“No, you don’t.”
“He specifically said, ‘Bring Tatum.’” I lowered my voice to imitate his.
“Really?” Tatum stared at my face. “No, you can’t lie for crap. But I will come, if you don’t mind.”
“Friends before dates,” I told her. “Do you want to stop off for the leprosy test first?”
“Nah, it’s not that contagious.”
Knox ambled over and held out his hand to me. “Let’s go, bunny. I’ve done my good deeds for the day.”
“Not yet, you haven’t,” Tatum answered. “Daisy is letting me come out with you guys. Because she’s worried that I’ll do something to make Nico’s car crash.”
He frowned at her. “The kicker was a no?” he asked.
“He’s so nice!” she complained.
He turned to me. “I can’t explain it,” I said. “I like people to be nice to me.”
Knox put his arm around me. “People better be nice to you.” He kissed my head.
“Ms. McKenzie! Marguerite! Knox!” A light above a camera lens shone in my eyes from behind the metal fence that separated the fans from the walkway out of the stadium. “Marguerite? Can I ask a question about the Pizza—I mean, the Pisanello picture? Marguerite? Knox, what about the game tonight? Do you have any comments? Can you comment on your relationship?” Austin DeJong hung over the barrier, microphone out.
I turned away. “That’s him. It’s that guy, the reporter who came to my house.”
“The one who knocked you down?” Knox asked. It was the scary voice.
“No!” I grabbed his arm. “I explained to you that he only bumped me by mistake. Let’s just leave, please? I don’t want to cause a scene. I just want him to leave me alone and he won’t if you make a bigger deal of this. Let’s just go.”
“Do you think that’s a live feed to the news?” Tatum asked thoughtfully. “I bet I can distract him. Ready? You guys make a break for it on my signal.”
“Tatum—”
Before I could blink, she ran toward the camera, grasping the bottom of her shirt. “Yoohoo!” she called, and it sounded just like Shelby was there with us. “Austin, honey!”
“She’s flashing him!” Knox said, his jaw dropping. And yes, she was.
“It seemed like the quickest way to get him to stop trying to film you, Daisy,” she said earnestly as we sat in my living room a while later, after Knox had grabbed her and we had run to the cars. “And it worked, didn’t it? They turned the camera off and everyone’s attention went away from you.”
“But it went right to your…” I pointed at her chest.
“Boobs,” she agreed. “Hey, I didn’t know your real name was Marguerite!” She tried her French accent with it. “I’m going to start saying that my real name is Yvette. Yvette Lumière.” She thought about it, then added, “French women go topless a lot more than we do here in northern Michigan.”
“Tatum!” I exclaimed. “What if that had been live? You would have shown your breasts to everyone in the viewing public!”
“Well, a lot of them have already seen, after that accident I had with my bikini top on the fifteen-meter diving platform at the aquatic center a few years ago. That was televised,” she said.
“Is there anyone who can keep an eye on you, besides Daisy and me?” Knox asked her. His voice sounded a little desperate.
“I don’t need anyone to keep an eye on me.” She checked her phone. “I have to go. I think someone at the stadium may have mentioned what happened there to my dad.” She shrugged. “Looks like he’s pretty mad.”
She promised to call me later and hopped out the door, leaving me alone with Knox. He had eaten almost everything I had in the house and then settled down with me on the couch to try to talk some sense into Tatum. We hadn’t been successful.
He tugged on the curtain to watch her back out. “She almost hit my truck.”
“Maybe her dad will be able to make her understand that she can’t do things like that.” It didn’t seem likely, but maybe.
Knox just shook his head. “I feel sorry for the guy. What would we do, with a child like her?” he asked me, staring down the street.
“We’d do fine, after all the practice with Tatum,” I said. I followed that thought into the future, of Knox and me, and a little girl of our own. “I think we’d be just fine.”
He dropped the curtain and looked at me closely. “Yeah. I guess we would be.”
Chapter 15
“Yes. There.” He groaned. “Harder.”
