Fear. Anxiety… Excitement.
It’s the last one that has me rethinking this impulsive decision to show up at Knox’s apartment above the shop unannounced. Only a couple of hours ago, I watched his Escalade speed away from the house as if Hell had sprung a leak and demons chased him. Maybe that isn’t such a far-off comparison. Knox has demons—dark, heavy, unrelenting.
Yeah, me, too. Some warped with age and dusty. Others new and hungry.
My old ones, they wear the face of my father. Of my insecurity, shame, and sense of unworthiness that are inheritances from an alcoholic parent to a neglected child.
The new ones… Well, they resemble the man behind this locked door. My lust for him is my dirty little secret. Even guilt over wanting my husband’s brother can’t stop the filthy dreams, or the need that reminds me that I didn’t die with Connor.
That need is what has me hesitant to knock on the door. Last time we were alone, I bared myself to him—literally. And he’d ended up rejecting me.
But it’d been for the best. Though humiliation still stings me like a thousand angry bees, I can accept the truth of it now. Sex with Knox—my employer, my friend, mybrother-in-law—is about thirty-one different flavors of crazy. “Inappropriate” doesn’t even begin to cover it. But “forbidden” and “practically incestuous” does.
And shit, I can just imagine Katherine’s reaction to finding out. She would disown both of us. The scene at dinner trips across my mind, the audio twisted up to maximum. My less-than-successful announcement of moving out. Katherine’s small, desperate pleas for me not to leave her. Knox’s rumbled defense.
Katherine’s ugly accusation.
Nausea churns and rolls inside me. Jude had told me about those words she’d hurled at Knox on that terrible night that’s both fuzzy and seared into my brain. But she’d been inconsolable and incoherent with grief then. Tonight… Yes, she’d been emotional, her fragile stability shaky, but there’d been no excuse. She’d inflicted a horrible wound to Knox. I glimpsed it in that green gaze that usually hid all manner of secrets. But he couldn’t conceal the hurt.
No, with Katherine and Knox’s already strained relationship, I can’t be responsible for irrevocably tearing them apart.
And then, as selfish as it is, there’s my need to have Katherine and Dan in my life. My own parents were… Yeah, there’s no other way to put it. They were fucked-up individuals. Just because people are able to reproduce and have children, doesn’t mean they should. And my parents are included in that group. When I met Connor, I didn’t just gain a lover, friend, and later a husband. I was gifted with a family—brothers and loving, affectionate parents. They filled a hole in my soul that I’d convinced myself I didn’t need or want filled anymore. I can’t lose that connection. That acceptance.
With that resolve lodged in my chest like a hard chip of ice, I lift my fist again, and this time, it connects. Several seconds pass, and I rap the door again. I know he’s here; his truck is parked downstairs.
“I’m not going away, Knox,” I mutter, raising my hand to knock again. Harder. Pound if necessary. I’m not going anywhere.
The door swings open, and Knox stands in the doorway.
Bare-chested.
Sweaty.
Breathing heavy.
Fuck.
Images of what he could’ve been doing before answering the door flood my mind like a swollen, overflowing river. And they all include a woman under him. In front of him. Over him.
Mortification blasts through me, a sharp-toothed emotion, as green as Knox’s eyes, nipping at its heels. What the hell? I have no right to be jealous. He’s not mine, and we don’t have that kind of relationship, regardless of our little…slip days ago. But logic does nothing to ease the burn in my veins or the tightening of my stomach over a nameless, faceless woman.
A woman who knows what it’s like to have Knox straining over her, those lean hips flexing, his cock powering into her, filling her…stretching her…
I suck in a breath, expanding my suddenly constricted lungs. Hoping to cool the furnace that has clicked on under my skin. Even the thought of him with someone else can’t douse this inconvenient lust for him and his warrior’s body.
“What are you doing here?” he demands, gravel in his voice. Frowning, he grabs the doorjamb, black wraps covering his hands from wrists to knuckles. Relief slaps me like a wet rag across the face at the sight of those wraps because that means he’s been working out, not fucking some woman. I blink, a little shocked at the intensity of it.
Fascination with Knox. Crazy. Inappropriate. Forbidden.
I chant the last three words like a mantra over and over in my head. Reminding myself why I can’t ever suck on the skin right under his navel like it’s a Jolly Rancher.
“I came by to see you, obviously,” I reply, focusing on his scowling face. Not waiting for his invitation—because I know there’s a good chance there won’t be one—I slip under his arm and enter his apartment.
It’s been a long while since I’ve been up here—the night I broke down after my first day at the shop, actually—but now, as then, I’m struck by the simplicity of the place. The same exposed brick from downstairs forms two walls of the living room that opens into a shared dining room, with a galley kitchen to the left. Two large windows that almost stretch to the ceiling permit the pale glow from the streetlights into the room, adding to the light from the vintage brass and smoked glass chandelier that hangs from the ceiling. That chandelier is the fanciest thing in the apartment. Generic, mismatched furniture occupies the rooms like strangers who just happen to be in the same place at the same time. Nothing personal like framed pictures or knickknacks or even his artwork like he has hanging downstairs in the shop decorate the cherry wood coffee table or walls.
If not for the gym equipment that I glimpsed in the second bedroom the last time I was here, and the incredibly large collection of anime DVDs stored in a glass cabinet, this place could’ve been rented and lived in by anyone. In spite of all the money he earned fighting, nothing but the shop, that expensive workout collection, and the house he bought his mother shows it.
No one could ever accuse Knox of being a hoarder.
