by Dannika Dark
Months ago, Knox’s partner hacked the Trinity files and came across a list of names. A background check found nothing out of the ordinary, so when one of the names showed up for his next assignment, Knox took a detour to Texas without his team to find Zoë Merrick. They never went after women, and this order was a hit. That’s when he found out Zoë was missing—which would have been fine with him, had he not run into Adam at her apartment. Adam wasn’t talking, and while that should have pissed him off, Knox owed him. They both agreed it was in Adam’s best interest to skip town while his team ran their investigation. Knox erased prints Adam left behind in Zoë’s apartment, and searched his property.
Towards the end of his service, Adam confessed he no longer felt that what they were doing was for a good cause. Knox stayed true and stayed in. Doubt was a plague that ravaged his conscience now that the facts were bubbling to the surface. They saw some weird things in their time, and as it turns out, had been treading in the world of Breed for years. The Trinity files were an inside database for the higher-ups only. It broke down different supernaturals, and a few names listed were ones they had taken out.
Adam fell off the earth, but after an unexpected phone call, Knox drove up and they shared information. Finding out Zoë was Silver took him by surprise, but he needed a good slap in the face to wake the fuck up from his purpose in life.
Knox curled his hand around the chilled glass and peered over his shoulder to check on the girl.
He had no shame admitting he would rather nail a woman than date her. He didn’t grow up with a mother, sister, or any woman in his life. His father had a fetish for cheap women that rubbed off on him. Knox wasn’t approachable, and at the end of the night, he rarely went home with a woman on his arm.
Her body was like sunshine—warm and intense—something he wanted to soak in with all his senses. Those wide eyes reminded him of azure skies along the southern coastline. Her hips were lush and curvy, leaving everything to the imagination with the layers of clothing she wore. Blond waves of hair spilled across her shoulders like particles of light. He knew she was a woman with class—real class—nothing like the women who came from wealth, pretending they were the very definition of it. Sunny was untouchable.
Knox’s chin touched his shoulder as he looked over it. A short waiter with a long goatee pocketed a few bills left beneath Sunny’s glass. His heart slammed to a stop when he saw the empty booth.
“Shit,” he muttered, throwing his heavy boots on the floor. He twisted around and caught a glimpse of her outside, running by the window. Knox had a choice, and while he could have let her go, that’s not how it went down.
He kept a safe distance behind, cursing himself as he stayed in the shadows.
Sunny shielded herself from the onslaught of rain with a small clutch over her head. The water on the dark streets shimmered like glass, collecting a shower of colors from the streetlights and neon signs. When she made it safely to the hotel, Knox took a position by a light pole and lit up a smoke.
***
Sunny tossed her wet scarf on the dresser. Cognito was miserable with all the rain. She switched on the dim lamp and stood by the window, watching a homeless woman squatting beside a dumpster with a bag over her head.
Marco was eating away at her conscience. In the beginning, he was an attentive lover. He treated her with gifts and expensive dates. She never liked dominant men; it was difficult to break it off with them when it was time. There was never a man in her life that matched his confidence. He was well traveled, educated, and cultured. He was also a liar.
Sunny leaned against the wall as the rain sprayed against the window. The room smelled musty, like a mixture of mold, sweat, and grandpa’s shoes. The yellow and brown striped comforter was stained, and it was criminal what they were charging her.
She thought about Knox. He took a stick to those men and she never thanked him. Whether it was the thought of him, or the damp chill in the air, a flurry of goose bumps scattered across her arms.
Her eyes snapped up when a person stepped behind a light post across the street. There was no hiding that frame of solid muscle. That was Knox out in the rain.
Was he watching her?
Without thinking, she ran out of the hotel to confront him. Her leggings soaked up water as she crossed the deep puddles in the road. Sunny stepped up the curb and touched his arm.
“Knox?”
Cold drops of rain pelted her face as Knox spun on his heel and walked in the opposite direction. Fast.
“Wait!” she yelled, knocking into a newspaper stand.
He took off at animal speed, his heavy boots crunching on the coarse concrete.
“Knox wait, don’t make me run after you because I will—all the way to Jersey if I have to!” she shouted, “and I don’t even know where that is from here, so STOP!”
He slowed down and looked over his shoulder.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked, approaching him cautiously. His lashes were wet and she couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt them on her like heat. A shiver skated across her skin and her teeth chattered.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he said. “You’ll get sick.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Adam took it.”
She figured as much when she noticed that he stayed at the bar for a drink, but never once did he offer to sit with her. The rain was deafening—but all she could hear was his breath.
