Knox KOBO

by Christie Ridgway

Knox tilted his head, trying to guess at more particulars. “High school sweetheart?”

  “I’d forgive myself for that foolishness.” She took another step back to sit on the mattress.

  He tried to focus on the discussion at hand instead of what he intended to happen on that surface in the very near future. “So, you were…what age?”

  “Twenty-one.” She looked away. “We met one Friday night at this local country bar that used to be popular. He was visiting his aunt and uncle.”

  “And he wooed you to the strains of a Kenny Chesney ballad about old Chevys, tire swings, and summer keg parties.”

  Her gaze cut to him. “Not a fan of country music?”

  “I like all kinds of music. I just don’t like the idea of someone hurting you.”

  She sighed. “I suppose some of the responsibility is my own. We met the next night at the same bar and closed it down, then spent Sunday riding around in his truck. That night, with a huge moon hanging over us like something out of the movies Rissa favors, he told me he’d fallen in love with me. Asked me to marry him. He had a ring.”

  “A ring?”

  “Fine.” Erin made a face. “He peeled the label off a beer and molded it from the foil.”

  “Who can resist a crafty man?”

  She laughed, and looked startled that she could. More beer went down her throat, then she told him the rest. The asshole had convinced her to go on the rodeo circuit with him. She’d gathered the tips she’d been saving from her part-time barista job, gassed up her car, and followed him and his truck out of town.

  “We stayed in a motel worse than this one the first night,” she said, glancing around at the no-frills decor. “And the next night one even worse than the first—in the middle of nowhere on the way to someplace I’d never heard of.”

  “No hunches you might be making a mistake?”

  She shook her head. “It was Romance with a capital R, the kind I would tell my children and grandchildren about one day. Love at first dance. I was all over it. I was all in.”

  Knox rubbed at his chest, the sudden ache there. “Then what happened?”

  “The third morning I woke up to find he was gone. He’d taken my stash of money, siphoned my gas, and left me a note on a fast food bag that said his declaration of love and interest in marriage had been hasty.”

  Knox’s brows rose. “Those words?”

  “All right, no.” Her gaze cut from his again. “It read, ‘Sorry, sweet thing.’” Her voice lowered. “And that’s how I felt. Like a thing. Easily discarded. Left behind without a second thought.”

  He hated the pensive expression on her face but tamped down his rage on her behalf. “Should we go back to his room?” he asked, keeping his tone mild. “Shake him down for the money he took from you?”

  She seemed to consider it.

  “No,” she said. “When I think about it, the amount is far less than a divorce could have cost me.”

  “Okay,” Knox said. “We could plan some sort of retribution, then. As a man from a family of seven brothers, I have no end of ideas.” Tearing the asshole limb from limb came to mind.

  That seemed to perk her up, and she set her beer on the bedside table. “Such as? Would we use eggs? Toilet paper?” She jumped to her feet and began pacing the room. “Am I bad for enjoying that idea so much?”

  As she passed by, he set his own beer aside with one hand and reached for her with the other, tumbling her into his lap. She landed with a little gasp, and he pressed his mouth to the side of her head and breathed in her fragrant hair. “What if I told you I like you bad?” he murmured against her ear.

  She shivered, and he felt her body’s temperature rise, the heat transferring to the cotton and denim covering her and then to him. He stripped off his unfastened shirt, then shifted her so she sat deeper in the cradle of his body. The ends of her hair tickled his bare skin.

  Erin’s hands landed on the forearm that he had banded about her waist. The restless movement of her fingers ruffled the covering of dark hair, and his flesh prickled, his cock pulsed, and lust surged in his blood.

  He pressed a hot kiss to her temple, then her cheek. Grasping her chin, he turned her mouth to his. “What if I mentioned that good sex is the best revenge?” he said against her lips.

  She hesitated, even as her hand reached up to cup his cheek. “Knox…”

  “Erin.” He turned his face to kiss the heart of her palm, then gave it a quick lick with the tip of his tongue. Her body shuddered. “I’ll make it good for you,” he promised.

