EIGHTEEN
“SO HAVE YOU told your sister?” Shelley asked as she carried over the sweating pitcher of homemade margaritas and poured more into Briar’s half-full glass.
Briar snorted and brought the frothy concoction to her lips. “The only thing Laurel knows is that I worked one day a week at the state prison and now that’s over.” That alone displeased her sister. She didn’t need to know more. She didn’t need to know about the lockdown. She didn’t need to know about Knox.
Shelley’s dark eyes boggled. “Seriously? You didn’t ever tell her about the attack?”
“No.”
Shelley plopped down on the couch, tucking her legs under her. Margarita sloshed over the rim of her glass and she licked the green froth from her fingers as she continued to stare wide-eyed at Briar. “So the whole being taken hostage and nearly getting raped by convicts . . .” She fluttered her fingers in the air as she took another sip. “Rescued by a hot-ass convict and then running into the same convict out on parole at the local corner store . . . bringing him back to your place for some hot monkey sex? None of that was worth mentioning?”
Briar lowered her glass from her lips. “God, no. You’ve met Laurel. Can you imagine? I would never hear the end of it.”
Shelly shrugged. “I’m sure if you really drove home how hot he is . . . and that he saved your life, she would have been down with you bringing him back to your place and fucking his brains out.”
“Uh. No.” Briar tossed a pillow at her friend. “He’s a dangerous felon. That’s all my sister would see.”
“He’s a hero,” Shelley countered, and Briar frowned, wondering why they were even talking about it. She hadn’t talked to Knox since that awkward phone call last week. A phone call that had felt a lot like a breakup. Worse. It actually felt worse than the time she walked in on Beau with Kylie-Marie. Except it shouldn’t have hurt that much. She and Knox hadn’t been in a relationship. It was only sex. He’d made that clear.
She told herself it was for the best. Butterflies in her stomach every time she got within five feet of a dangerous criminal wasn’t healthy. No matter how shattering the sex was . . . no matter how, sometimes, his eyes seemed to smile when he looked at her.
“Hmm.” Shelley traced the rim of her glass in slow circles. “Imagine all that sex he’s got stored up inside him from being locked up all these years.”
Briar’s fingers tightened around the stem of her margarita glass and she took another gulp, those butterflies back, rioting in her belly. Yes, she could imagine because she knew. She hadn’t told Shelley that she’d been with him multiple times. She’d only divulged that first time. She wasn’t sure why except that it had started to feel too personal. She certainly hadn’t shared with her neighbor that there had been a pregnancy risk either.
“Too bad you’re not going to see him again,” Shelley continued. “He’s going to need someone to release all that energy on.”
“I know where he works,” Briar murmured automatically . . . unthinkingly. “Place called Roscoe’s—”
“The bar off Highway 51?”
Briar did a half-nod, half-shrug sort of thing. “Yeah, but I don’t really—”
Shelley hopped up from the couch, her legging-clad legs doing a wild little jig. “We have to go! Tonight!”
“Uh . . .” Briar motioned to the back bedroom where they had just tucked in Shelley’s children not half an hour ago.
Shelley nodded. “I can get a sitter. Seriously. We have to do this. Before you lose your nerve. I’ve been there a couple times. The place is wild on the weekends.”
“Lose my nerve?” she squeaked. “Shelley, I didn’t say we were going.” Nerve was for someone who had made a dramatic decision. A decision as dramatic as showing up at the workplace of the panty-dropping-hot felon she’d had a fling with. Had. As in over. And she had most definitely not made that decision. “I haven’t even got any nerve.”
“Briaaaaar,” Shelley cajoled.
“This is crazy,” she muttered. “He’ll know I’m there because—”
“You want to fuck his brains out,” Shelley finished with an emphatic nod, her voice matter-of-fact.
