He releases me and I trip over the leg of the table as I do everything in my power to cover the exposed crotch of my panties and hoist my jean shorts back up over my bare ass. My hands shake badly and Knox mutters a terse order to the others to step aside and let me through.
They obey and I’m running and my vision is blurred and I want so badly just to fix my clothes, flip back my hair and keep on serving drinks, but there’s a knot of hysteria in my lungs that’s swimming up the length of my throat and in my head it sounds like screaming. A woman screaming. I know her voice, I know her name, I know her face. Is it me? I’m not sure.
Wolf whistles chase me out into the night air and I run into its embrace, and don’t stop running until I reach the trees. I collapse against the first one I find. It’s a sapling, and shivers under my weight as I brace my shoulder against the slim, coarse trunk and feel for the buttons and the zipper along the front of my shorts. I manage to get both undone, but it seems to take hours.
Like some puzzle I knew how to solve once, but no longer remember, I can’t get my clothes to do what I want. My hands are not my own. They’re silver. Stained by moonlight. I close my eyes as goosebumps break out across my arms though I’m far from cold.
The wind whispers my name and I jump. “Holy shit. How…how long have you been standing there?” My voice wavers as I drink in the sight of Knox. Standing just a dozen paces away, he’s wearing a black tee shirt, black jeans, and a grimace. The moonlight falls across his skin and glints off of the barrel of his gun.
I wonder if my expression betrays fear, because the moment I turn towards him, his crude, near barbaric severity softens. I gasp at the unraveling and he edges back, lifting both hands to shoulder level. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. Funny, because I hadn’t even considered that.
I must look vulnerable enough though for him to say it and needing to correct the impression, I step back into the shadows of the trees so that he cannot see me. From that safety, I stammer, “I fucking know that. I didn’t need you to follow me and I didn’t need you to stand up for me in there.” Jesus, it’s a lie. Because I need everything, and nothing. Just the words he said before and his hand against my cheek. A promise I can believe in. A taste of something gentle. A different life.
His eyebrows come together and the hollows beneath his prominent brow make him look demonic. His lips draw back from his clenched teeth and all at once he stows his gun in the back of his jeans, I presume, to keep from shooting me with it. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you and your constant need to be a man and be in charge and defend the poor and defenseless?” I rebuff lamely. “I don’t need you! Just get away from me.”
“You know what – I should have just left you. I should have seen you across the bar pinned to that wall being assaulted and just let him fucking…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, but his face twists like he’s sucking on something sour to the point that he’s no longer recognizable. He’s vicious and violent and reminds me for a brief and harrowing second of Spade and I remember the bastard’s hands on my ass, hear his voice in my ear, taste his salty sweet skin.
These memories, though from moments ago, should be gone by now, locked away, but instead I’m drowning in them and my heart is racing too fast and I’m breathing so damn hard and shivering though it’s as warm as an Arabian winter. The sticky heat wraps around me and I imagine that it’s the only thing holding me up. I stagger and moonlight cuts across my hand as I reach for the tree, but it’s disappeared.
I gasp and everything disappears but two men in the moonlight. No. That’s one man twice. His back is turned and he’s walking away from me and it’s as if he’s taken all of the light with him because it’s suddenly so dark and I’m afraid and a child and in my ears I hear pounding, like a train, though I know it’s a fist on the door coming to take me away.
“Please don’t let them take me away,” I say, though he can’t hear me. “Knox,” I gasp and the air comes shorter and harder. I clutch my chest and my right knee wobbles dangerously. “Knox.”
He twists and seeing me, hesitates. Suddenly, he’s running and I’m hit by a wall even though he’s far away. “Mer,” he shouts, but I’m lost, falling for hours and days until the grass punches into my spine. It’s hard and scratchy against my legs and back and I want to stand, but I can’t seem to catch hold of anything to pull me to my feet. There’s nothing for a moment, but the sound of me dying, and then in the next there’s him.
