47. Knox
FORTY-SEVEN
KNOX
Fury grins and crooks a finger, so I lean down enough for her mouth to ghost over my ear. “I killed him,” she whispers.
She pulls back and studies me, like she isn’t sure whether I’ll scold or crown her. Her lips are wet. Her pulse jumps at her throat. There’s a swelling at her temple she’s combed her hair over, and she’s keeping her weight off one knee.
“You hurt?”
Fury shakes her head slowly. The crowd shifts behind her, but most of my attention stays on her face.
She knows it, too. It makes her reckless. Makes me want to see what she’ll do next.
“Which him?” I ask, voice low.
Her eyes flick to the stage, then to the double doors where Holden went. “The one you wanted to get rid of. Stine. I used the knife.”
Weeks of that file sitting in a drawer, and she closed it in a night. It hits me all at once—the savage, ugly thrill of it mixed with the white-hot spike of pride. “Messy or clean?”
She tips her head, all tease. “Messy. Really, really messy.” She lets me close the gap until our noses almost touch. “You mad?”
I can’t help the smile. “No.” I touch her face, thumb grazing her lip—just enough pressure to leave the memory of touch. “How’d it feel? First time on your own?”
She closes her eyes, savoring the question, then slides them open with a look that’s hot and bright. “Like I can finally breathe.”
The music pulses around us, and she lets it roll through her body with deliberate abandon.
She’s all animal tonight, pain and pleasure and danger in a black dress and silver mask.
I want to taste that wildness, want her so bad it hurts.
But as soon as I reach for her, she slides sideways, just out of reach, her eyes flashing with a dare.
“Don’t,” I say.
She looks up at me. Wide-eyed. Innocent. The same face she made when I caught her stealing fries off my plate last week, like she couldn’t possibly be doing the thing she’s obviously doing.
“Don’t what?”
“Whatever you’re thinking.”
“I’m not thinking anything. I’m just dancing.
Enjoying the ambiance.” Her hips sway as her eyes drift to the main floor, where the domme on stage has moved from the crop to something that involves rope and the redhead’s ankles.
The crowd has shifted closer, drawn in by the quiet intensity of it.
Fury watches with her lips slightly parted and her pupils blown wide, and I can see the night catching up to her—the kill, the blood, the adrenaline that hasn’t fully metabolized.
She’s a live wire looking for a circuit.
“Fury,” I warn.
“Knoxie.” She smiles and disappears into the crowd before I can catch her wrist.
I almost laugh.
She thinks the bodies and noise make her hard to find. They don’t. I know every exit, stairwell, and blind corner in this building. I know how Fury moves.
I key my radio. “All stations. Brunette. Silver mask. Black dress. Nobody touches her. She doesn’t leave the building.”
She’s already slipping through the crowd, a streak of bare legs, wet hair, and chaos cutting across the main floor. Male gazes follow her.
That dress is borderline illegal, even by club standards. It’s so tight that it’s obvious there’s nothing between her skin and the fabric. A hush follows her every step. She doesn’t notice, or she does and she’s weaponizing it.
I shadow her without closing the distance. She wants to be chased.
She grabs a glass from a passing tray and looks back at me. I nod. The drinks on the floor are controlled.
She downs it, and the liquor sharpens her grin. Then she sets the empty glass on the ledge and takes another, swirling the stem between two fingers as she surveys the room. She doesn’t drink this one. She only holds it while condensation beads across her palm.
The domme is binding the redhead to the post in a configuration I’ve seen before—legs splayed, tension focused on the inner thighs, maximum exposure without cutting off circulation.
I know the type of rope, the knots, the points of failure.
I could have done the rigging blindfolded, but watching Fury watch it is its own kind of exhibition.
The way her focus narrows, the flush that moves up her throat, the way she bites her lip and tries not to show she’s reacting.
As I pass the bar, Micah catches my eye, tilts his head in question. I hold up one finger, a gesture to let him know I’m on it. He nods and goes back to pouring.
I follow her, but not close enough to pin her.
She’s arcing through the edges of the room where the regulars keep to themselves and watch the stage show.
The VIP corridor is minor league compared to what some of these men and women get up to after hours.
I recognize most of the faces behind their masks.
Two lawyers, a surgeon, a man who owns half the marina.
Fury glances over her shoulder and catches me watching. She lifts her chin like I’m a challenge. Like she wants me to be the problem she solves tonight.
She puts her back to a patch of exposed brick with a clear view of the stage.
She tips the glass, not drinking, just rolling the lip along her bottom teeth, eyes locked on the scene.
The domme is sliding a gloved hand between the redhead’s legs, slow and theatrical, coaxing moans that are half performance, half real.
The guy on his knees has his tongue out, desperate for any scrap of attention. I see the moment the domme decides to reward him, palm curling under his jaw, a sharp word snapped into his ear before she offers the redhead’s clit to his tongue.
The crowd tightens, the bar-level noise flattening to focus. Fury’s thighs press together. I’m growing uncomfortably hard just watching her.
A man peels off from the knot of voyeurs, his jawline knife-sharp.
He homes in on Fury, his body language already set for a pull—cocky, predatory, not knowing she can out-hunt him any day of the week.
He says something, low and assured, but before she even answers, I’m on him.