“Shelley,” she snapped. “You know I don’t—”
“I know that, but God, Briar, don’t you just want to ever go after what you want? And I know you want him.” Her dark eyes peered at Briar closely, like she was trying to see under her skin. Heat flamed Briar’s face because, yeah, she did want him again. It had been a week, but she’d been on edge without him the entire time, craving him like an addict needed her fix.
“I know in the two years that you’ve been living across from me there hasn’t been anyone. God, I’d die without sex for that long. Then you meet him. Are you really okay with just letting him go? Going back to an existence void of sex? I don’t know if you can handle another drought. You know what they say if you don’t use it.” She paused, staring at Briar meaningfully, her perfectly groomed eyebrows arching. “You lose it.”
“My vagina falls off?” Briar asked incredulously. “It’s not a penis, you know.”
“Oh, you can lose a vagina.” Nodding fiercely, Shelley moved to the counter and snatched up her phone. “I’m calling the sitter.” She pointed at the door. “Get yourself home and in the shower. Hurry! And be sure to shave.” Her sparking eyes traveled up and down Briar, stopping to rest on her hair. “And no ponytails. Use that conditioner I gave you to tame that nest. Use like half the bottle if you need to.”
“Fine,” Briar grumbled, clambering off her friend’s couch.
Stepping outside, she crossed the walkway and slipped inside her town house. Her stomach fluttered with excitement as she headed into her bedroom. She started sliding hangers, looking for something sexy to wear. There was no denying it. She was looking forward to seeing Knox again. Despite any promises she had made to herself to let it end . . . despite the ring of finality she had heard in his voice on the phone last week, she wanted to see him again.
ROSCOE’S WAS A broad wood building sitting back off the highway. The wood looked weathered and so stressed it might collapse in the next big storm. Antique signs and rusty license plates decorated the outside of the building. There were several motorcycles parked out front, along with an assortment of trucks. Shelley’s neon coupe looked decidedly out of place in the gravel lot.
“You’ve been here before?” Briar questioned as they made their way up the wood ramp to the door.
“Not in a few years.”
Briar nodded. Shelley’s life was busy. She had her hands full with her children and only minimal relief from her ex-husband. When she did go out it was usually on a date with some guy through an online dating site. She was naturally picky about those dates. She wanted a professional man, and Sweet Hill was full of blue-collar types. Which was ironic since she was pushing Briar to hook up with a convict. Ex-convict, a voice inside her reminded. It was the same voice that reminded her that he had saved her life.
When they entered the room it was to the sound of a small, three-man band playing classic rock at the far end of the room. Shelley was right. The place was packed. And it seemed predominantly full of men. An assortment of leather-clad bikers, good ol’ boys, and redneck types still wearing the wrinkled clothes they went to work in.
She followed Shelley across the wood plank floor.
“Was it like this when you were last here?” Briar asked as they made their way to a high table with three stools surrounding it.
“Yeah, it was a little rough then, too, but I didn’t know any better in those days.”
“Uh, but you do now?”
“Yeah, I’m older now. I don’t do the dumb shit I used to.”
Briar fought a smile. She sounded so ancient. At twenty-seven, Shelley was only two years older.
Hopping up on the high sto
ol, Briar was suddenly grateful that she had decided to wear jeans. Shelley approved because she deemed them snug enough. You need a pair of jeans painted on so tight that nothing is left to the imagination.
Briar smoothed her hands over her thighs and glanced down at the skintight denim. Mission accomplished. She just had to pretend her ass didn’t look huge in them.
She glanced around the bar, searching.
“Do you see him?”
“No.” Her heart sank like it probably shouldn’t. Knox was the only reason she was here. And the reason for the hair and the jeans and the makeup. Not to mention the slinky camisole-style top that showed off her shoulders and cleavage in a way that made her feel naked.
Several men and women danced on the sawdust floor on one side of the building.
“Want to dance?” Shelley asked.
Briar shook her head. “I haven’t had enough alcohol for that yet.”
Shelley signaled the waitress. “Well, let’s rectify that.”
