“The writing was sharp, the story gripping. You might have exaggerated some of my character traits, but your ending statement was poignant. ‘So is Knox Jagger a bad boy or a good man? He’s both. He’s neither. He’s a breed all his own.’” He gave me a sideways smile. “So now that the ‘man of mystery’ isn’t nearly such an enigma, I guess it’s time for you to find new subject matter.”
Twisting around, I inspected the courtyard. It was alive with students and commotion and energy. A couple was arguing by the fountain, the girl looking ready to slap the guy with her water bottle. A couple of guys were sitting across from each other giving one another lingering looks. An ad-hoc professor stood a little too close to one of his female students and looked down her shirt every time she looked away. Someone wearing a gorilla suit was running around the courtyard shouting about freeing the lab rats in the science building.
“There’s never a shortage of subject matter,” I said as, from the sidewalk, a guy flung a banana at the impassioned gorilla, thumping it right in the head. “Obviously.”
“Enough about subject matter.” Knox nudged me, his arm coming around behind my back. “Let’s talk about a subject that matters to me.”
I kept my eyes on the raging gorilla and tried to pretend Knox’s mouth dropping to my neck wasn’t undoing me. “If it’s the subject I think it is, talking isn’t usually involved.”
Knox nipped at the base of my neck, eliciting a soft sigh from me. “That’s never kept you quiet before.”
“Is that so?” Lying back on the grass, I grabbed his shirt and tugged him down over me.
He rolled almost all the way onto me, lining up his hips where he knew I could feel him. Already ready to go. Trying to keep from smiling so I wouldn’t give myself away, I slid my hand into my purse and rifled around in it until I felt what I was searching for. With the fabric wadded up in my hand, I reached around Knox’s backside, opened his back pocket, and stuffed it inside.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked with a pronounced smirk, his hand gliding down my side. When it got to the hem of my skirt, he stopped.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” I answered, draping my arms around his neck. When his fingers slid under my skirt and up my inner thigh, my breath came in irregular pulls.
“Damn, it is what I think it is.” His voice was a few notes deeper, and his thumb stroked a spot on my body that made me want to shudder and leap.
I patted Knox’s back pocket I’d just stuffed my underwear into. “And to think that whole time, you really were calling every single number.”
“It wasn’t a lie.” His words were muffled as his lips brushed my collarbone.
“No, just an omission that, instead of a booty call, it was more of a checking-in call.”
His lips continued their journey up my neck. “I’m just one human being looking after another human being.”
My eyelids drifted closed as his hands and mouth continued to make me feel things I should have been embarrassed to be feeling in a public place. “Given how full your pockets would be leaving a party, I think it’s more accurate to say you’re just one human being looking after a few dozen others—every morning after.” When Knox had confessed that as part of his quest to make his life count for something, he had in fact, gone through every single pair of panties he’d accrued in a night and given each girl a call the next morning to make sure she hadn’t found herself in a bad situation—just a quick call to make sure they hadn’t wound up in an unfamiliar place with no memory of what had happened to get them there—and once he found out they were okay, he ended the call before they could get their hopes up that Knox Jagger had chosen them over their panty dropping rivals. The very guy who could have bedded every last one of them instead choose to take the role of a father checking in on his daughter . . . or a brother checking in on a sister. It had taken him a couple tries to get out the brother and sister part.
When Knox’s touch became more urgent and I knew I was moments away from throwing my head back and filling the entire courtyard with my soprano, I managed to squeeze out a few words. “Not now. Later.” My eyes closed as he touched me one last time before his hand moved back down my leg.
“Then what now? It’s the last day of school. You’re here; I’m here. What now?”
I shifted a bit farther under Knox until I could feel his hips pinning mine. “How about you kiss me like you did in the hospital? That should get me by until we make it back to the privacy of our bedroom.”
Knox’s hand covered my cheek, his fingers splaying across it. Kissing the tip of my nose, he said, “How about I kiss you right after this . . .” Lowering his mouth to just outside my ear, he whispered three words—the three words that made this whole roller coaster of a disaster of a wonderful year all worth it.
“I know, Knox,” I whispered. “I know.”
He pressed his forehead into mine, and we closed our eyes together. “Good.”
Then the boy I’d done everything I could to keep out of my life at the start of the year, the same one who’d turned out to be the only one I couldn’t keep out, kissed me.
Thank you for reading HARD KNOX by
NEW YORK TIMES and USATODAY Bestselling Author, Nicole Williams.
Want more of The Outsider Chronicles?
Check out DAMAGED GOODS,
releasing early September 2014.
When Liv Bennett said good-bye to her sinkhole of a hometown, she planned to leave that chapter of her life behind forever. But forever turned out to only be three years.
After her addict of a mother up and disappears, Liv returns to what she considers her own personal hell smack in the middle of nowhere Nevada to take care of her two younger sisters, and she promptly reinstitutes the golden rule that got her through her first nineteen years of life without getting knocked up, roughed up, or messed up: don’t date the local boys and, god forbid, don’t fall in love with one of them.
It isn’t long before that golden rule is put to the test.
Will Goods grew up in the next trailer over, but the wild, careless boy who used to tear up the town with his three brothers has morphed into someone else so completely, he’s almost unrecognizable. The quiet, contemplative man who works on cars every night and takes care of his mentally ill mother every day is nothing like the local boys Liv grew up avoiding.
But when Liv considers suspending her golden rule just this once, she finds out something about Will that will change everything.
Will Goods isn’t who he used to be—he’s not even the man Liv thinks she’s gotten to know over the summer. He’s become someone else entirely.
He’s become . . .
Damaged Goods.
Nicole loves to hear from her readers.
You can connect with her on Facebook: Nicole Williams (Official Author Page)
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Blog: nicoleawilliams.blogspot.com
Other Works by Nicole:
CRASH, CLASH, and CRUSH (HarperCollins)
LOST & FOUND, NEAR & FAR, FINDERS KEEPERS
UP IN FLAMES (Simon & Schuster UK)
GREAT EXPLOITATIONS
THE EDEN TRILOGY
THE PATRICK CHRONICLES
Hard Knox Page 34