Hard Knox

But nothing was simple when it came to second chances, or Beck and me for that matter.

  “You know what I call second chances?” I crossed my arms.

  They shrugged their reply.

  “A second chance at failure. You know, just in case you didn’t get good and smeared and scarred the first go ‘round.”

  Rob shook his head, chuckling. “You’re weird, Charlie.”

  “Coming from you, that just might be the best compliment I’ve ever been paid. Thank you.”

  If the guys’ faces going blank hadn’t gotten my attention, the entire house seeming to instantly go silent did the job. By the time I turned to see what had caught literally everyone in the house’s attention, a chorus of hoots and whistles was sprouting up from the front of the house. The crowd seemed to be parting quickly, but before it had opened all the way, I already knew who was coming. Although why the masses were whistling and cat-calling was a mystery.

  When Knox’s face cut through the crowd, he didn’t look pissed. No, that was the tame, tame version of what he was. He had the look of a man who had a volcano inside him that was moments away from going Krakatoa all over the place. When his eyes locked on mine, a brief moment of relief washed over his face, but that was quickly erased by the expression that put all other pissed-off faces to shame. I was so busy staring at his face that I didn’t notice at first what clearly everyone else was only seeing.

  But when I finally did notice what resided south of his face, my jaw dropped, along with my stomach and just about everything else. I supposed I could wager a guess as to who those jockstraps out front had been reserved for—those who’d shown up without a toga. As Knox crossed the rest of the main room, every eye on him as he powered through it naked save for a scrap of cloth covering his below-the-belt region and the elastic straps keeping it all together, I thoroughly accepted that when Knox had told me he didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone thought of him, he wasn’t lying.

  By the time he’d stormed up to me, I was on my fourth silent verbal chastisement to keep my eyes north of his belly button and, preferably, north of his chest . . . although his face was just as difficult to look at as other parts I was trying to avoid. So, the neck. That was what I set my sights on as Knox skidded to a stop in front of me. Naked. Save for a jockstrap. In a room full of people all staring at us.

  Not exactly how I’d hoped my incognito night would go.

  “What in the hell are you doing, Charlie?” His voice was quivering, almost matching the quivering of his body.

  He was holding back a hurricane of anger, but I wasn’t sure how much longer he could or would hold it at bay. I’d never witnessed Knox unleashing that hurricane, but I’d seen enough of these kinds of moments to make me certain I didn’t want to be in the same zip code when it happened.

  In an effort to look like I was as relaxed and chill as he wasn’t, I kept my face flat and willed my voice to do the same. “Knox, take it down a notch or five. I’m fine. Perfectly safe.” I motioned at the guys around me, mainly Beck, who were all gaping at Knox like they would have been guffawing on the ground if they weren’t fully aware that he’d take his topping-the-charts anger out on them if one so much as snickered.

  His eyes darkened to obsidian and narrowed on the guys around me. “You don’t look safe. You look surrounded.”

  Beck was the one with the courage or, in this case, the one with the biggest death wish. “Surrounded by what? Decent guys? The kind who are pretty much the opposite of you?”

  When Beck motioned between Knox and him, Knox studied Beck’s arm like it would be as easy to snap as a twig. That was when I decided to not-so-casually angle myself between them. It didn’t last long. Stepping in front of me, Knox backed me away from Beck and the other guys. Now I was pressed against Knox’s back. His bare back. His bare backside.

  Shit, I shouldn’t be getting woozy spells when two of my friends were looking like they wanted to put the other six feet under.

  “I’ll give you we’re about as opposite as two people get,” Knox said, barring my way when I tried to come around him again, “but the ‘decent’ title goes to neither of us.”

  Apparently done with Beck and his brothers, Knox spun on me. “Are you okay?” The words came out slow, clipped, like he had to censor them first.

  I held my arms out and spun. “I’m fine.”

  The second flash of relief registered on his face before it shadowed again. “Good, I’ll move on to my next question.” He had to open his mouth and work his jaw loose before he could continue. “What are you doing here without me?”