I squeezed my thighs around his hips to increase the thrust. “Almost. Almost…yes! I got it.” That had been a big one.
Knox picked up his head. “It feels better already. Thank you.”
“Rubbing your back is hard work,” I told him. I had been massaging out knots, one by one, for quite a while now. “There’s so much acreage of you.” I shook my tired hands. After Tatum had roared off, we had gone out to get more to eat, and then to Martha’s grocery store where Knox had bought enough food for my house to feed an army, which meant that he’d be all right for the next 24 hours staying with me. Then we had fit the new bed frame together and the mattresses on it, and put the old ones outside.
“Don’t they usually haul these away when you buy new ones? I could have met them here,” I had said, but Knox had frowned.
“I wouldn’t want you in the house alone with some delivery guys. I’ll get someone to come for those.” He was tired and sore and after I had put on the sheets, he was ready to try out the new bed. So far, I was impressed by the sturdiness.
“Can you do my shoulders again?” he asked now, his voice muffled by the pillow.
I flexed my fingers. “Sure.” I leaned over, shifting my hips. I kissed his back where a big bruise was blooming. There was another on his thigh that I had seen fleetingly and wanted to investigate, and another on his arm that I had already kissed. My breasts hovered over his back and I dipped them down, brushing against his skin. It was a shame I had my clothes on. I leaned again, pressing myself to him as my fingers massaged. When I moved my hips like that, it felt—
“Daisy, what are you doing?”
I froze. “Nothing.”
“Really?” Knox turned underneath me, flipping to his back. He tugged on my t-shirt. “Let’s take this off you. Flash me, honey.”
“Well—” I held on to the fabric, keeping it anchored down. “There’s a little surprise underneath. I have a different bra on but I wanted to wait to show you.”
“I want to see now. Right now.”
“Hang on. Let’s try something that I’ve been wondering about.” I dug in my pocket and pulled out a little tin. “Can you eat a few of these?”
He looked at the lid, then back at me. “Do you think I have bad breath?” Then his eyes widened. “Does this have anything to do with what Tatum was asking me in the library, about if…” He opened the box and emptied at least half of it into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “I’m ready to try it.”
“I never did this before,” I told him. “Tell me if I’m doing it wrong.”
“Whatever you do, I’m going to like it. I’m going to love it.” He cupped the back of my head and pulled me down to his lips for a very minty kiss.
I moved away from his mouth, but I kept kissing him. His nose, his chin with the dimple that got hidden under the stubble he usually wore. His jaw, up to his ear. He shivered a little, just like I did when he kissed me there. I moved down his neck to his nipples and lightly scratched my fingernails over them, making him shiver again. Then I went lower, tracing the dark hair that ran from his chest down…and down. I undid the top of his jeans and looked into his eyes. I got lost a little, in the silver, then he helped me to pull off the rest of his clothes.
He was huge. His equipment was gigantic. I took a breath. I knew that from the night before, but this close up, it was fascinating and pretty intimidating. I snuggled myself between his legs and rested my head on the hard plane of his stomach, then reach
ed to carefully touch him with my fingertips.
He immediately moaned my name. “Daisy!”
I wrapped my fingers around him, feeling soft skin over iron. I fluttered them, finding my grip, and Knox groaned again, so I nodded, leaned forward, and licked. Once, twice, and I moved my hand too, as Tatum had instructed when she had offered her advice about this. “Think of a lollypop and go for it,” she had advised. So I did what I would have to hard candy on a stick: I licked and sucked.
Knox liked it. He really, really did. His fingers twisted in my hair and he talked to me. “Yes, Daisy. Like that. God damn, your mouth…again. Again, please. Yeah, right there!” The words made me get almost dizzy. A little lustrous fluid emerged and I licked that, too.
He jumped. “Minty?” he gasped.
“I need a bigger sample,” I said honestly, but Knox groaned, and moved my lips back to his shaft. I took as much of him as I could into my mouth and his hips started to pump.
“Daisy…are you sure? I can’t—” He could. He came, so much that I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know if this volume was normal but I did the best I could, and from the sounds that Knox continued to make, it was all good for him.