He rises over the horizon of the grass before dropping to his knees. He grabs me roughly as he takes a seat and drags me onto his lap. He’s leaning against something and I’m surprised when his tee shirt comes down over my head. He gathers up my wrists and holds them to my chest and uses his whole body to warm me.
“Shh.” His voice is a command and I am able to find solace in that. “Follow my breath.” I can feel the rise and fall of his chest but it means nothing to me. “Mer,” he barks. He takes my chin between his fingers and forces me to look at him. Envious irises ringed by an even darker green. “Breathe.”
“D…d…dying,” I rasp and my throat closes entirely or maybe it’s just his hand around my neck, cradling my head.
“Plumeria.” His voice is a shout that pummels like a jackhammer through me. He calls me by my full name. Not many people call me that and no one has ever spoken those four syllables with such importance. I feel commanded by it. Compelled. Lifted.
I black out but resurface what feels like years later, though I know it was only the span of a much-needed breath. His hand is on my forehead, lifting up my bangs, and my crown rests on the broad pillow his massive shoulder creates. I can’t move at all, but I can hear the air coming in and out of my lungs and his deep bass whispering, “Like that. Exactly like that. In and out, even, calm. Nothing’s going to hurt you, not while I’m here.”
“But…you’ll leave.” I wish I can take back the words the moment I say them but I can’t.
His arms tighten around me and I am rendered immobile by his size and the sheer density of him. But I don’t feel threatened. I feel safe. “I’m not going anywhere, Plumeria, and nothing is going to hurt you.”
He’s true to his word and as a sequence of familiar constellations pass by slowly overhead, he doesn’t move except to pull gently on my hair. My breathing is back to normal and I no longer shake, but I still don’t get up even though I should. My brain is mud, though I know that’s only part of the reason.
The larger part is that seated with him in his heat and his protection is the happiest and safest I can ever remember being and I’m afraid if I so much as flinch and sever the sensation I’ll burst into tears. This is the last I can ever see of this man. No one was ever supposed to see this part of me. To erase evidence of this night from my life’s history book, he too must go into the box of memories. The box of pain.
The haunting notes of a wind chime sound in the distance and I begin to close my eyes as a sudden fierce sleep grips me. Beneath his breath, Knox curses and a second later those bells become voices.
“Knox!” I don’t recognize the speaker, but Knox must because he shifts out from underneath me and sets me gently on the grass.
He glances down at me and must read the obvious intent in my expression because he issues another quiet order. “Don’t move.” He turns to face the cursing voices without budging from my side. “I’m alright.”
“Christ, brother, we were worried that Padre and that walking asshole had…”
“Don’t come over here,” Knox shouts and another heaping of fear freezes my bones at the thought of being discovered here by four other men when I’m already at my most vulnerable.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I’m fucking Plumeria,” he says, holding out his arms as if it were the most obvious explanation. “Now get the fuck back.” The grunts and whistles of approval make me smile on the inside, though
the grin doesn’t quite touch my lips. I had wanted to fuck Knox, hadn’t I? Had being the operative word. Not anymore. Sleeping with Knox now would ruin me.
“You know the rules, brother,” Dixon chides.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. No girls at the house. That’s why we got a field.”
“Good.” The jangling of keys.
Knox stretches above his head and snatches something silver from the air. Starlight. “Thanks.”
The distant sound of voices fade and when Knox looks down at me, the pressure of his gaze is brutal enough to wound. I wince and try to stand, hoping to move away from him but he’s there. He’s everywhere. His hands slide around my lower back, pulling me into his heat and after the despicable weakness I just displayed, I don’t feel capable of pushing him away.
Fuck it, I think to myself as his fingers cup my ass, he can just have me. I slump against his chest, but instead of lowering me back to the ground and taking me for himself in the way all men seek to take women, he hoists up on the waist of my shorts once, and then again, both times hard enough that my feet leave the ground and I have to hold onto him.
