tension pulling tight between us, he stands several feet away, his massive body angled slightly toward the exit as if leaving is still an option he is offering me.
A monster with manners. How horribly inconvenient.
“No,” I say, softer now. “You haven’t.”
His gaze drops to my mouth. Only for a second. Only long enough for my entire body to betray me. Heat curls low in my belly, startling and unwelcome. Not soft. Not sweet. It’s sharp and sudden, like my body has remembered it’s alive and decided to punish me with the information.
I grip the water bottle harder, and Knox hears the plastic crackle.
His eyes snap back to mine, and something changes in them. Not pity. Not kindness. Something darker. Hungrier. Leashed so tightly it looks painful.
A tremor moves through him, and the tape around his right hand creaks as his fingers curl.
I stare. “Knox?”
“Go back to your apartment, Briana.”
My name in his mouth shouldn’t sound like that. Rough but careful, torn from somewhere deep inside him.
My pulse kicks. “Why?”
“Because I’m asking nicely.”
A smarter woman would leave. But then, no one has ever accused me of being smart. I step out from behind the bar, and Knox’s entire body locks.
It’s not subtle. The man goes still in a way that reminds me of predators on nature shows, right before something small and fluffy has a very bad day. His shoulders rise with a slow breath. His hands flex. The skin along his forearms seems too tight.
For a heartbeat, I imagine horns. Not because they are there. Because some indescribable instinct inside me knows they could be.
“What happens if you stop asking nicely?” I whisper.
His eyes go black. Not dark. Pitch. Fucking. Black.
The change steals my breath. A sound rumbles out of him, so low I feel it through the floor before I hear it. It rolls into my bones and settles somewhere deep inside my chest.
Fear should come, but all it does is wait at the edges, confused because the sound doesn’t feel threatening. It feels like a warning, not to me, but somehow for me.
Knox turns his face away, breathing hard through his nose.
“Briana,” he says, and this time my name is almost a plea. “Please.”
That does what his growl can’t. It stops me.
Knox doesn’t seem like a man who begs. Not for mercy. Not for forgiveness. Not for anything. He looks like he would let the world break itself against him and call it Tuesday.
But he is close to begging now. For me to move away. For me to be safe.
The realization slips beneath my anger and cuts something tender.
“You think you’re going to hurt me,” I say.
He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t need to. The silence is answer enough. Slowly, I take one step back, and his shoulders drop by a fraction.
Another step and the darkness in his eyes recedes until they are merely dark brown again, almost black in the low light. His breathing steadies, but the air still hums between us.
I should go home, and we both know it.
Instead, I say, “I’m not afraid of you.”
His laugh is quiet and bitter. “You should be.”
“Maybe.” I lift my chin. “But I’m not.”
His gaze searches my face like he wants to find the lie there. I let him look even if I don’t know what he sees. A tired woman in stolen safety. A human with too much rage and not enough sleep. Someone still bruised on the inside.
Whatever it is, it makes his expression shift again. Not softer, because Knox doesn’t do soft. But something in him gentles, and somehow that’s worse.
“You had a nightmare,” he says.
My stomach turns over. “I said don’t.”
“I didn’t ask what it was.”
“Very noble.” I roll my eyes as sarcasm drips from every word.
“I don’t need details to know you’re shaking.”
My fingers still around the bottle. Damn him. I glance down and find my hand trembling. Not much, but enough.
“I’m cold.”
“It’s seventy-four degrees in here.”
“Maybe I’m delicate.”
The look he gives me is so flat I almost laugh. Almost.
Then the moment passes, and exhaustion rushes in where anger was standing guard. My shoulders sag before I can stop them. Knox notices that too. His gaze flicks over me, taking inventory without making me feel stripped bare.
That’s another inconvenient thing about him. I never feel exposed because he is looking at my body. I feel exposed because he is seeing everything else.
“I don’t know how to sleep anymore,” I admit.
The words fall out before I can catch them. Knox goes very still again, but this time the danger is different. Quieter. Sadder.
I press my lips together, furious with myself. “Forget I said that.”
“No.”
My eyes snap to his. “No?”
“No.”
“Do you always answer people with single syllables, or am I getting special treatment again?”
His mouth twitches. It’s not a smile. But it could be the ghost of one, if ghosts had muscles and bad attitudes.
“You keep asking if you’re special,” he says.
My breath catches despite myself. Damn him again.
“That wasn’t an invitation to get poetic.”
“I don’t do poetic.”
“Shocking.”
His gaze drops to my throat. Not in the way the vampires looked at it. Not like hunger. Well, not that kind of hunger.
His eyes pause where the bites used to be, and something murderous passes through them.
I should hate it. I should tell him I don’t need another man’s rage, that I have enough of my own.
But there’s a dark, ruined part of me that likes his fury.
That wants to cup it in both hands and ask what he plans to do with it.
“Do they know?” he asks.
“Who?”
“The ones who took you.”
The room seems colder. I wrap both hands around the water bottle. “Know what?”
“That you survived.”
Something moves through me. Slow. Unsteady. Do they?
The vampires who held me are dead. I know that because Korvin told me after I broke a mug against the kitchen wall and demanded the truth. The ones in that room are dead. The ones who drank from me. The ones who smiled.
But there were others.
Voices in hallways. Footsteps beyond doors. Names whispered when they thought I was too weak to hear. Money changing hands. A woman laughing behind a red curtain.
A symbol carved into the wall. I remember that more clearly than I want to. A circle. A slash through it. Three drops beneath.
My breathing speeds up, and Knox sees it.
“What did you just remember?” he asks.
I shake my head, not wanting to say the words.
“Briana.”
“No.”
His jaw clenches. “This matters.”
“So does my right to have a thought without everyone prying it open.”
Frustration flashes through his eyes, but he says nothing. Just gives me silence and space. Damn him. Damn him for learning that I need both.
I take a breath. Then another. “It might be nothing.”
“It isn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know your face changed.”
“You study my face often?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. No shame.
Heat crawls up my neck. “Knox.”
“I watch everyone.”
“Liar.”
His eyes hold mine. “Not like I watch you,” he says.
There it is again. That dangerous sincerity. He doesn’t flirt like men in bars flirt. There’s no easy charm. No lazy smile. No practiced line meant to slide under my clothes.
Knox says things like they cost him blood. That makes them harder to dismiss.
My skin prickles. My body leans toward him before my mind can order it not to. He notices. The black flickers in his eyes again, gone almost as quickly as it appears.
He steps back. And I can’t explain how much the retreat irritates me. But it also calms something I refuse to name.
I look away and focus on the sink behind the bar. “There was a symbol. In the place they kept me.”
Knox doesn’t move.