Christ, I’m fucking unraveling.
She squeezes my thigh. Again, like she knows. Like she feels the storm in me.
“Bear,” she says softly. “Thank you for bringing me.”
Her voice cracks something in me. A seam I thought welded shut loosens.
She isn’t running. She isn’t asking for more while calling me a monster. She’s just grateful.
And that simple truth leaves me wrecked. I pick up her small, delicate hand, bring it up to my mouth, and kiss her smooth skin.
She smiles, wrecking me harder.
We drive in heavy silence, the mountain growing closer, steadier with every mile. My hands ease on the wheel the higher we climb, but the thought won’t leave me.
I could lose her down there—to that smile, to the ease she wears in the middle of town, to the way she fits everywhere I don’t.
The idea claws at me.
I glance sideways. She’s watching the trees now, content, my T-shirt slipping off her shoulder, lips curved faintly as if she still carries the flower shop smell with her.
And I know, cold and absolute, that I’d break whatever or whoever dares to take her away from me.
13
KNOX
Three days.
Three long, testy, beautiful fucking days with my petal curled up in my bed, out of commission, snapping and softening by turns.
The first day after the visit, I carried that knot in my gut like a stone, waiting for her to bring up town again.
Waiting for her to say the word leave.
But she didn’t, thank fuck. Each time she blinked up at me from the pillows with those stormy eyes and made conversation about something else, that knot eased just a fraction, only to tighten again when she shifted and winced from soreness.
By the second day, I was dealing with a whole other problem—her damn period.
My petal was temperamental as fuck during her time of the month.
The blood didn’t faze me.
Hell, I’d bleed for her, with her, over her if it came to it.
No, it was the fire in her eyes, the sharp tongue, the way she flinched at my shadow one minute, then clawed for me the next.
Not ashamed to admit I was out of my fucking depth.
May have hovered too much. She slapped me for it.
I should’ve been pissed. But the second her palm cracked across my chest, she froze—then dropped to her knees like she’d sinned in church, and wrapped that pretty mouth around my cock.
Her apology sucked my balls dry, rattling my spine until I was shaking like a damn sapling in a hurricane.
First time I’d ever been slapped and sucked in the same breath.
Wouldn’t mind it happening again.