There’s a pressure in my chest I’m unable to displace where the numbness is supposed to be and when he fastens the button at my hips and pulls my zipper up to meet it, I cough into my fist. It’s all I can do not to cry. And then I wait for it – for him to ask me a barrage of questions that peel the skin back even further though I’m already only flesh and feelings.
He clears his throat and steps away from me. I try to think of something to say but my throat is gooey with saliva that I can’t swallow. Finally, he breaks the silence. “I’m not doing anything right now and I’m thinking you are in pretty serious need of sugar…”
“I’m not in shock,” I say, but I barely complete the sentence. I flick my gaze up to his face and see that he isn’t angry – for once – but is smiling.
He shakes his head. “Of course you aren’t. What I meant to say was, I’m feeling hungry and Patty’s Place is open late. Care to join me?”
Shock makes me grin, though the expression is as wobbly as my knees are. “You go to Patty’s?”
“What? A guy like me isn’t allowed to like pie?”
“No. I mean yes.” I look down at my sneakers and the patch of disrupted grass peeking up around their dirty white soles. The air smells like earth and pollen, but like sweat, eucalyptus and blood even more. “I mean, you can like whatever you want.” The harsh edge I usually hear in my own tone eludes me, and I sound like a kid.
“Good. I’d like for you to come with me.” He holds out his hand. I’ve never held anyone’s hand before. I mean, not unless I was trying to hurt them, or stop them from hurting me.
“I’m still on tonight.”
“Fight’s over and the place is mine. I’ll text Ollie from the car and let him know why you can’t make it.”
“Why can’t I make it?” I say skeptically.
He shrugs, still holding his hand flat out between us, like an offering. “Sex, obviously.”
I smirk, “Thanks.” Funny thing is that I mean it. I place my palm against his and he laces his fingers through mine. I flush at the contact, finding it surprisingly intimate. His hand is warm and dry and covered in calluses from the fights. I wonder if that’s how he finds my hand too.
We go the long way around the barn to avoid the smokers hanging out in the shed, opting instead to trek through brambles and immense stretches of ivy to the parking lot. About half of the cars have cleared out so I feel less bad about leaving Ollie all alone. He did me a favor, hiring me on the spot like he did. I’d thought the place was his because when he’d hired me, he hadn’t had to call the owner.
My gaze wanders over the back of Knox’s head down his thick neck, over his shoulders. The muscles flex beneath them and he still sports dark streaks across his back, from his left shoulder blade to his right hip. It’s blood, though the fact that it’s my brother’s doesn’t bother me. The sight of his skin covered in bruises and a few faint abrasions around his right ribs feels like home to me. Home? What the fuck am I saying? I don’t even understand the meaning…
“Pinche idiota,” I shout as his right hand reaches to push aside a curtain of Spanish moss. A flare of aggression lights up his face, but it flickers quickly and fades when I pull his fingers into mine. Now I’m just holding both his hands like the idiot I just accused him of being. “Chiggers. In the moss. Don’t look at me like that. Lo siento.”
His eyes are huge and his lips are parted. He licks them after a moment and grins. “No reason to apologize.”
He ducks under the misty grey curtain, following the path that I show him. When we hit gravel, he leads me to a 1980 Chevy C-10, charcoal metallic. Of course he’d drive a muscle car. I’m smiling at the selection until I realize that his hand is on the passenger door’s shiny silver handle. It glints as it catches the moonlight. Guys don’t open doors for girls like me and yet here he is, body framing the darkness of the doorway.
He’s not looking at me, but at the ground, as if there are diamonds nestled there in the gravel. His brow is tense, lips severe and when he holds his hand towards me, I understand the implicit order. He reels me in until I’m directly in front of him and inhales once, then again.
“I’m going to ask you one question about what happened back there, and no other. Do you understand?”
I want to say no, but he isn’t asking and I’m not up for a fight. So instead I nod, hold my breath and pray.
“Did I get there too late?”
“Too late?”