  I doubted my answer would ease him down from his flagpole of rage, so I turned his question on him. “What are you doing here in a jockstrap?” My voice cracked twice—once at the jock part and again at the strap.

  “Funny story. Let me tell it to you.” Knox pulled a long breath in through his nose. “When I got back to my place after work—”

  “I’m not sure the word work applies to what you do.”

  His face darkened. The muscles running down his neck quivered. Knox was not in the mood to be amused, or find me amusing, or feel any kind of amusement whatsoever. Noted. Best to keep the wiseass comments to myself and let the man tell his story.

  “When I got back and found you and the truck gone, I called you. Five times.” His glare fell to my purse.

  I may have turned the ringer off on my phone in anticipation of him blowing it up when he found me MIA.

  “From there, it was pretty easy to figure where you were, so I got right back on my bike, made it here in less than five minutes, and oops, I forgot my toga since I was kind of in a hurry to get to the girl I’ve gone to every fucking length in the world to keep safe for the last two months before she decided to step into the pit of vipers all alone.”

  A good half of the room’s attention had shifted to Knox’s and my “impassioned” conversation. The other half continued to gape at some part or parts of his bare body.

  “When the derelicts at the front door told me I could either come in wearing a toga or this thing, I stripped down, tugged this son of a bitch on, and I’m pretty sure you can fill in the rest from there.” Knox’s chest rose and fell so hard that it brushed mine with every breath he took.

  Like they’d been programmed to do it, my hands moved toward him, one closing in on his chest, the other circling around to his back. When I realized what I was doing, I forced my hands back to my sides and distracted myself with a question. “Why didn’t you just kick those ‘derelicts’’ asses and barrel in clothed and still in possession of your dignity?”

  “Because doing it like this was a quicker way to get to you than plowing through every last Kappa Kappa jockstrap in this place, and because I don’t give—”

  “A flying fuck what anyone thinks about you. Yeah, I caught that the first fifty times you said it.” I backed into the wall, hoping the distance would simmer down the want and longing I felt having him so close. “And did you just call them a bunch of jockstraps when you’re the only guy in here wearing one?”

  Knox’s palm drove into the wall beside my head. I’d clearly pushed him to his limit. But I wasn’t going to censor myself and mold what I said and did because I was worried about Knox Jagger’s limits. Just because he had a difficult time controlling himself didn’t mean I had to control myself for him. I was close to shoving him away when someone distracted him.

  Beck came up beside us. “Ease up, Jagger. You’re scaring her.”

  “I’m not scared,” I said. Maybe I should have been, but I could never feel scared of Knox.

  “You should be scared.” Knox’s voice went low. “Because either in that room or the kitchen or the porch or the backyard or this very room, he’s here. He’s watching you. He’s waiting for your most vulnerable moment. He’s waiting to get you alone to finish what he started. He’s waiting, Charlie.” The skin between Knox’s brows creased as his anger changed into something more anxious.

  When I’d left t
he house without him, I knew he’d be angry, but I hadn’t guessed he’d be so scared. From the way he looked at me, a person would have thought I’d just been dangled inside a cage of hungry lions. Fear so primal was etched into every part of his face I didn’t know how to ease it. So I just reached for his hand, knotted my fingers through his, and held it tight.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him.

  Whether from my hand finding his or from my words, half of the worry seemed to melt off of him. When he let out a long sigh, the rest of the worry seemed to follow.

  “Come on, Beck. You’re not going to school to become a garbage man, so leave the trash alone,” what sounded like Dorian’s voice said. “Let’s take it somewhere else.”

  Knox spun on him, keeping my hand in his, his other hand lifted and curled in a familiar way. “You can call me garbage until you’re blue in the face, but if you call Charlie garbage once, if you even think about calling her garbage, that will be the last word out of your mouth.”

  Dorian crossed his arms and put on an unaffected face, but he took a couple of steps back. “Because you’ll kill me?” More sarcasm than not was in his voice.

  Knox shook his head. “No, because I’ll break your jaw in so many places you’ll be communicating through sign language.”