  “What if I can’t make it good for you?” she whispered. “It’s been…so long.”

  His breath caught, his chest expanding with the knowledge of what she implied. “Six years? That long?”

  She ducked her head. “I’ve, um, been reluctant. So now it’s possible I’ve forgotten how to please a man.”

  He laughed, surprising himself with the soft sound when he was so damn hard and when a new, urgent need was clawing at him. It was imperative to obliterate her memories of the asshole’s hands on her by replacing them with Knox’s hands. Knox’s touch. Knox’s kisses.

  He wanted to imprint himself on her. Saturate her in his scent. Make her remember no one in her body but him.

  Startled by the primitive thoughts, he pushed them away and focused on her instead, lifting her chin to gaze into her anxious eyes. “What if I can guarantee it can be good for both of us? I have a surefire system.”

  “What’s that?”

  He pressed a kiss to her mouth, then drew his tongue along her bottom lip, taking pleasure in her breathy moan. “You answer all my questions.”

  Her eyelashes drifted down as his tongue made another pass. “What kind of questions?”

  His next kiss was slow and deep, and she opened for him, wiggling closer to his body. He lifted his head. “Do you like that?”

  She blinked drowsy eyes. “What?”

  He smiled and nudged her cheek with his nose. “Did you like that kiss?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” His fingers flipped open the buttons of her shirt until he could insert his hand inside. Through her sheer bra, he found the taut peak of her breast and toyed with it, tugging until it was an even tighter bud. “Do you like me to play with your nipple?”

  She squirmed and shoved her face in to his neck. “Knox…”

  “This is part of my system,” he said, his expression perfectly sober. “I can only promise mutual satisfaction if you do your part.”

  “Fine then,” she said, with a trace of annoyance. “I like you to play.”

  “And the rest, darlin’.” He promised himself patience. “You have to say, ‘With my nipple.’”

  She stalled.

  Stilling his teasing fingers, he waited.

  “With my nipple,” she finally echoed, and her body quivered, so delicious.

  He rewarded her by playing again with the tender bud, then nibbled on her bottom lip. “If you like my tongue in your mouth, you need to say so.”

  “I love your tongue in my mouth,” she said, eager now. Fervent.

  He laughed, kissed her lavishly, then went back to touching her, undressing her, making her tell him she liked what he was doing to her by using words she’d probably never uttered aloud to a man.

  It was a fun game. Sexy. One designed to keep his six-year celibate and slightly unsure partner just a little more off-balance and a lot more aroused.

  She was naked, still on his lap, and he positioned her back to his front and spread open her thighs with his denim-covered knees. “Oh, Knox,” she murmured, eyes closing, her face flushed. “We should turn out the lights.”

  And miss the way his big hands looked, one tweaking her nipple while the other inched down her taut belly? He didn’t think so.

  “What do you call this?” he asked, placing his palm over her mons so his fingers rested on the seam of her lower lips. Her hips twitched, an invitation, but he resisted, knowing she’d go wetter the longer
he waited. “Erin? What do you call this?” He pinched her nipple to get her attention.

  She moaned and arched her back, clearly relishing the tiny bit of pain. “I call it…um…” Her breath came in shallow pants as he released and pinched again. “Down there?”

  “So unspecified,” he chided. “Tell me you like me playing with all these soft, wet layers.”

  “Knox…” She squirmed, her perfect ass pressing against his cock, and then her hips began to rock into his exploring fingers.

  He swallowed his groan. “Tell me you like me inside you.” One finger. Two. Her inner muscles clenched on them, and he was the one shuddering now. “Tell me you like me touching this little button.”

  This time he couldn’t hold back his groan as she pressed up, into his touch. “Oh, darlin’.”

  Still fondling her nipple with his other hand, he caressed her clitoris with two fingers, circling the hard and swollen nub. Her muscles tensed, her body strung tight, and now he switched from demand to praise, whispering how sexy she was, how desperate he was to watch her climax.

