He held out his hand and she dropped her keys into his palm.
They drove back to her place in silence. Tapping her fingers along the edge of the door, she stole several glances at him. His jaw was locked in tension, his hard eyes focused straight ahead on the road. She opened her mouth at one point to tell him it was okay, but it didn’t feel right. Nothing felt okay in this moment.
As angry as she was with him for exploding like that, she felt him slipping away from her, becoming his old self. The inmate that hardly spared her a word, and when he did it was fierce and brutal.
By the time they reached her condo, she was ready to talk. He unlocked her door for her and handed her back her keys.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
She stepped inside and he followed her, closing the door behind them.
She dropped her keys on the counter and spun to face him. “What the hell was that back there? I mean I know he was an asshole but was it really necessary to—”
He kissed her. Circled her neck with his hand and hauled her against him. There was nothing soft or tender about it. He claimed her, his teeth tugging hard on her bottom lip, and she opened for him with a moan. He picked her up, his hands guiding her legs around his waist as if she weighed nothing at all.
A few short strides and they were in her bedroom. On her bed. He fell over her and yanked her dress up to her hips with a single rough move. Everything was happening so fast. Her heart was pounding. Her blood roaring.
His mouth fused hotly to hers, not even coming up for air as she felt his hand between them, working his zipper down. He grabbed her hand and shoved it inside his jeans to close around him. “Touch me,” he ordered.
Her fingers circled his hardness, her thumb dragging over the swollen tip of him.
“Christ,” he muttered.
He fumbled in a pocket. She heard the crinkle and tear of a foil condom wrapper. He broke away long enough to shove his jeans all the way down his hips.
Propping up on her elbows, she watched him slide latex over his erection, so turned on at the sight that she couldn’t breathe. He spread her thighs wide and reached down to jerk her panties to the side with an impatient twist.
And then he was in her, pushing deep. She surged against the fullness of him, her head dropping back as he yanked her hips closer. He sank all the way in and didn’t wait for her to catch her breath at the sudden invasion.
He pumped inside her, his expression savage as he worked to his own release. She clutched his biceps, needing something to hang onto as he pounded out his need.
Abruptly, he paused and flipped her over on all fours. He ripped her underwear fully off and splayed a hand under her stomach, lifting her higher, positioning her how he wanted her on her hands and knees.
He slid into her from behind, his hands gripping her ass. She moaned, a rush of wetness meeting the thrust of his cock. He’d never been like this before. This was an unfiltered Knox. He took her fast and rough. For himself. And that only made it hotter. Made her sex clench and burn around the slide of him. She backed up into him, meeting his thrusts in her own frenzied need. Their bodies crashed together with loud slaps.
The sensation of his hands gripping her bottom, and the delicious friction of him sliding in and out of her, exhilarated her. She glanced over her shoulder at him, and the sight of that brutally handsome face, like something carved from stone, so feral and stripped bare with wild hunger for her, made her knees shake and threaten to buckle.
He leaned over her, his hard chest curving over her back. One of his hands slid around her hip and arrowed straight to the core of her, finding her clit and rolling it deftly. She came apart, her world splintering into shards of light and then descending to darkness, where, for a moment, she couldn’t see anything at all. But she felt. She felt him still going, hammering into her almost desperately, her breath coming in rapid gasps as he barreled toward his own release.
She felt the scrape of his jaw against the side of her face and then the sink of his teeth into her earlobe. And just like that she shuddered all over again, her body vibrating and humming as her sex squeezed around him.
“Oh,” he groaned. “That’s it. Milk my dick.” She felt him come inside her as he held himself deep, spasming almost in rhythm to her own contracting body.
His voice breathed into her ear, “Mine.”
She felt the word echo through her, felt it sink deep and root inside her in the most hidden crevices of her heart. Her chest expanded on a silent yes. She was his. And he was hers. She felt that, too, even if she couldn’t say it out loud.
She collapsed on the bed, not even minding his weight over her, pressing her into the mattress.
She turned her face to the side, still gasping. He braced his arms on either side of her, keeping his weight from fully squashing her. His harsh breath fluttered the hairs at her neck. She rubbed the tickle away with her fingers.
He lifted himself off her, and she felt an ache at the sudden loss. As he went into the bathroom to dispose of the condom, she sat up, smoothing her wrinkled sundress down her thighs. She was standing by the time he returned, ready to have the conversation she had tried to start with him before he kissed her.
He stepped out of the bathroom wearing a familiarly distant expression on his face. The sight of it stabbed her in the chest, and suddenly he felt out of her reach. Already gone. She ignored the feeling and told herself she was overreacting.
She took a breath and started. “Knox, about what hap—”
“I’m going to head out.”
She blinked and shook her head, sure he did not just cut her off to announce he was leaving. “We need to talk,” she said, nodding at him as though encouraging those words to sink in. For him to understand.
He rubbed his fingers over the center of his forehead like he suddenly had a headache. Like she was his headache. Which stung. “I don’t think we should do this, Briar.”