A platinum-blond waitress walking past detoured for their table. “Hey, there, girls, what can I get you?”
“Two Shiners.” Shelley winked at Briar and her stomach sank again, sensing what her friend was going to ask next. “Is Knox working?”
The waitress froze and looked Shelley over speculatively. “Who’s asking?” The woman was pushing fifty and still looked good. She was plump with a fresh face. The only makeup her bright red lipstick.
Shelley nodded at Briar. “My friend here knows him.”
The waitress glanced at her. “That so?”
Briar lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. It was as far as she could go to admitting that they were friends—or something.
“Yeah, he’s working,” she admitted. “I’ll let him know his ‘friend’ is here. You got a name, honey?”
Briar started to shake her head, but Shelley went ahead and answered for her. “Tell him Briar is here.”
“All right.” She nodded slowly, as though she wasn’t too sure about either one of them. “I’ll be back in a moment with your beers.”
As soon as she slipped away, Briar turned on Shelley. “What did you do that for?”
“Just to speed things along.”
“God, Shelley, now he’ll know that I’m here because—”
“Because of him,” she finished. “Yes. You are here because of him. You don’t think he’ll figure that out the moment he sees you? Men appreciate directness, Briar.”
Still annoyed, Briar turned to stare straight ahead at the dance floor, crossing her arms in front of her.
“Oh, come on. Don’t pout. Look, our waitress is getting our beer at the bar . . . and holy hell, who is that? Please tell me that’s not him. If that’s your guy I think I’m going to face-punch you, Briar. You have been holding out on me, girl.”
Briar swung her gaze to the long stretch of bar that backed against the wall. It was Knox, all right. In the flesh. Looking better than ever in a pair of faded jeans and black T-shirt with Roscoe’s logo stamped on the pocket.
She blinked, finding the sight of him here, in his element, a little strange. This was his world. Not the prison. Not her apartment. She glanced around, noticing that she wasn’t the only one looking at him. A few others slid him sidelong glances. Women checking him out. Men looking at him almost warily. She guessed he got that a lot. His reputation preceding him.
She shook the hair back behind her shoulders and drew a ragged breath. He hadn’t spotted her yet. He was standing behind the bar, leaning over to hear what the waitress was telling him. Their waitress. Oh. God. She knew what she was telling him. Her stomach plummeted to the soles of her boots. Any moment he would know she was here. He would look up and—
His head shot up at whatever and his eyes scanned the room until finding her.
“Oh, shit,” she breathed, the crazy urge to dive under the table seizing her.
“Oh shit is right,” Shelley echoed as he came around the bar, carrying the two Shiners he was about to give to the waitress. “He’s coming this way and it looks like he wants to devour you.”
“Or strangle me,” she muttered.
He didn’t look happy to see her. Her chest tightened as she recalled that phone call last week. He hadn’t said the words directly but she’d understood his meaning. Have a good life. She’d heard it in his voice. In his good-bye. He was done with her. And now she had shown up here.
He was treating her to that same intense, unsmiling stare he had treated her to all those times he visited the HSU.
“Oh my. That body. He’s ripped. I can actually see the definition of his six-pack through his shirt. Girl, you better get all over that,” she hissed, her words ending right before he stopped at their table.
“Hey,” Briar greeted, her voice weak.
“Your beer.” He set a bottle in front of each of them, but his gaze trained on Briar with laserlike focus. It was almost like he didn’t quite recognize her. Or perhaps he simply couldn’t reconcile her presence here. In his world.
She had been in his world, on his turf, before. In the prison. Why was this so different? Even as she wondered that, she knew.
The balance of power had shifted. They weren’t in the prison any longer, where he lacked power. The beast was out of its cage and there was no telling what he would do. He could do anything. This was Knox unleashed.
“Hey,” Shelley announced, stretching out her hands to shake his. “I’m Shelley, Briar’s neighbor.”
