by Lara Adrian
God knew he was having a hard enough time living under the same roof with her as it was. Every minute was becoming a test of self-control.
Seeing her in the foyer that morning had been yet another test. Only a minute before he’d been punishing his body under a cold shower, attempting to douse his uncooled desire for her. After a restless night spent prowling his quarters and trying to resist the urge to seek her out following their conversation in the kitchen, he had been itching for an outlet for his aggression.
He had almost hoped to find Travis Parrish or his brother on the other side of the door instead of Leni’s friend. He would have welcomed the opportunity to pound his fist into something more deserving than the attic’s old walls.
But it hadn’t been misplaced aggression pulsing through him when he’d heard the insistent rapping on the front door. It had been something deeper. Something more than basic concern for a female he was honor-bound to protect as a member of the Breed.
He would kill for Leni Calhoun, no question. In some rusty corner of his conscience, he had to admit—at least to himself—that he would do anything to preserve the simple, idyllic life she had made for herself and her nephew.
She pivoted around to lean her back against the workbench as Knox reassembled the repaired bathroom fixture. “Carla went home about an hour ago.”
“I know. I was in here when I heard her car leave.”
He had purposely made himself scarce during their visit. Maybe he should have said more than a handful of words to Leni’s friend after she’d arrived, but it wasn’t his job to be hospitable. He was there for one purpose, even if he had to keep reminding himself of that fact.
“Anyway, I promised Riley we’d rent that new superhero movie tonight,” Leni said. “We’re going to start it in a minute, if you’d like to come in and join us.”
Knox exhaled. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” She tilted her head, her tone playful as she watched him. “You got something against caped crusaders?”
“No,” he said, setting down his work and meeting her gaze.
Damn, those eyes knocked him out every time he looked at her. So clear and steady. Fearless. Right now, there was a hopeful gleam in them that seemed to carve a hollow in his chest as she stared at his grim face.
“You said I shouldn’t make promises to the kid that I won’t be keeping, Leni. I agree. I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to get used to me being around.”
“Oh.” She frowned and glanced away from him, giving a dismissive shake of her head. “Yeah, that’s true. Good point.”
It was. So, why did he feel like such a bastard for saying it?
“I shouldn’t keep Riley waiting,” she murmured. “Anyway, I really just wanted to come out and see if you needed anything. I haven’t seen or heard from you since this morning when Carla was here.”
“After our conversation last night, I thought keeping my distance from you would be best. For both of us.”
Fuck. He instantly wished he hadn’t said a word, just kept his mouth shut and let her go.
Because although she had started to move away from him, now she paused.
“Knox, about that . . .” She faced him, her expression pinched with contrition. “I’m sorry for prying about Abbie, about your life. I didn’t have any right to say the things I did about what you’ve been through or the choices you’ve made.”
He couldn’t keep the low curse from slipping past his clenched teeth. Her charge that he was running away from his past while still clinging to it had been dead-on. He hadn’t wanted to hear it. Hell, no one had ever dared say it to his face before.
Of course, Leni with her forthright manner and fearless heart wouldn’t hesitate to put him firmly in his place, set him straight. He liked that about her. He respected her for having the guts to call him on his bullshit, even if it pissed him off to admit it.
“You don’t need to apologize,” he muttered. “You were right. About everything you said.”
She studied him for a long moment then glanced down, toying with the edge of her roomy sweater. “Carla told me what you did.” Her gaze lifted. “You put Dwight Parrish and his brand-new truck in the river?”
“Only seemed fair.”
Her mouth curved, those mesmerizing eyes lit with amusement. “You did that for me?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to convey a message, that’s all. Announce my presence in Parrish Falls in clear, unmistakable terms.”
“Ah.” She nodded, but it was obvious she wasn’t buying his excuse. “Well, I think you’ve done that. Carla says the whole town is already buzzing with the news that we have a Breed male in our midst. Dwight’s making it sound like you’re a homicidal maniac.”
He grunted. “Not that far from the truth. I don’t much care what anyone thinks or says about me.”
“Normally, I don’t either. But the Parrishes will use anything they can against me when it comes to Riley. It’s not going to take long for tongues to start wagging about the fact that you’re staying here with me.”
“If you want me to leave, I will.”
“No,” she said, no hesitation at all. “I don’t want that, Knox.”
“You sure?” He almost wished she’d say the words, give him an out before he allowed himself to become any more involved in her life. “I’m not the only one of my kind who’s capable of protecting you and Riley. I could make a call right now, send for someone else to step in and do this right. Hell, just about anyone would be better suited for babysitting duty than me.”
“Is that what this is to you?” Her brow pinched. “Is that how you see me, Knox?”
Shit. He hadn’t meant it to sound like a jab toward her. Far from it. “Do you really need to ask that?”