His thumb sweeps the back of my hand, applying a firm pressure that terrifies me, because it betrays how his fingers shake. With rage. He must notice me noticing because he releases me and shoves his hands into his front pockets. “Did he rape you?”
Knox might as well have thrown a bucket of ice water over me. I freeze, moving only my head as I twist it to the side, like when Spade hit me. I’m only just now beginning to feel the makings of a bruise, and evidently he sees it. The moon is strong and I feel it on my skin as a whisper of sunlight. Then his fingers.
They start beneath my eye, following the curve of my cheek back to my ear. He doesn’t ask me if it hurts, if I’ve taken a hit before. Both are obvious. I feel him come close to me. So close I wonder if he’s going to kiss me. I’m struck over the head with a brick when he does. His lips are full and they’re hot as hell and sinfully smooth as they sweep my hairline. I jerk back, but he’s already pulled away and is standing on the other side of the car door, watching me from over its rim.
“Get in.”
I pass my hand over the leather bench but hesitate before taking a seat. “I wasn’t,” I say, letting the heavy curtain of my hair fall between us. “He didn’t.”
His chest expands…deflates…expands…deflates… His teeth bite down and he grunts something between them.
“What?” I ask.
“Good,” he says, and true to his word, it’s the last thing he says on the subject.
He only manages to shrug out of the anger he wears like a coat when we’re on the road, back in the city. Lights start growing more frequently out of the ground as the first of the storefronts pass. It’s late. Most people are inside with their loved ones. City’s too small for night owls. But there are some of us. The delinquents and the degenerates, struggling for survival in alleyways, dealing drugs beneath the shady awnings of gas stations, vomiting on street corners as they try to drag themselves home or…eating pie.
He sits across the metallic tabletop with his elbows spread wide, wearing a jersey from his gym bag. Two Irish coffees, two empty plates, four empty glasses, a slice of pecan and a slice of pumpkin rest between us. I didn’t realize how hungry I was – how thirsty either. I’ve been keeping pace with him the whole way and the slices are big, and the whiskeys aren’t singles. He pauses halfway through his last slice and leans back against the cracked, plastic leather. It’s fire e
ngine red and squeaks beneath his weight as he drapes his arms across the top of the bench seat.
“What?” I say, draining half of my last Irish coffee. I’m lightheaded already. Always been a lightweight. Probably not a good idea with Knox watching me like that. “What?” I say again.
“What.” He shrugs, tone so flat and nonchalant it makes me wonder what I’d been asking about in the first place.
I shake my head. “Never mind.”
“So your brother fought…” He pauses and seems to consider.
It’s that consideration that makes me laugh. “You don’t have to lie to me. I’ve got eyes, and I’m not like the other girls you probably bring to this place so I know what I’m looking at. My brother’s a piece of shit. He’s got a good arm though. I just wish he would practice ¬– and I don’t mean prison brawls. He thought he’d learned something in the can. If anything he’s only gotten worse.”
I blow air out of the side of my mouth and trail the older waitress behind the counter with my gaze. She’s got a yellow apron on. It’s stained but she’s smiling at the mean looking trucker on one of the red swivel stools and he’s smiling back. Next thing, I realize I’m smiling too. So is Knox. And his mouth is distracting.
“I mean, look at you,” I blurt, for want of something to say, “If my brother had half your discipline tonight’s fight would have gone a lot differently. You’ve clearly had practice – and not just street fighting. Boxing – probably some martial arts too. My guess is that you’ve been at this since you were a kid. Probably knocked out a boy’s teeth for the first time when you were nine and couldn’t believe how good it felt.” I point my fork at him and he leans forward so quickly I sit back.
“You’re good.” He swipes his left arm across the tabletop and clears a path through the dishes so that nothing sits between us but my plate. He’s huge, taking up more than his fair share of the space and is watching that plate like a killer, like it’s the only thing keeping him from something he wants. I refuse to acknowledge my own body’s mirrored response.
The Hunting Town (Brothers Book 1) Page 3