My hand on his upper arm, a squeeze that starts friendly and then travels south.
“Not yours,” I say, my voice sandpaper and rebar.
The guy pauses, glances at my hand, then looks up at me. I’m six-seven and have a hundred pounds on him. He makes the right call, lifting both hands with a wry half-nod.
“Didn’t realize she was spoken for,” he says.
“Her mask is silver, fuckhead.”
He backs off into the crowd.
Fury grins up at me, still leaning against the wall. “Am I spoken for, Knox?”
I clamp my hand around her jaw and bend to her mouth. Hard enough to anchor. Her arms come up and drag me closer.
Teeth. Tongue. Her nails at my neck.
She bites my lip.
I fucking love it.
When we break, she’s breathing fast. The flush on her neck travels to her chest, and her smile is sharp enough to be lethal. She glances past me, toward the corridor Holden vanished down.
“Don’t let me out of your sight,” she says, ducking below my arm.
She’s gone before I can grab her.
Fury wants to be hunted.
Fine.
I cut left, past the stage and through the gap between the sound booth and the back wall. The main floor is too open. She’ll want walls. Corners. Somewhere she can make me work for it.
I check the east corridor first. The alcoves are all occupied—green lights glowing above the curtains.
I scan each one as I pass. A man on his knees between a woman’s thighs.
Two women kissing on a leather bench, fingers tangled in each other’s hair.
An older couple, slow and deliberate, moving together like they’ve been doing this for decades.
No Fury.
I keep moving. My radio crackles—Marco on the back corridor.
“Knox, your brunette just came through here. Heading toward the gallery.”
The gallery. Observation rooms with one-way glass, where members watch without being seen. Private. Dim.
Exactly where she’d go.
I take the back stairs two at a time. The gallery corridor is quieter than the main floor with thick carpet, recessed lighting, sound dampened to a hum.
The doors are spaced apart, each one leading to a small room with a window that looks into the suite on the other side.
I check the first. Locked. Second. Locked.
Third—ajar.
I push it open.
She’s there. Standing at the one-way glass, her reflection ghosted over the scene on the other side. Her arms are crossed, weight on one hip, watching with an intensity that has nothing casual about it.
In the suite beyond the glass, a man is bound to a chair while two women take him apart with their hands and mouths, slow and methodical.
He’s blindfolded, head tipped back, every muscle in his body straining against the restraints.
The women are communicating without words—a touch here, a glance there, adjusting their rhythm to keep him right at the edge without tipping over.
Fury’s reflection is very still. Her hand has drifted to her throat, fingers tracing the bare skin where the choker usually sits.
She senses me before she sees me in the reflection. Her mouth quirks. She doesn’t turn.
“You gonna stare all night or come inside?” she asks, eyes locked on the suite.
“Depends,” I say, voice low. “You planning to behave?”
“Never.”
I step inside. The door seals behind me, cutting the club noise down to nothing. Only the man’s low moan comes through the glass.
Fury doesn’t look away. She shifts until my chest meets her shoulder.
“She’s about to make him beg,” Fury says, gesturing with her chin as one of the women slides her hand along the man’s inner thigh, nails raking lightly. The other is at his ear, mouthing something filthy, her lips moving with slow, soft sadism. “You ever been edged so long you thought you’d die?”
“Thought, maybe,” I say. “Never gotten close enough to believe it.”
“I’d believe it,” she says. “If it was you tying me up.”
I close the last inches between us and run my hands up her arms, pinning them lightly against the glass. Her eyes meet mine in the reflection.
“Hands above your head,” I say.
Her pulse hammers at her throat, but she does it. Lifts both hands to the top of the glass, wrists crossed, breath coming faster.
Behind the one-way glass, the two women alternate their attention between the man’s nipples, thighs, and cock. He squirms, hips grinding into the seat, desperate for more.
I watch Fury’s reflection. Her bottom lip is caught between her teeth, the flush moving down her throat and into the deep V of the black dress.
I drag my tongue along the shell of her ear, making her shiver.
I hold her there, her breath hitching as much from the tension as from the slow-motion show on the other side of the glass.
I could take her right here—dress up, heels on, wrists pinioned—but it’s more fun to make her stew in it.
More fun to see what she does when it’s all right there and I’m the only one who can give it to her.
She’s watching the man now, and her head falls back onto my shoulder. “You want to tie me like that?” she whispers, just loud enough to make it a dare.
“I want to do worse, Fury.” I close one hand around both wrists and lean into the curve where her jaw meets her neck. “You want a taste of what he’s getting?”
“Only if it’s truly worse,” she whispers.
“Careful, Fury. That sounds like a challenge.”
Her eyes flutter closed as I pin her harder to the window, one hand lifting her wrists higher so her body arches, helpless and offered in black fabric and nothing else. I drag the hem of the dress past her ass, baring her to the cool air.
She sucks in a breath, about to taunt or beg or bite, but the man in the chair comes loudly and violently.
Fury uses the distraction to twist free.
I let her.
Sometimes the best part of hunting is when the prey thinks she has a shot.
She yanks her dress down as she runs, wrenches the door open—and slams straight into Eli’s chest.
“Little savage,” he says, steadying her by her upper arms. “Seems you’ve been a very bad girl tonight.”