  Dorian huffed. “Better learn the sign for garbage then.” He shared a laugh with Rob, but that laugh was snuffed out as Knox grabbed Dorian’s toga and pulled him toward him.

  “Unless you want me to actually kill you, you’d better shut up and get far away from me. If I see your face again tonight, it’s not going to end well.” Every muscle was stretched beneath Knox’s skin as he lifted Dorian.

  “Knox,” I warned, shaking my head. Dorian’s dad headed up a large law firm in Louisiana. This wasn’t the kid Knox should vent his anger on—as much as he might have deserved it.

  Glancing at my hand curled around his shoulder, Knox slowly set Dorian down. I exhaled when Dorian was on the ground again and Knox’s fingers were uncurling from his toga. Although, of course, he couldn’t resist shoving Dorian halfway across the room.

  “Now’s the part where you guys circle up and talk about who you’re so going to nail tonight . . . if only in your head and hand,” Knox said.

  Paxton and Rob blocked Dorian’s way as he charged our way. The kid had few, if any, survival instincts.

  “Maybe if you’d stop leaving a trail of spurned girls in your wake, the rest of us could have a bigger slice of the pie,” Dorian said.

  A hard laugh rolled from Knox. “If the game I’m getting with the college girls is negatively affecting you guys’s games, then—here’s a sobering truth—you guys have no game. None.”

  I bit my lip and looked at the ground to keep from smiling. Knox was right. No one but the two of us knew of his no-college-girls policy. If Beck and his brothers were having a tough time “scoring,” it wasn’t because of Knox and his rumored coed exploits.

  “But you’ve got game?” Rob practically spit at Knox.

  Knox extended his arms. “Guys who have it don’t need to talk about it.”

  When Beck headed over to help Dorian and Paxton with Rob, I could tell from Beck’s expression that he wasn’t going to leave quietly.

  “You might have mad game, Jagger, but that’s about all you’ve got.” When Beck’s gaze slipped from Knox to me, his forehead creased.

  Knox stepped forward and raised a finger . . . but not the one I would have assumed. “I’ve got more honor in my little finger than you’ll ever have, so you’d better watch what you’re implying.”

  Beck didn’t bristle. Instead, he shrugged. “You’ve got more of something, but I think it’s centralized in your jock and requires antibiotics.”

  After a round of laughs and high-fives, Beck and his brothers moved to leave. When they were almost in the other room, Beck looked back at me and waved. That seemed to upset Knox more than any of the things they’d said.

  The tension was thick, so I did my best to slice through it. “Hi, honey. How was your night at work?”

  Knox’s back was still to me when he answered. “My night was going great until I came home to find you gone. From there, it’s pretty much gone downhill.”

  My plan was to avoid engaging him in talk about my solo party-going. I wasn’t sure his blood pressure could take any more. “Did you win?”

  “I always win. I’m five hundred dollars richer.” He reached back to pat his . . . With a sigh, he added, “My wallet’s five hundred dollars richer.”

  Nice, Charlie, you’ve got him off the topic that brings him close to blowing his lid. Keep going. “Five hundred dollars.” I shook my head, imagining how quickly he’d earned that money—how quickly someone else had lost it. “Who are these people who bet against you?”

  “People dying to earn the title of the one who broke Hard Knox’s undefeated record.”

  His back was still to me, and as nice as it was, I’d really rather have looked him in the face when we were having a conversation. “The world outside Sinclair calls you Hard Knox too? Why?” I stepped around in front of him.

  His gaze was traveling around the room, seeming to take in everything. Since a good ten minutes had gone by since Knox had come charging in, most everyone had gotten their fill of gaping and gone back to doing what they’d been doing—most of the males at least; plenty of the females were staring at Knox like they wanted to massage oil into his skin with their hair.

  “Because I’m hard to beat,” he answered in a tone that suggested it should have been obvious. “Really, it should be Impossible Knox, but people love their cute double meanings.”

