A startled laugh escapes me before I can catch it. Sometimes I think Knox was born centuries too late. With his huge, powerful, warrior’s body, razor-sharp intensity, and laconic manner, he could’ve been a Spartan. Which is why, when he reveals his dry humor, it always catches me off guard and gives me an inexplicable little thrill of delight. While my feelings tend to explode all over the place, splattering everything and everyone like a paintball gun, Knox is a vault, with every emotion locked up tight behind that broad chest. Even when Connor died, that stoicism didn’t crack. I half hated, half envied him that at the time. The only instances I’ve seen him lose that impassivity is in the ring…and the one memorable time I accidentally saw him having sex.
My belly twists, and the ache that pulses there slides lower at the memory, leaving a warm, bright trail. By the time that sweet pain settles between my legs, I’m surprised my flesh isn’t lighting up like a damn glowworm.
So inconvenient and inappropriate, this raging case of lust for my brother-in-law.
“I know this is”—I shrug, searching for a word and coming up with a lame—“surprising.”
He arches a dark eyebrow. “Surprising,” he repeats. “That isn’t the word I would’ve chosen.What the fuckfits, though.”
“Those are three words,” I mumble, and then I sigh because, yes, I’m stalling. Jesus, sometimes I still feel like that scared kid afraid to speak her mind, terrified of disappointing someone. Of making them mad. Bad things happened when you annoyed or irritated a drunk. But Knox isn’t my father. One, I’ve never seen him down more than two beers in a night. And two, I’ve never dreamed and touched myself to visions of my sperm donor. Eww. Mimicking Knox, I cross my arms. But while his stance screams badass, mine probably radiates, “I’m trying to keep my shit together.” “I can’t live in Dan and Katherine’s house for the rest of my life,” I say, hearing the defensiveness in the tone.
“I agree.”
That steals some of the steam building up inside me. Scrubbing my hands down the fronts of my thighs, I cross the small distance to the black, leather tattoo chair and drop down onto it.
“They aren’t going to see it that way,” I murmur, not needing to clarify who “they” are. His mother, stepfather, and I are close—even more so after Connor’s death. I close my eyes and release a slow, deep breath. Used to be a time when I couldn’t even think those words—Connor’s death. Connor died. Connor. The pain would flay me, stripping emotional skin from my bones. I didn’t scream aloud, but the cries would echo in my head like a crazy-ass banshee. Now, two years later, the agony had dulled to a sore ache. Still there but bearable, a reminder of an injury. Even forgotten for small stretches of time.
But for Katherine, the suffering hasn’t diminished. Her sorrow is as sharp as the day she found out her son had died in a stadium locker room from a ruptured brain aneurysm. Connor was—is—her son, and I can’t imagine losing a child, no matter his age. She’s clung to her family to get her through. Well—I glance at Knox and meet his shuttered, dark green gaze—most of her family. She considers me her last living piece of Connor, and my leaving is going to hurt her. Badly.
But I can’t let that keep me frozen in this…half-life anymore. Moving is just the first step. When I met Connor, I dropped out of college, choosing to move in with him, to support him and his career. To just be with him. Now, I’m a twenty-four-year-old widow with no college education, living in her in-laws’ house. Not what I envisioned for myself. I enjoy working at the shop as the manager—really love it. I’m good at it, and I have so many ideas how Knox can grow, expand his brand, maybe open more tattoo shops. To gather the courage to approach him with my thoughts, I need to learn more about marketing, promotion, and business. And to accomplish that, I have to return to school.
That’s step two.
Yeah, I’m trying to become a big girl.
“No, they’re not,” he agrees once more. There’s no softness or gentleness to his voice, but I don’t need either at the moment. If he did soften, I might cave and decide to put this move off like I’ve done for a couple of months now. “Are you ready to face it?”