“Yes. I really do.” She swallowed, inhaling a breath that seemed to fortify her. “I need to ask it, Knox. I need to know if you’re only here out of some aggravating sense of duty, or because you want to be. I need to know if I’m the only one feeling like there’s something building between us, or if I’ve just been alone too long to tell the difference. Because if I’m wrong, then I—”
Knox speared his fingers into her loose hair and pulled her against him, silencing her doubts with his kiss.
Leni melted into him on a moan. That throaty, uninhibited expression of pleasure and need went straight to his cock. Behind his closed eyelids, his vision bled amber. His fangs lengthened as he teased the seam of her lips with his tongue. She let him in on a shivery gasp, her mouth hot and wet on his, open for his taking.
With one hand cupping her nape, he let his other glide down the graceful curve of her spine. He took hold of her hip and dragged her closer, needing her to feel what she did to him. How hard she made him.
His blood raced like wildfire in his veins, throbbing and molten, just like the rest of him. It took all he had to break the contact of their mouths. His breath sawed out of him, desire all but ruling him just from a single kiss.
The glow from his transformed eyes lit her face as he looked at her. “Does that answer your question, Lenora?”
Her jagged sigh left no room for doubt, but he kissed her again, just to make things clear. This time, he claimed her mouth with all the heat and hunger he’d been struggling to hold at bay since he arrived in Parrish Falls and first saw her.
Her hands roamed over his back, her short fingernails raking across the bunched muscles that twitched and jerked under her touch. He wanted to feel her hands on his bare skin.
Fuck, he wanted her naked beneath him. If he didn’t put the brakes on this kiss, that’s exactly where they were heading.
He drew back on a rough growl. “You should’ve told me to go. Christ, you still should.”
She shook her head as she gazed up at him, her lips kiss-bruised and glistening. “I don’t want anyone else, Knox.”
Were they still talking about keeping her and Riley safe? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything but the feel
of Leni in his arms. He didn’t want to let her go, but if he held on another second she wouldn’t be going anywhere for the rest of the night.
“Your friend’s going to be disappointed to hear you didn’t agree to a substitute.”
Leni gave him a confused look. “You mean, Carla?”
“She and her virgin carotid,” he said, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, my God. You heard that?” She gaped at him, and he could almost hear her mind replaying the entirety of her entertaining, and rather illuminating, conversation with her friend. “Please tell me that’s all you heard.”
He grinned. “I will, if that’s what you need me to say.”
She groaned. “You heard everything, didn’t you?”
“Every last word.” He arched a brow. “Almost six years, eh?”
She winced, then let out a laugh. “Dammit. I’m going to kill Carla next time I see her.”
He lifted her chin on his fingertips, barely resisting the urge to kiss her again. “Don’t worry, your secrets are safe with me.”
“What about the rest of me, Knox?”
A promise lit on the end of his tongue. Solemn words he didn’t have the right to be thinking, let alone give voice to. He held back his reply, but only with the force of both his teeth and fangs.
Pleasure, he could give her. Physical security? Without question.
He would even give his life for her, if it came down that.
But promises like the one she asked of him now felt far out of his grasp.
His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth as she stared up at him. Silence spread between them, awkward and heavy.
Back at the house, the kitchen door squeaked open. “Aunt Leni, where’d you go?”
She flinched, blinked. Cleared her throat. “I, um . . . I need to get back inside.”
“Yes,” Knox said, sounding as grim as he must have looked.
Leni pivoted around and hurried out of the garage. “I’m right here, honey. Are you ready to get that movie started?”
Knox didn’t let out his breath until she was back in the house and the door was closed behind her.
CHAPTER 13
When Knox came in from the garage a couple of hours later, he found Leni asleep with Riley in the living room. She sat scrunched into the arm of the sofa, her chin tipped down on her chest at an awkward angle, while the little boy sprawled across the cushions in his pajamas, his pale blond head resting on a pillow on her lap.
Knox exhaled a quiet chuckle as he stepped into the room. On the television across from them, the movie’s closing credits rolled to a triumphant score implying a resounding win for the heroes. He turned it off, catching his hulking reflection on the darkened screen.
The way he had entered the world, the things he’d been forced to do, Knox had never considered himself one of the good guys. He had never particularly cared to be, either.
Selfish. Solitary. Savage. Those were the things that best defined him.
Not softness. Not sympathy.
Not some twisted urge to be a savior to the fierce-hearted beauty and the innocent child sleeping so trustingly under the guard of a man who’d been raised a soulless monster.
Knox told himself he didn’t feel any of those things now, as he stepped over to the sofa and simply watched the pair for a long moment. He couldn’t leave them like that, even though he knew the smartest thing for him to do was head upstairs to wait out the remainder of the night in peace. Especially after that kiss with Leni.
He still burned from it, everything male in him greedy for another taste of her.
He wanted more than just a taste.
He watched her breast rise and fall with her breathing. He could hear her pulse thudding, could see the fluttering tick of it in the side of her bent neck. His fangs responded of their own will, hunger chasing through his own blood, his gums throbbing.