  She moaned, her head turning to press her cheek to his chest as her back arched. Yeah. Now.

  “Give it to me, baby,” he said, and then simultaneously pinched her nipple and her clit.

  She gasped, her body jerked once, then spasms rolled through her, a sweet, unmistakable orgasm. Her head turned tighter into his chest, and as she poured into his hand, her teeth latched onto his skin.

  He grunted, the bite unleashing his control.

  Game over.

  The instant her body began to quiet, he had her up and out of the chair. His strides ate the ground, and then he tossed her onto the bed. Denim hit the floor. He was reaching for her when he remembered condoms.

  Cursing even a moment’s delay, he bee-lined to his kit on the bathroom counter. Then he tore back into the bedroom, as if she might disappear into thin air, to find she’d loosened the covers to stretch her perfect body on the white sheets.

  Pulse pounding, he stared at her, arrested by something other than craven lust. She was so… He felt so… Rubbing at his chest, he tried to find the right words. And even though his cock was clamoring for attention, he decided he couldn’t go to her until he figured out exactly what was going on. What power she wielded. Why this felt so damn important.

  But then she held out her hand to him, and he was powerless to resist her.

  When their flesh touched, Knox groaned, as if those answers he sought before had been found. He gave himself up to the experience, wallowing in the feel of her skin, in her sighs, in how easy it was to bring her up again.

  He suckled her breasts leisurely, even as her nails dug into his scalp.

  His tongue savored her taste, tickling along her ribs and then lapping at the edges of her navel.

  She moved like a flower seeking the sun, bending in graceful curves as he sought new parts of her to explore—the underside of her arm, the cove behind her knee, the vulnerable line between her inner thigh and her sex.

  But before he’d taken his fill of her, she was urging him up with insistent hands and entreaties. Giving in again, he covered her. She widened her legs, inviting his thrust, and he gritted his teeth and took it as slowly as he could, the intrusion into her molten heat sweet agony.

  She closed over him, a tight fist of ecstasy and he rocked into her body, short lunges that sent hot chills down his spine. “Erin,” he gasped out. “You make me mad.”

  Her answering moan sent his hand down between their bodies. He speared his fingers around the base of his cock, spreading her petaled layers so that her clit was better exposed to the rocking motion of his body. She ground upward against him and he closed his eyes, pushing deeper into her.

  It was so damn good.

  It had to last forever.

  Which it didn’t. Finally, when he thought he couldn’t hold out another millisecond, her body began to stiffen. Thank God, he thought, burying his face in her throat.

  Her muscles began to milk his cock, just the smallest of tremors, tiny ripples. Knox reached between them again and found that stiff nub at the top of her sex. Breathing hard, he rubbed it with the edge of his thumb.

  She gasped and then shook, her arms and legs clasping him like a lifeline. He shoved deeper into her body, once, twice, and then felt heat sear down his spine and circle his balls before it shot up his dick, and he came in fiery bursts.

  The world stopped turning.

  When it moved again, he rolled off her. On unsteady legs, he made it to the bathroom to ditch the condom. Then he wet a cloth, washed himself, and wet another, making sure the temperature was warm but not too hot.

  Through sleepy eyes, Erin watched him return. Instead of heading straight for her, he detoured to turn off the lights. Now the only illumination was the low glow slanting from the half-open bathroom door.

  All the better to conceal himself, he thought, afraid of what his expression might reveal. Sex wasn’t supposed to leave a man troubled. Though his body was sated, his mind—no longer preoccupied by the drive toward orgasm—wouldn’t stop turning over the puzzle that was this tender-protective-possessive trio of braided emotions that Erin provoked in him.

  He liked women. He liked sex.

  He did not like feeling like this.

  Sitting on the mattress beside her, he drew back the sheet she’d pulled over her breasts. Her fingers scrambled for it, missed.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked in alarm, her gaze jumping to the cloth in his hand.

  “Wash you,” he said, nudging one silken thigh from the other. “Make you more comfortable.”

  “I can do that myself.” She sat up and reached for the cloth.