He managed a polite nod as they shook hands. “Knox.” Then he was looking at Briar again.
“So this is where you work,” she said lamely, fingering her sweating bottle nervously.
The band suddenly started playing an old ACDC song, and it was even harder to hear. But that didn’t stop him from asking what was so clearly weighing on his mind. He leaned in to demand, “What are you doing here?”
What was she supposed to say? I came here to see you? That only smacked of desperation.
She shrugged. “Just felt like going out.” She nodded toward the stage. “Great band.”
He stared at her dubiously and she waited for him to call bullshit. He didn’t. Instead, he gestured to the bottles, all businesslike. “Let me know if I can get you anything else.”
She nodded dumbly.
“How about you have a drink with us?” Shelley cajoled. Trust her to cut right to the flirting. It was as natural as breathing to her.
“Can’t. I’m working.”
Shelley pouted, jutting out her bottom lip prettily and Briar felt a stab of jealousy as Knox studied her neighbor. Did Knox like what he saw? What wasn’t to like? Shelley was sultry and sexy. Two kids hadn’t altered her tiny size-two figure.
Shelley cocked her head, coyly twirling her hair. “Aw, you don’t get a break?”
Briar sucked in a breath, stifling the urge to face punch her.
“It’s pretty busy tonight and we’re short-staffed.”
Shelley brought her beer to her lips, talking against the bottle’s mouth as she pouted, “Oh, fine. But we’re going to need more beer soon, Knox. I hope you’ll bring them to us.”
“Sure. Just signal me.” Without a glance for Briar, he turned and headed back to his spot behind the bar.
“Hmm, now that’s a view.” Shelley cocked her head, admiring his ass as he walked away.
“Did you have to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Flirt like that!”
“He was about to leave. I was trying to keep him here longer. “
“Yeah, by hitting on him.”
She shrugged. “Well, you weren’t doing anything. Besides. You’ve been insisting that you don’t want to fuck him again . . .”
“That doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to,” she shot back.
“Fine. Don’t be mad at me. You know I love you. I just got carried away. He’s so yummy.”
“Fine.” Briar supposed she could forgive her. She better than anyone understood Knox’s impact on the female’s senses, after all.
Shelley hopped down off the stool. “Let’s go dance.”
“What? I don’t dance—”
“You need to loosen up. C’mon. We’re here. Why not?”
They were here. And she had just told Knox they were here to have fun and listen to the band. Not stalk his ass. What was the harm in dancing with her friend?
“Okay.” Hopping down from her stool, she tipped her beer and finished it in a long gulp, taking it as fortification. Slamming the bottle down on the table, she met Shelley’s gaze. “Let’s do this.”
NINETEEN
BRIAR—HIS BRIAR—WAS WORKING it on the dance floor like it was something she did every Saturday night at Roscoe’s. Shit. Not his. Not his Briar.
She wasn’t one of the bar trolls who skulked in here night after night, seeking validation through booze and strange men pawing at her. She was the type who preferred a book or television to a wild night out. Knox liked that about her. He liked that every time he touched her, every time he kissed her, she looked faintly surprised. And he fucking loved the sounds she made as she pulled him closer, urging him to do things to her he was positive no man had ever done before.
He wanted to be the only man to touch her. It was total caveman of him, but that’s what he was. A fucking caveman that reveled in rocking her staid little world and making her fly apart. She made him want to pound his chest. Christ. Thinking about her that way was making him rock hard. Thankfully he was standing behind the bar where no one would notice.
His gaze tracked her. For being not much of a party girl, she was doing a good job faking it. He glared across the distance, straining and twisting his body as he worked the bar, determined to keep her in his sights. She held her hands up in the air and swayed those hips he remembered holding in his hands, anchoring her as he slid home inside.
He lifted on the balls of his feet slightly, following her stripper moves between bodies and over the tops of people’s heads. Where the hell did she learn to dance like that?