  Studying him while he studied the room, I realized how appropriate his nickname was. “You’re hard to them because you can’t lose, you’re hard to me because you’re as easy to open as a strong-headed clam . . . You’re just hard all the way around, aren’t you?”

  That was when Knox’s eyes dropped to mine—with a familiar glint in them. “Why yes, yes, I am.” He capped his words with a wink.

  I gave his chest a light shove. “Put your filthy thoughts away before someone gets dirty.” The glint in his eyes grew. “What if the person who gets dirty from my filth is you?”

  I pretended my stomach hadn’t bottomed out from his words and the way he’d said them, the way his expression had darkened, and where my thoughts went. “I’m pristine.” Finding my voice a few notes high, I cleared my throat and tried again. “Good luck trying to get this shiny, sparkling vessel dirty. Speaking of dirty . . .” I unwound one of the layers of my toga. “Let’s get you covered up, if only partially.”

  “You think I give a shit what anyone thinks of me?” Knox stilled my hands as I fumbled with the sheet.

  “No, I don’t. However, I’m having a difficult time doing any thinking with you”—I motioned at him before motioning a bit lower—“in that.”

  His head tilted. “Why?”

  “Because you’re naked save for a few unfortunate scraps of fabric.”

  “Yeah, but you wouldn’t care if that guy or that one or any of them were sporting the same thing. Why are you in such a hurry to get me covered?”

  Knox didn’t fight his smile as I ripped a strip off of my toga. His smile widened when I couldn’t seem to rip it fast enough.

  “Can we not do this right now, Knox? Please? Can’t I just want to cover you up and not have to go into the whys behind it?” Once I had a chunk free, I cinched it around his waist, adjusting it so it didn’t ride so low I could see the stomach muscles that tapered down into his . . . A flame singed my throat when I imagined what it would be like to run my thumbs down those muscles with Knox above me, kissing my neck as he moved inside . . .

  Knox’s fingers brushed my cheek. “You’re blushing. Again. I would have thought you’d have had your blusher surgically removed by now.”

  “I’m not blushing; I’m flustered. There’s a huge difference.” When I’d knotted the fabric around Knox’s waist, I adjusted it
a bit higher then double-knotted it.

  “Flustered over what?”

  “Flustered over just about everything that’s happened since when you entered that door. A lot of fluster-worthy material spanned that period.” Of course, once I let go of his makeshift toga, it slid much too low on his hips, seeming to just barely hang there.

  “Like what I strutted into the party wearing?” Knox swayed his hips, clearly savoring the rise he was getting out of me.

  “The only thing that crossed my mind about your party outfit was that you’d have no panty-stuffed pockets to empty out at the end of the night.”

  “For a self-proclaimed cold-hearted journalist, you are a truly terrible liar, Miss Chase.” Knox swayed his hips again.

  I rolled my eyes, though I wanted to do something else in response. “Why don’t you hang out here, Magic Mike, and entertain the girls while I work some magic of my own and try to catch our suddenly-shy roofie dropper?”

  The lightness left Knox’s face. “Our scumbag’s become shy because he knows we’re after him. He knows he’ll get his ass handed to him on silver plate if we catch him, and he’s got a lot to lose. He’s being careful.” Like it was instinctual, Knox slid closer to me—so close there was barely any space separating us. “Which means he’s not going to come into the same room as you when I’m with you. Because he’s clearly after you, he’ll show himself only when you’re alone.”

  “Kind of like I was before you came storming in here, beating your chest and establishing dominance. If our guy was planning on making an appearance, you just put him back in his weasel hole for another month.”

  Knox’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know he hadn’t already made his appearance?”

  “Um, because the only guys around me, other than the ones getting busy under togas, were Beck and his band of merry men.”

  Knox stared at me, waiting. Waiting for what, I didn’t know.

  “Exactly,” he said, his tone the equivalent of a nudge.

  “You think Beck or one of his guys is responsible?” The idea was so preposterous, I laughed. Those guys talked a lot, but the closest they came to breaking laws was jay-walking. They all had bright, trust-fund-filled futures they wanted to hang on to.