72. Knox
SEVENTY-TWO
KNOX
The next afternoon, I hit rep twenty with ninety pounds in each hand.
Not enough.
I lower Holden’s adjustable dumbbells to the mat.
Holden would tell me training to failure alone is stupid. He’s got rules about solo lifting. I told him I’ve been pressing my own body weight since I was nineteen and haven’t died yet. He told me that’s survivorship bias. I told him to fuck off.
My bar, bench, plates, and heavy bag are still at my apartment. Now that we’re living here permanently, I need to organize movers. But in the meantime, Holden’s setup will do. It’s enough to train. Not enough to disappear into.
Odin benched us. The Kennel went dark. Stephen could be dead or watching us right now, and all I’m allowed to do is wait.
So I slow every rep until my arms shake.
Fury finds me between sets.
I hear her before I see her—the soft pad of bare feet on concrete. She appears in the doorway in a flannel shirt that isn’t hers—Eli’s, I think, based on the size—shorts, hair piled up, a glass of water in each hand.
She holds one out. I take it. Drink. Set it on the floor.
She lowers herself onto the mat beside me, cross-legged, her knee touching my thigh. She smells like Holden’s soap and Milo’s shampoo.
“You’re hiding,” she accuses.
“Training.”
“Same thing.” She sips her water. “You’ve been out here since lunch.”
“Needed the quiet.”
We sit. The garage is dim. Late-afternoon light comes through the high window, throwing a bar of gold across the concrete.
“Can I ask you something?” she asks, shifting on the mat.
“Mm?”
“Are you okay? With everything that’s changed?”
“What do you mean?”
“With Eli and Micah,” she adds. “And Milo and Holden.”
Yesterday changed the house twice. Eli and Micah finally stopped pretending. Then I came home from the auto shop and Milo declared Holden his boyfriend while they were still naked on the kitchen floor with Fury.
She thinks I’m out here because I feel left out.
“I’m fine.”
“Regular fine, or Knox-fine?”
“Fine fine.”
She studies me. “Knox. The house sounds like a hotel on prom night. Some people would have feelings about that.”
“I’m not some people.”
“I know. That’s why I’m asking if you’re okay.”
I wipe my hands on the towel. Take my time choosing my words.
“I’m straight. That’s not a wall I’ve put up. It’s what I am. Them being together doesn’t change what I have with you.”
“And it doesn’t bother you? Watching?”
“Watching you with them, or watching them with each other?”
She flushes. “Both?”
“Fury.”
“Yeah?”
“I like control. I like being the one who makes you come apart. But I like watching too. When Micah has his mouth on you, Holden pins your wrists, or Milo makes you laugh in the middle of it, I see you let go because you feel safe with us.”
Her lips part.
“I like them watching me with you too. Hearing you say my name when I’m the one making you moan. That’s claiming. You’re mine. They know it.”
Her breathing changes. Shorter. Shallower.
“Them being together doesn’t threaten any of that. It means more people who love you. More hands to catch you if I can’t.”
“If you can’t?”
I look at the dumbbells. My hands.
“None of us can cover every door. Milo killed fourteen men and Stephen could still be breathing. Four other men mean you don’t have to depend on me being everywhere at once.”
Her hand settles on my knee.
“If I’m not here, you’ve got four people to come home to. You’ll never come home to an empty room.”
Her fingers tighten against me. “Neither will you.”
I look at her hand on my knee. Her fingers. The scars.
“You’ve got us too,” she says.
“I know.”
She studies me. “So you’re not feeling lonely? Or left out?”
“No. Too many people around. I like my peace.”
“You sure?”
She flicks open the top button of the flannel. It’s a small movement. Casual, like she’s adjusting the collar for comfort.
“Yes,” I say, but my voice has dropped half an octave because my body clocked the button before my brain did.
“Mm.” She undoes the second button, and I clue in when she runs her fingers down the bared skin.
Underneath the flannel she’s wearing nothing.
“Well . . .” My throat is dry. “Maybe a little lonely.”
She grins. Third button. The flannel falls open, and she shifts onto her knees on the mat.
Gold light cuts across her skin. My pulse kicks.
“Guess I better fix that,” she says.
I reach for her. She catches my wrist.
“Ah-ah.” She pushes my hand back. “You already gave me a whole speech about control and watching and claiming. Seems only fair I get a turn.”
“Fury—”
“Hands flat on the mat, Knox.” She doesn’t blink, and there it is—the steel beneath the softness, the part of her that grabs knives and doesn’t flinch. “Don’t move them until I say.”
I put my palms flat on the mat.
She moves over me, straddling my thighs, and leans in. The flannel brushes my bare chest. She’s so close I can feel her breath.
“You like watching?” she murmurs against my jaw. “Watch this.”
She shrugs the flannel off one shoulder. Then the other. It slides down her arms and pools around her knees on the mat. She’s bare from the waist up, straddling me while I sit with my hands where she told me to put them and my self-control hanging by its fingernails.
“Fury.”
“Mm?”
“I’m going to need permission to move my hands.”
She considers this. Takes her time about it. Runs one finger down the center of my chest, between my pecs, over the sage plant and the bees, all the way to my waistband. I feel every inch of it.
“Permission denied,” she says, and kisses me.
Her mouth is slow and deliberate. She tastes like cool water, with heat underneath. She takes my lower lip between her teeth and pulls, and I growl, and my hands flex against the mat because every instinct I have is screaming to pick her up and put her where I want her.
I don’t. She told me not to.
And fuck me, she’s good at it.
She pulls back. Her eyes are dark. Her cheeks are flushed. She’s breathing hard and grinning, and she’s the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen.
“Okay,” she says. “Now you can move your hands.”
I’m on her before she finishes the sentence. My arms around her waist, her body pulled flush against mine, my mouth finding hers in a kiss that’s not gentle and not slow and not anything except exactly what I need.
She laughs against my mouth. It turns into a moan. The moan turns into my name.
I pick her up. She locks her legs around me.
Her bare chest is pressed against mine and her hands are looped around my neck and I’m carrying her toward the door because the mat is too thin, the concrete beneath it is unforgiving, and what I’m about to do to her requires a surface that won’t leave bruises.
“Upstairs?” she asks against my neck.
“Upstairs.”
“The bedroom has people in it.”
“I know.” I push through the door and head for the stairs. “That’s the point.”
She pulls back enough to look at me. Her eyes are bright. Her grin is wicked.
“You want an audience.”
“I want them to see how pretty you are when you shatter.”
She cups my face and kisses me once more, softer this time, a private thing between the two of us before we become public.
“Then let’s give them a show,” she says.