“Come here, bunny,” he gasped. “Come here.” He kissed my head and held me tightly against him. “Man, that’s a fine way to end game day.”
I started to laugh. “Was it really ok?”
“Perfect.” He nuzzled my hair. “You did great today.”
I picked up my head to look down his stomach and in between his thighs, where he was still huge, but now looking more relaxed. Sort of sleepy, I thought, if a male part could look that way.
He huffed. “I didn’t mean that. I’m talking about you coming to the game at the stadium. How hard was it, really?”
“Tough,” I admitted. “But it was worth it. I was so glad to be there to watch you, even though I wanted to pour boiling oil on the offensive linemen when they touched you.” I brushed over the bruise on his arm.
“You get fierce about me.”
I propped on my head up his chest. “You want to protect me, right? I feel the same way about you. If I can pour boiling oil on someone for you, I will.” I touched his lip with my fingertip. “I spent so much of my life being afraid for myself and afraid for my mom. I’m trying to watch you and not be afraid, but it’s hard.”
“Just so that you’re not afraid of me.” He looked into my eyes, searching. “I don’t think you are.”
“I’m not. Why would I be?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I have a temper. I used to,” he corrected himself. “It drove me on the field. Now, it’s a reason to retire. I don’t feel that anger anymore.”
“What were you mad about?” I asked quietly.
He sighed, lifting and lowering my body with his breath. “I was mad at my mom because she ignored me, neglected me. Smacked me around and let her boyfriends do it, too. I was mad at the guys she brought over at how they treated her like shit. I was angry at other kids for having what I didn’t, for teasing me for being dumb and for having a prostitute for a mother. I was mad at the world.” I patted his hair, smoothing it back. “It came out on the field and that made me an all-right football player, good enough to get into college and get money to pay for it. It made me get into fights, too. I would throw down at the drop of a hat and I got in trouble, all the time. I got arrested the night before my eighteenth birthday.”
I knew that—Tatum had told me. “What happened?”
“The police called to say they found my mom’s body in a dumpster,” he said matter-of-factly. “Some guy had found her alone on the street, violated her, beaten her to death.”
“Oh, Knox.”
“She hadn’t been a real mom to me in a lot of ways, but I lost my mind. I lost my mind,” he repeated. “I went out and got drunk and fought about five guys because they looked at me sideways.” He touched the scar on his neck. “One of them had a knife. I was very lucky.”
“Knox,” I said again, thinking that my heart would break.
He stopped looking off into the distance, off into the past, and focused on my face, wiping my tears with his thumbs. “That was the worst night of my life. They put me in the back of a car without door handles, then took me to the hospital and handcuffed me to a gurney when they realized how much blood was coming out of my neck. I never did anything since that would get me into trouble with the police, I never even got a traffic ticket, except that night I got pulled over with you. I won’t ever fight like that again, I swear it to you, Daisy.”
“I’m not worried about that,” I told him. “I know you can adjust if you need to. If you want to.”
“That was why I stayed away from you.”
“Because you got into a fight when you were seventeen?”
He was quiet again, looking at me. “Maybe you’re confident in me, but I wasn’t,” he said finally. “It was hard to think of myself like this, as someone who could be this, for you. I left last spring sure that it was better for you, and for me, to be apart.”
“No,” I said firmly. “That’s definitely not better for me.”
“Me neither. I had to remember my grandma,” he said. “I had to remember what it was like to love somebody, and have her love me back. I’ve been on my own for a long time and I meant for things to stay like that.”
“No. You’re a pack animal,” I told him.
“A wolf.” He smiled.
“I don’t mean that shifter stuff, I mean that we all need people. I was alone for a long time too, even when I was living with my mom, and it was miserable. I was miserable.”
Knox pulled me even closer, so that I was nearly on top of him, my face pressed into his neck. “I missed you, bunny, the whole summer. You knocked me on my ass. I wanted to be with you, even if I didn’t know if it was right.”
“Of course it’s right!”
“I didn’t know if I could be good enough for you.”