Fuck. This desire he had for her was dangerous.
Looming over her like some maniac with smoldering eyes and elongated fangs wasn’t the kind of picture he wanted to paint for her or the kid tonight.
In the garage, Leni had asked if she was safe with him. After he’d overheard her admit to her friend that she wanted him—after learning no man had given her pleasure in nearly six years—safe was the last thing she should be feeling with him.
Knox mentally jammed a lid on his lust for Leni to deal with the unconscious child in her lap. He carefully lifted Riley off her and carried him up to his bedroom.
Leni didn’t stir as he went back down to collect her too. Her heavy sleep was testament to just how exhausted she truly was. Knox knew how little she’d been able to rest these past few nights. He’d heard her roaming the house at all hours. Saw the fatigue and worry over Travis Parrish’s homecoming tomorrow shadowing her eyes. She felt boneless in his arms, draped against him as helplessly as the child he’d just ferried up to bed a minute ago.
But Leni was no child.
As he tossed aside the coverlet and gently placed her on the mattress, he couldn’t help but pause for a moment to soak in the sight of her. Leni was tall and lean, yet curvy in all the right places. She was no waif, but the thick-knit, oversized sweater and soft black leggings she wore gave her a fragile quality that tugged at him even as he longed to peel her out of her clothes and feel her nakedness against his hard, far-too-aroused body.
She must have finally sensed she wasn’t alone. Just when he had almost convinced himself to get the hell out of her bedroom, her long lashes stirred, then lifted.
“Knox?” A look of surprise swept over her face. It morphed quickly into worry. “What’s going on? Where’s Riley?”
Knox sat down on the edge of the bed as she began to rise up in alarm. “It’s okay. He’s okay. The two of you fell asleep watching the movie. I just carried him to bed a minute before I brought you up here.”
She exhaled her relief, letting herself fall back against her pillows. “You carried us both to bed?”
“It was either that or let you wake up in a few hours unable to move your head.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time. But thank you for that.” Her brows furrowed as she stared at him. Then she groaned and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, God. I was having this awful dream that my friend Carla came over and made me admit some really embarrassing things.” She spread her fingers a bit, eyeing him through the cracks. “Can we please forget everything that happened in the last twelve hours or so?”
He smirked. “No chance of that.”
As much as he might wish it were possible to put the revelations about her sex life—or lack thereof—out of his mind, he’d been unable to think of much else in the time since her overheard her conversation with Carla.
Kissing Leni in the garage hadn’t helped.
In fact, it had only lit a match to his unresolved desire for her.
He cleared his throat. “I should let you sleep. I brought you up here because it was obvious you were exhausted. Tomorrow’s going to come early.”
“Yeah.”
She parted her lips as if she wanted to say something more, but then thought better of it. She glanced down. The move sent a tendril of her dark hair swinging into her face.
Knox should have let go. He should have let her keep whatever she was reluctant to say. Instead, he reached out, swept the stray lock out of her eyes and lifted her chin on the edge of his finger.
“You all right?”
She nodded, but her gaze told him something different. “The day I’ve been dreading since Travis Parrish was sent away is finally here. It’s only hours away now.” She swallowed. “I’m scared, Knox.”
He knew how much that quiet admission cost her. He understood her apprehension about her sister’s assailant coming home. He’d seen the fear in Leni over the thought of losing Riley to his father and the rest of the Parrishes. He had recognized Leni’s worry the night she asked for his help. But this was the first time she’d said it out loud.
“What can you do if they try to take him from me? What can anyone do about that, Knox?” Emotion choked her voice. She slowly shook her head in resignation. “Half of him is Parrish. He belongs to them, more than he belongs to me.”
“Bullshit. That’s not even close to true. Blood has nothing to do with where someone belongs. It has nothing to do with the lengths someone will go to protect what matters.”
As he said the words, he realized just how profoundly he meant them. Not only when it came to Leni and her sister’s child, but how Knox felt about the woman he was looking at now.
Leni wasn’t his. As a Breedmate, he fully expected that one day, the gift of her eternal blood bond would belong to another male, one who deserved her. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t protect her to his last breath.
Even without the mark on her belly, her life had become precious to him. It was worth fighting for. Worth dying for.
He was starting to believe she might even be worth living for, something he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
“I’m not going to let anything happen,” he said, the promise rough for the presence of his fangs. “I’m going to keep both of you safe and together. No matter what it takes.”
She leaned against him and he brought his arm around her, holding her close in spite of every warning that thundered through his blood and body. He was treading into dangerous waters with her tonight. His need for her intensified now that she was cuddled into his chest, her sweet scent filling his senses.
He tipped his head back, searching for the strength to get up off her bed and leave the room. Leni’s palm rested over his heart. She had to feel the savage drumming beneath her hand. She had to know just how close he was to breaking.