She flinched. “What is ‘this’ exactly? Let’s be clear on that point since you don’t want to do it again. Fucking?” She managed to not even shock herself at uttering the profane word. “Is that what you mean? You don’t want to fuck anymore?” She motioned savagely to the bed. “You could have fooled me.”
He looked almost bored as he gazed at her, tilting his head to one side. “Let’s not do this, Briar.”
“Oh, let’s do it. I want to. Really.” She crossed her arms. “I thought you coming here last night established you were interested in me.”
“There’s fucking and there’s having a relationship. I’m not the relationship type. You are.”
“And you’re just now deciding this? You seemed to have a different attitude last night . . . and this morning.”
“There’s never been a chance for us. Don’t you see that?” He waved his arms, some of his austere facade cracking as his frustration bled out. “We were just fooling ourselves, Briar.”
She shook her head. “I—I was willing to try—”
“Consider it tried,” he said, taking another step away from where she stood in front of the bed, like he couldn’t wait to escape. “You’re not the kind of girl who gets involved with a man like me.”
Her chin went up. She fought against the wave of pain rolling through her. “Maybe you’re right.”
He hesitated, looking at her oddly, and she gave herself a pat on the back for catching him off guard. Did he want her to plead and beg? No. She would reach him a different way. With the truth.
“Today my sister told me I was just like my mother.” At his silent stare, she continued, “She said that because my mother married my father. And she never left him even though he beat her and humiliated her and made her every day a misery. Even though she lived in fear of his voice, she stayed. She stayed and made us stay, too. She still stays with him even though we’ve offered her a place to live. A home with e
ither one of us. She stays with him. This dangerous, abusive man.” Emotion bubbled up in her chest, threatening to overtake her, but she held on.
He finally spoke, “You never told me—”
“About my father? Why would I? He’s not part of my life anymore. He doesn’t deserve to be remembered but I’m telling you now. Maybe I didn’t go to prison, but I know what it’s like to live every day waiting to be free, waiting to escape a shitty existence. I know about abusive men.”
He closed the space separating them and cupped her cheek. “Your sister is wrong. I would never hurt you, Briar.”
“You’re right. I’m not my mother. But you’re leaving me now because you think you’re the same as him . . . this thing I’ve been careful to stay away from.”
“Briar . . . you’re smart enough to see—”
“Smart enough to know you,” she quickly cut in, triumph flashing through her at making her point. “I’m not my mother and you’re not my father.”
His hand dropped from her face. “I never worried that I would hurt you. It’s the rest of the world I worry about. I never planned to kill that boy all those years ago. I just wanted the truth out of him. Justice for Katie. It could happen again. I could lose control. Around you, I feel that way. If anyone ever hurt you—” He stopped and shook his head. “That’s why this ends here.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me,” she insisted, even though she knew as she uttered the words that they would have little impact. His mind was made up.
“You’re not hearing me,” he growled, his eyes growing more distant. Cold, shuttered blue. He was already gone from her. She was talking to air. “I’ve got to be in control now . . . I can’t be that kid I was all those years ago. With you, I feel like him again.” He motioned between the two of them. “This . . . us . . . is me out of control.”
She sucked in a deep breath and angled her head, truly hearing what he was saying even if he did not. “So what you’re saying is that I am no good for you.”
Her words hung between them, a truth that felt as awful as teeth sinking in, latching onto muscle and sinew, striking bone and sending pain vibrating through her. This wasn’t about him being so fucking noble and letting her go because he wasn’t good enough for her.
He thought she was bad for him.
He looked angry and a little bewildered. “I didn’t say that—”
“Yes. You did.” Essentially that was it. The truth.
She backed away, sipping air into lungs that felt raw. “I get it now. It doesn’t matter what I think or feel. It doesn’t matter that I might be a little in love with you.”
As soon as the words escaped, she knew they were a lie. There was no might. She was a lot in love with him, and she stood before him exposed, her heart bared and bleeding.
“Briar.” He said her name gently, pitiably. As though she were a dumb girl who went and fell in love with him when he didn’t want that. When there was no chance in hell he would stick around and love her back. God. She was that dumb girl. “You don’t feel that way. This was sex. Good sex. Sometimes that gets confusing—”
“No,” she snapped. “Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot who doesn’t know the difference between sex and love. I know what I feel.”
For a moment he looked like he might touch her again. If he touched her, she would fall apart.
But he didn’t.
“And,” she added hoarsely, the words sliding from a throat that felt raw with burning tears, ready to fall, “I know what someone looks like when he’s running away. Because he’s scared.”
“I am scared,” he admitted, his jaw locked tight. “Scared of making the same mistakes and going back in that box again.”
So she would be a mistake.
“Understood,” she said, with far more composure than she felt. “So go,” she commanded. When he still stood there staring at her, she blurted out, “Get the fuck out.” The sooner he was gone, the sooner she could fall apart.