“You are. You’re perfect for me, and you’re just what I need,” I said. Tears dripped down onto his chest.
“Good. And you’re what I need, every sweet bit of you.” He kissed me. “I didn’t mean to turn this into therapy. I had my mind on other things.” He patted my butt.
I took a shaky breath. “I want you to talk to me. When you don’t—the silence, I can’t take it. I lived a long time with that, and I need you to talk.” I looked him in the eyes. “Got it?”
“Ok. I’ll talk to you.” He patted again, then squeezed. “Let’s talk, but about something else.”
I took a breath. “We could talk about the game. Or we could talk about finding out where some of those Cottonmouths live so I can vandalize their houses for how they tried to hurt you.”
“You’ve been spending too much time with Tatum. Actually, I was wondering about the mint. Anything?”
I thought. “I didn’t notice it. But I was a little overwhelmed by the whole experience, so we may have to try again.” And I felt movement against my leg that made me look down. Things were no longer so sleepy.
He reached into the pocket of my shorts for the metal box. “Let’s test it on you. Eat a few and I’ll investigate.” I chewed the mints and he moved around my body with his hands. “Sit up, honey, so I can see you. Why am I buck naked and you have on so many clothes?” He pulled my shirt off and gaped. “Now, that is something.”
“I never had a bra with cutouts,” I admitted. Knox sat up and lapped at my breast. “Oh! That’s why they’re there.” I felt the vibration of his laugh on my nipple. “Oh, that’s nice,” I sighed, but the bra came off pretty quickly, as did the rest of my clothes.
“Sit up on top of me.”
“Are you too tired?” I asked. I swung my leg over his hips but I kept my hands over my breasts, so at least part of me was covered.
Knox removed my hands and put his there instead. “I’m not too tired for this. Your skin is like silk.” My head lolled a little as he massaged, and then he moved one hand down t
o touch me below. I opened my eyes to watch his fingers caress, finding all my sweet spots. When they entered me, I arched my back and moaned his name. “Let’s check for that mint now,” he said. “Right now.” He flipped me over and parted my legs with his hands.
It moved quickly to me demanding the main event. Fortunately, the new mattresses were a lot sturdier than my old ones had been.
∞
“Aren’t you dying?” Tatum demanded when I answered the phone.
“What?” I balanced Domenico’s coffee on my textbook, the one I had finally read yesterday. Knox had fallen asleep on Sunday afternoon but I had gotten a burst of energy and done some studying after the third time. Or maybe it was the fourth. Oh, that had been something…
“Are you even listening to me? A nun!”
I focused on Tatum’s words. “Who? What?”
“Paige! The woman who was trying to get me to do the half-marathon, she’s becoming a nun! Not like a real Catholic one, but, you know!”
Caffeine was becoming a nun? “What kind of—”
“And Hope’s getting married! The one who always complained about not meeting anyone, how all the guys sucked, she’s getting married! What the hell is happening to these women?” Tatum moaned. “All my friends are acting crazy!”
Domenico’s coffee almost spilled. “Tatum, I haven’t read the yoga text chain in a few days. Let me catch up on it and then we can discuss. I’m on my way to the attic right now and I’ll call you so Domenico can hear the news, too.”
“You haven’t been paying attention to the yoga girls because you’ve been too busy getting pumped out of your mind. Fuck, I’m almost choking on my jealousy! Hey, Domenico’s ok, right? He hasn’t been answering his phone.”
My footsteps slowed. “I haven’t heard anything.”
“Let me know. I have to go again to the life coach because my dad is flipping ape shit. It was fucking Lyle who told him about the boob thing at the stadium so now he’s on my list. See you.”
“Domenico?” I called, as I balanced everything to unlock the door to the attic and punch in the alarm code. It was dark inside; no singing, no cursing in Neapolitan about spilled drinks. “Domenico?” I repeated. I flipped on the lights and saw the mess on the floor. Latex gloves and paper wrappers—I picked one up, and it was for an IV line. Oh, my God.
The Big Hit Page 23