  With a gentle shove, he pushed her back to the pillows. “Let me.” It was imperative that it be his hand that accomplished the intimate task.

  Her eyes wary, she stared at him.

  “Let me,” he whispered, opening her legs wider. Let me. Let me. The words coursed through him. Let me touch you. Let me know your body. Let me care for it, care for you.

  He pressed the folded fabric to her sex, over the petals still flowered open and swollen. She flinched at the contact, and he caressed her hip with his free hand. “Sore, baby?”

  “Sensitive.”

  He murmured a soothing sound and refolded the cloth to reveal a still-warm side that he placed against her pretty pink flesh. This time she sighed, and he held it there until the fabric cooled.

  She’d relaxed fully now, her eyes at half-mast.

  “A glass of water?” he asked, rising to get rid of the washcloth.

  “No.” Her head snuggled into the pillows as her lashes drifted onto her cheeks. “I have everything I need.”

  Upon returning from the bathroom, he found Erin curled up and fast asleep. That weird feeling surged again, dizzying him a little, and he dropped to the mattress, needing to be close to her again. As he arranged himself around her, his cheek settled against a cool swathe of her hair and one of his hands curled around her breast. An unfamiliar contentment washed through him—one deeper, warmer than the usual sexual afterglow—just another perplexing feeling to join the others.

  Erin made a sleepy, enquiring sound.

  “What?” he said, and dropped a kiss to her bare shoulder.

  “Was that good sex?” she mumbled.

  “Baby.” Maybe after the experience she felt stripped raw, too. He gathered her closer, kissed her again to reassure her. “That was great sex.”

  In response, she pushed back into his embrace, her ass snugged against his groin. Her sigh seemed to move through his chest, turning over his heart.

  Oh, shit, Knox thought, as the truth suddenly hit him like a pole to the forehead. This finally made sense…all of it.

  Great sex, yeah.

  And a huge, cosmic joke.

  Because the truth was, he’d fallen in love.

  He’d fallen in love with Erin Cassidy.

  And while three of his brothers had
taken the plunge, unserious, fun-junkie, only-in-it-for-the-grins Knox Brannigan didn’t have the first idea how to deal with it.

  Hours later, Knox had yet to find sleep or any answers to his predicament. He rolled from the warm bed and the even warmer Erin—refusing to look back in case he found he couldn’t leave her—to slip outside. The four o’clock morning air, briny from the nearby ocean and bracing thanks to the a.m. chill, slapped him further awake.

  Scrubbing his hands over his face, the sandpaper sound of his whiskers loud in the pre-dawn quiet, he sat down on the curb of the motel walkway outside his room’s door. He gazed, unfocused, into the parking lot, the vehicles glazed with moisture. Then his vision narrowed on an old, run-down pick-up in the second row. It likely belonged to the asshole in 105, he decided, and wondered where he could find a baseball bat. The windshield would shatter with one satisfying crack.

  Or maybe he’d track down a knife­—even a screwdriver would do—and he’d sink it into the rubber tires just before breaking down the other man’s door to shake him from sleep so he could punch him in his ugly, lying-and-leaving face. Thinking how enjoyable that would be, Knox half-rose, then sank back down again with a groan.

  What the hell was the matter with him? Was this what “in love” would drive a man to? He’d had to get forceful a time or three when handling drunks at The Wake, but he hadn’t been compelled to hit anyone since he was twelve and found his youngest brother Finn had taken apart Knox’s favorite model airplane just so he could put it together again himself.

  Finn. God, he wished he could reach his brother right this damn minute. Maybe hearing his voice would help Knox get his feet back under him. But the other man was impossible to reach on a whim given that he was currently flying off that carrier somewhere.

  So without Brannigan Number Seven to connect with, he reached for his phone to call the other brother to whom he was closest.

  Luke picked up with something like a low growl. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you rock climbers rose in the dark to film the dawn breaking over mountain peaks from a portaledge tent—”

  “I’m in my real, very soft, very comfortable bed at the resort. And you woke up Lizzie.”