He didn’t even flinch at her language. He nodded once, looking so damned stoic. The same impenetrable mask he wore the first day she met him at Devil’s Rock.
Without another word, he slipped out of her bedroom and out the front door.
HE CURSED AS he slammed into his truck and pulled out of Briar’s parking lot. Regret welled up bitter as blood in his mouth, but not for walking away from Briar. That had to happen. She thought she loved him, but she didn’t. She was wrong about that. She couldn’t love him.
He was getting out just in time. Hell, he probably should have gotten out sooner. When he initially tried. Before she showed up at Roscoe’s and threw his world off kilter.
He wouldn’t lose control again, and Briar made him do that. He felt too much around her. He wanted her too much. Cared about her too much. His mind shied from thinking about love in relation to her. It wasn’t love. He came from a world where you staked a claim. Prison taught him about taking, having. Marking what was his. That was his instinct when it came to Briar. Not love.
She was risk, and he had vowed to leave risk behind when he stepped out of that prison.
He regretted ever starting this between them in the first place. He regretted that he hurt her. He should have fucked his way through half of Roscoe’s instead of having something clean and sweet like Briar.
His phone started ringing in his pocket. A quick glance down revealed his aunt’s name. He felt a flash of worry. He hoped everything was okay with Uncle Mac.
He answered, “Hey, Aunt Alice, everything okay?”
“Knox, have you seen the news?”
“No, what’s wrong?”
“There was a riot at the prison.”
His stomach heaved. “North?”
“We just got a call. They took him to Memorial Hospital.”
“What’s his status? Will they let us see him?” He knew the only way they let family visit inmates in the hospital was when the prognosis was grim. As in deathbed grim.
“Not yet. The social worker said he’d call back with an update.”
“I’m on my way. Be there in ten minutes.”
He hung up and stared straight ahead into the setting dusk, his gaze burning. The guilt he felt for leaving North behind twisted and swirled like an angry hive of bees in his stomach. It was just one more thing. One more weight added to the piles of bricks that already crushed him.
He should have been there. Then maybe North wouldn’t be in the hospital now.
He pressed down on the accelerator, eager to get home and be near the phone when they called back.
TWENTY-FOUR
DEEP SHADOWS DRAPED the hospital room. A dim glow radiated from the panel above Reid’s hospital bed, saving the space from complete blackness. Someone outside his room laughed as they passed his door. The footsteps faded. Otherwise the hospital was quiet with that humming quality of a building that never shut off. Like him. Reid was wired tight. Tension knotted his shoulders as he reclined in the bed. He never shut down. Never turned off. He couldn’t afford to. Not until he was a pile of ashes in a box. Then, he’d rest.
Doctors, nurses, and other personnel worked the six floors of Sweet Hill Memorial with seemingly little thought to the felon in Room 321. Exactly the way he wanted it. He’d been here eight days. Eight days since he was taken from Devil’s Rock in an ambulance. In that time, he’d been an exemplary patient. He withstood all the poking and prodding without complaint. He slept and he ate. You could say whatever you wanted about hospital food, but compared to prison food it was five-star cuisine.
He’d used his time to store up energy and plot his next move. He had only one chance and he couldn’t fuck it up.
He’d be sent back soon. He wasn’t hooked up to any beeping machines anymore. His wounds had pretty much healed, leaving only the black lines of stitches and fresh, itching scabs. No threat of i
nfection or continued bleeding. His arm sling could come off in a few days. According to the doctor, he was lucky to be alive. Half an inch to the left and the shiv would have hit his heart.
He’d said nothing when the doctor told him that, looking at him so expectantly. As though Reid might express relief or gratitude. He might be alive and breathing, but he had died a long time ago. Nothing but a walking ghost now.
A ghost with nothing to lose.
Still, starting that fight had been a gamble. He winced, recalling how quickly everything had escalated and turned into a full-on riot. He’d only meant to get himself injured. Instead inmates had died. Guards were injured. He’d seen North go down in a shower of blood. He felt like shit about that. He’d promised Knox he would look out for the kid. Reid had made inquiries and knew he was in a room somewhere else in this hospital. Thankfully, North would recover, but that face of his wouldn’t be so pretty anymore.
And that sucked. More guilt. More sins to heap at his feet. But it was done. He, better than anyone, knew you couldn’t change the past. He just had to make sure it meant something. That it wasn’t for nothing. Then he could go back to rotting away for the rest of his life.
He took a deep, mostly pain-free breath as a nurse entered his room for a final bed check of the night. He was the last to be told anything concerning himself, but he knew. Even if he hadn’t spied the paperwork on the doctor’s clipboard authorizing his release, Reid knew. His time here was done. It was now or never. He had to act tonight.
“Are you comfortable? Can I get you anything? Another pillow?” Nadine asked as she adjusted the one beneath his head, bringing her chest close to his face. It was a game she liked to play. Tease the hard-up convict. Lingering touches on his body that didn’t feel quite so clinical. It’d been a while but he knew when a woman was into him.