Chapter 3
Three
Knox
Hallie Rutherford was trembling before me.
Not from fear. I knew the difference. No, this was something else entirely, her eyes wide beneath the moonlight, completely fixed on me like I’d just flipped a switch inside her.
Christ.
I’d known this girl half her fucking life. She was twenty-four now, and tall for a woman, yet I still towered over her. And for the first time, I became acutely aware of every inch I had on her.
Every inch that separated us.
And every inch I’d love to sink into her cunt.
That last thought slammed into me so hard and fast it almost knocked the wind out of me. I stepped back half a foot just to stop myself from doing something stupid. And Hallie looked up at me all doe-eyed and flushed like she actually wanted something dangerous. Like she craved it.
God help me, I could give it to her.
I could overpower her right now, if I wanted. Not that I would. But the thought was there, swirling around inside my sick fucking mind beneath the polite facade I’d worn for years. I kept these urges buried, knowing there was something dark and twisted inside me that no woman would ever understand.
I didn't understand it myself. Not at all. Some nights, that darkness I knew lurked just below the surface even terrified me.
But Hallie looked at me like she wasn’t afraid of it. Those pillowy pink lips and deceptively innocent brown eyes could probably pull it right out of me.
She swallowed loud enough that I could hear the sound in her throat. “You wouldn’t do that to me,” she said, the words coming out in a whisper.
She was still testing me. The stubbornness was endearing–almost cute, even–but maybe I needed to be less subtle in letting her know: I want to be the one who gets to play with you.
At first, I let my eyes do the talking. I held her stare, letting my gaze travel slowly from one eye to the other, giving her every chance to understand exactly what I meant.
I imagined holding her down and the way she’d wriggle and whimper below me, hoping she could read the desire on my face.
But just in case she couldn’t, I said, “You really think I can’t be the man to give you what you want? ”
Hallie’s mouth fell open with a scoff. “Knox, the things I want a man to do to me are really fucked up. It’s so… depraved.”
“Is it?” I asked, and her mouth snapped shut in surprise as I took a small step forward. When she didn’t move, I took another, closing the space between us until her back pressed into the metal door of the garage apartment. There was nowhere else she could go.
I raised both hands and braced them on either side of her head on the door, caging her in completely.
I didn’t touch her, but I could feel the heat rolling off her body onto mine.
She could have slipped away if she wanted, and I’d let her–but instead, she just stood there and froze, hiding her breasts behind that damn Kindle.
God, that GOOD GIRL sticker was such a damn lie.
“Is it really that depraved,” I whispered, lowering my mouth so close to her that my lips nearly grazed her earlobe, “if it’s something we both want?”
My cock strained against my jeans as Hallie sucked in a slow, shaky breath. Neither of us broke eye contact, exchanging a silent understanding between us. There was the tiniest spark of something dangerous, and the longer we stared, the more it threatened to burn.
“You’re not serious,” she dared.
My jaw tightened.
We had too much history, didn’t we? She saw me as an older brother type. Just a nice guy. She didn’t know this part of me, the part that wanted to grip her hips until she bruised, pin her down, and take what I wanted from her.
But I could show her.
Give her just a little taste.
I lowered one hand to my pocket, watching her eyes follow the movement with curiosity.
I pulled my keys out, glancing down briefly to find the old brass one.
Hallie’s brows pinched together in confusion, and a second later, I reached around her body toward the doorknob.
My shoulder brushed against hers as I quickly stuck the key into the lock, skillfully turning the knob with the same hand the second it clicked.
She choked out a shocked gasp as she stumbled backwards into the dark stairwell, wedged between my body and the metal door as it slammed into the wall just inside. I pressed against her, invading her space in a way that felt both reckless and intoxicating.
I was so fucking hard I could barely think.
Hallie looked like she was putting it together–the realization that I’d stayed here, too, many years ago. Could she remember that? Was she wondering why I never gave the key back to her parents? Was she thinking about how I’d had it all along?
I could’ve helped myself to Hallie Rutherford any time I wanted this summer.
The fear in her eyes told me she was only thinking about the way my body pinned hers in place, preventing her escape. I pushed more, grinding my hips into hers to make sure she could feel my arousal. Her ragged breathing only made my cock throb even harder.
“Knox,” she whispered, my name on her tongue sounding more like a plea than a warning. I could smell the coconut rum on her breath.
And that stopped me in my tracks.
Hallie was drunk, and that made this “consensual” non-consent an unfortunate impossibility. This couldn’t happen. Not now, at least.
With a jerk, I tugged my body away from hers, stepping back into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs that led to the apartment. I waited a few seconds for us to both catch our breaths, watching her sink a few inches down the wall in the absence of my body holding hers up.
Outside, the moonlight bounced off the pool and spilled through the doorway, illuminating every rise and fall of Hallie’s chest. I forced myself to look away from her soft lips, parted just enough that I could see the little gap in her perfect teeth.
I braced myself for her to call me a bastard and tell me to get the hell out, but she didn’t say a word.
“Hallie,” I said, my voice sounding rougher than I meant it to be. “If you want to continue this conversation when you’re sober, you know where to find me.”
And with that, I left, pulling the door shut behind me before traipsing across the Rutherfords’ quiet backyard like I hadn’t practically assaulted one of them.
But fuck, she damn near asked for it.
***
I woke up the next morning already hard.
It was pathetic, really, how fast my mind snapped right back to her.
Hallie against that wall, all breathless and looking at me like I’d unlocked something in her.
I tried to shake the memory and think about something else, but my hand was already around my dick before I even formed a conscious thought.
And it was her in my head—her voice cracking as she said my name, her body tensing beneath mine in the stairwell.