Again, we’re on that same wavelength, and I don’t need to ask what he’s referring to. “Face their sadness? Hurt? The sense of betrayal?” I shake my head and spread my hands out, palms up. My heart pounds, lodging in the base of my throat as if I’m telling them at this moment. “How the hell do I prepare myself for that?”
Knox snags his chair and lowers his big frame into it, never removing his steady, piercing gaze from my face. Jesus, he’s… Handsome isn’t the right word. That’s too anemic, too…tame. Even though I can tell from the strain around his eyes and the tautness of his skin over his slanting cheekbones that he had a rough night, there’s still a wildness, a harsh rawness in his fierce, angular features that isn’t softened a bit by the lush fullness of his mouth or the dark brown scruff that’s a little thicker than a five o’clock shadow but nowhere near verging intoDuck Dynastyterritory. Thank God. He’s beautiful in the way of a black leopard—powerful and dangerous, muscles covered in sleekness. And all that focus and intensity. When he fixes that on a woman while he’s fucking her, it must be exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. An image flashes across my mind before I can strike it down.
His hard, relentlessly male features are dark and stamped with a carnality that is both cruel and sexual. Green eyes hooded; skin pulled tight over sharp cheekbones; full, sensual mouth even fuller, more sensual, the corner curled into a small snarl.
Fuck.
I struggle not to fidget but fail. A small, subtle shift of my hips, and heat licks at my sex, flicking my clit. Please God, let him take the betraying movement as nerves rather than arousal. Catastrophic doesn’t even begin to cover the mortification that would consume me if he discovered my inappropriate, damn abnormal fascination and…preoccupation with him. Yes, preoccupation sounds so much better than obsession. Still, doesn’t matter what you call it. Fascination, preoccupation, obsession—they’re all so wrong when I possess them for my dead husband’sbrother.
In some people’s books, it would make me a slut, at best. A deviant, at worst. Or a deviant slut.
One of those books would belong to Katherine and Dan. And the thought of hurting them, of piling more despair on top of Katherine’s already fragile shoulders… I’d die rather than do that to the woman who’s been more of a mother to me than the one who birthed me.
“You can’t,” he answers my question. “You just do it and brace yourself for the fallout.” His eyes narrow on me. “Are you ready for this, Eden? To move out and live on your own?”
If it’d been anyone else asking, I might take offense. Might, hell. I would definitely take offense. Just the suggestion that I’m weak, that I can’t fend for myself, support myself, sets my teeth on edge. I’ve survived what most people have only seen on Lifetime movies—a drunk father and not-all-the-way-there mother, homelessness at eighteen, the death of my husband. I might appear like a good Chicago wind could blow me over, but I’m stronger than anything life has thrown at me.
But that’s not what he meant. For five years, I haven’t been on my own. Three months after meeting Connor, I moved into his cramped, one-bedroom apartment. Then when he died, I lived with his parents. Am I ready for the loneliness that might eat me alive? For the silence that might press in on me?
The truth?
I don’t know.
But I’m ready to find out.
And moving out is just the first step. But it’s the most important one.
“If I don’t do it now, I might never do it,” I reply, shifting my attention to the muscular forearms resting on his thick thighs and the large hands clasped together between them. “It would be easier to stay with Katherine and Dan. But I need to…”Get on with my lifetrembles on my tongue. God, that sounds so cold, so dismissive. As if I’m really saying,get over Connor. And maybe…maybe both are right. I’ll never forget Connor—how could I forget my first love, my husband?—but I can’t remain in this limbo, either. My fingers tangle together of their own will. Though I despise the gesture and what it reveals, I can’t stop the restless, anxious twisting. “The house. It’s…” The words stick in my throat, and I swallow to force the explanation out. “I love your parents, but I feel like I’m not progressing there. At first, I needed to be there, for them as well as myself. But sometimes I feel like I’m…like I’m suffocating.” Horrified at what I just said about his parents, I jerk my head up and stare into his eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean…”
The guilt gnaws at me, because Ididmean it. It makes me a selfish, ungrateful bitch, but I did.