As I pumped with my fist, I imagined her trying to scramble away across her sheets, her fingers digging into the mattress as I caught her by the ankles and had my way with her.
The thought alone pushed me over the edge so fast and hard my vision blurred.
The shame followed just as quickly.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I’d kept the sickness in me hidden away for a long time, but Hallie managed to coax it right out of me with just a few words. When she stood there shaking with that same, twisted hunger I’d tried to push down and hide away all this time, I couldn’t hold myself back.
Because suddenly… it wasn’t about me anymore.
Not really.
This was about giving her what she’d clearly been starving for. I could let her feel something she’d only ever read about in her romance books. I could be the one man to give her the thing she thought she could never ask for.
And… oh fuck, I wanted to be that man for her.
The truth was, my desire for Hallie burned even deeper than my need to take control.
My attraction for her was born the evening Brooke Rutherford, the oldest sister, got married, and Hallie was home for the summer from college.
Her dusty blue bridesmaid dress with the open back hugged her curves just enough to make it painfully clear she’d crossed into womanhood when I wasn’t looking.
And we’d danced that night. I couldn’t remember if it was my idea or hers, but somehow, my hands found her hips during a slow song, and she spent the next four minutes whispering about her bridezilla sister in my ear.
We laughed, I twirled her once, and then we parted. The hollow ache in my stomach when her body left my side caught me by surprise that night. I wasn’t sure if it meant anything to her, but for me, that was the night everything changed.
She became my obsession.
That was the first night I went home and thought of Hallie with my dick in my fist, shuddering as I whispered her name.
I’d kept my lust to myself all this time.
She was Adrian’s little sister, for fuck’s sake.
I never crossed any kind of line with her.
Never even flirted. I’d trained myself not to look at her for too long, and tried not to notice the way her ass filled out the leggings she often wore around the Rutherford house when she visited home.
And then my fantasies about her became… dark. I caught myself wondering what kind of sexual experiences she had with her boyfriends–was she satisfied? Did they choke her and hold her down? Did she want them to?
Would she think I was a disgusted, perverted, psychopath for thinking about that?
The shame burrowed deep inside me, making it difficult to walk into the Rutherfords’ house sometimes.
I was still invited to every barbecue and holiday gathering, though, and I was too polite to keep away from the rest of them. I had no excuse.
I started measuring my life in moments Hallie was in the room and moments she wasn’t, and somehow, the space she occupied in my mind only kept getting bigger. My obsession grew.
I made observations.
I noticed patterns and memorized routines.
Even when she moved up to Milwaukee, she didn’t really disappear. Her careless social media presence made it easy enough to keep tabs on her–too easy–even from a distance. I ran background checks on the men who drifted in and out of her life, keeping tabs on some of them just as much as her.
Brody’s record was squeaky clean, with not even a seatbelt infraction to his name.
But something about the guy always rubbed me the wrong way.
It wasn’t just that he was a cocky, self-indulgent fitness bro and not nearly good enough for someone like Hallie.
There was something else there. It took a few months to work out his Reddit username, but once I had that, he was finished.
I didn’t have to do much.
I let his own misogynistic, red-pill, disgusting comments speak for him in the form of printed screenshots, which Hallie found slipped beneath her apartment door one morning.
For a while, I worried my interference and her break-up with Brody was the catalyst that rerouted her entire life.
She quit her job at the marketing firm and moved back here, lying to everyone in her life about her job.
The Rutherfords thought she was still working remotely, but she’d been secretly picking up DoorDash shifts in other neighborhoods ever since she came home.
She was too proud to admit Milwaukee didn't work out, just like the rest of the Rutherford family had warned.
Hallie was at rock bottom, and it was at least partially my fault. I could have just let her be blissfully ignorant, and some nights the guilt ate at my insides for disrupting her happiness.
I told myself she’d be okay. She was home again, surrounded by people who loved her, and she was resilient enough to rebuild without my involvement. I stayed close but careful, hovering at the edges of her life without touching it, watching without interfering.
A quiet observer.
Even when she stepped out in a black bikini, sneaking glances at me all night at the pool party, I kept myself in check. I focused on Adrian. I helped their dad grill. I joked around with their mom. I wore the version of myself that everyone liked and trusted.
But then Hallie had to go and throw out the words “consensual non-consent,” and suddenly every line I’d drawn for myself dissipated into thin fucking air. She had no idea, of course, what those words would do to me when she uttered them the first time. What they'd unlock.
Well, she knew now.
It was up to her to decide if she wanted to do anything about our mutual wicked interest or not. Only time would tell.
My phone buzzed on my bedside table, snapping me out of whatever trance I’d sunk into.
Adrian. His name lit up the screen with a paragraph asking about our travel plans for the WWE thing that night.
I had the night off, but I’d gotten us both tickets just to have something to do.
I didn’t really follow wrestling, but Adrian had been into WWE since we were in middle school.
What followed his text was a five-minute back-and-forth about taking the Metro and loose follow-up plans. We laid everything out like we were cosplaying as responsible adults.
And as I rubbed my eyes and walked toward the bathroom door to take a shower, my phone buzzed once more over on the nightstand. I groaned, prepared to send him a thumbs-up emoji to indicate the conversation was over.
But it wasn’t Adrian.
Hallie: Could we meet up today and talk??
For a few seconds, I just stared at the words on the screen, my heart leaping right to my throat. I felt a heat unfurl in my chest, spreading through me like someone had just flipped on every dark urge I’d been suppressing.
Whatever Hallie wanted, I’d give it to her. If she needed me to pretend our conversation the night before never happened, I’d let her think I could. But if she wanted to be pinned down, restrained, and fucked until she couldn’t take it anymore? I could give her that, too.
I mean, it was the least I could do.