“Come inside, let me make you a cup of hot coffee and dry you off. This damsel in distress owes you one.”
His shoulders hunched up as he tucked his hands in his pockets, watching her closely but never speaking a word.
“Or, I’ll just stay out here with you… in the pouring rain,” she said, folding her arms.
Knox wiped a hand over his wet face and moved towards the hotel, escorting her across the street with the palm of his hand between her shoulder blades.
Once inside, Sunny made a beeline to the bathroom and grabbed a fresh stack of white towels. Knox was closing the dingy curtains when she entered the room.
“Those locks on the door are cheap.”
Well, wasn’t that an odd thing to say?
“It’s all I could afford on short notice; most of the hotels were booked,” she said. “Here.” She flung a towel across the room and he caught it with his left hand. By the looks of him, he needed more than a towel. “Give me your shirt and hat, I’ll wring them out and hang them up to dry. I also have a hair dryer.”
The shirt he wore didn’t leave much to the imagination. While it was the color of iron, the fabric was sheer when wet and she could see every line of muscle.
When she snatched the hat away from his head, the look on his face made her giggle. “Well, at least let me take this before you catch pneumonia.”
Sunny marched into the bathroom and wrung out the hat, folding it over the shower rod. She wondered why he wore it all the time because it covered up his beautiful black hair. It was probably the most boyish thing about him.
She tossed her wet clothes in the bathtub and slipped into a pink nightgown that draped past her knees. Zoë used to tease her about her old-fashioned gowns, but she liked them, and Zoë had no room to talk with her sweats and frumpy shirts.
“Are you staying at a hotel nearby?” she yelled through the open door.
“No ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am unless you’re taking my order—and I like extra pickles on my burger,” she replied. “Can you put some coffee on?”
Sunny dabbed the ends of her hair with a white cotton towel until the water was no longer dripping. She smiled when she walked into the room and saw Knox holding the coffee pot upside down, staring inside.
“I take it you don’t drink much coffee?” Sunny took the pot from his hands. “Sit down and tell me how you know Zoë, I mean… Silver.”
“Through Adam.”
His eyes darted between her gown and her painted toes. She was a little confused a
s to why he avoided eye contact with her.
“What exactly is up with that? Are they an item or something?”
Knox laughed; it was throaty and rolled out like a long, suggestive caress that made her toes curl.
“Doesn’t he wish? Romeo can’t seem to catch that fish.”
“You rhymed,” she smirked. “That’s one fish who doesn’t want to be caught. He should cast out his line for another one because he’s wasting his time. She doesn’t trust men.”
“What about you? Do you trust men?” Knox sat down and ruffled his wet hair with the towel.
She slunk in the opposite chair and thought about it.
“I love men with no strings attached. I just want the frosting, not the whole cake.” She glimpsed down at his hand, absent of a ring. “No wife?”
A tight smile wound across his face, and he dropped the towel on the floor.
“I’m not hitting on you. I’m just making conversation,” she lied. There was something about Knox that reeled her in, and she wanted to kick herself for playing twenty questions. He was the complete opposite of the men she found attractive. He looked as if he lived a rough life, yet even with his brutal features, she couldn’t stop looking at him.
“Fuck no. Might as well castrate me, and I like my balls just fine where they are—firmly attached.”
She dismissed men like him, and while normally that kind of vulgarity would put her off, Sunny found it refreshing that he was real with her. It had been ages since she knew what real felt like.
***
What the fuck are you doing here? Knox thought to himself as he scratched the stubble on his jaw. He tried not to stare at Sunny in her satin gown, and almost blushed like a bastard when she walked into the room. She looked like a pink flower, and he breathed in lavender perfume mixed with rainwater.
He would stay, politely drink his coffee, and leave.
“Cream?”
Fuck. “No, black is fine.”
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
She placed the steaming cup in front of him and his eyes brightened. He never liked the taste of coffee, but he appreciated the smell.
“Do you hate women, or is it just me? I won’t be offended.”
Knox took a long sip, not giving in to provocation. Some women were always looking for a fight. Through his peripheral, he watched her mashing the tips of her toes against the carpet as she stood beside him. Purple polish. He noticed.
“I don’t want to frighten you—just watching what I say.”
“You don’t scare me, and I don’t mind the way you talk. In fact, I kind of like it. I don’t know why, but it makes me feel…” She hesitated. “You put me at ease, and that’s saying a lot.”
“I’m not the kind of man you need to feel comfortable with.”
She squeezed a few drops of water from the back of his hair and he shuddered. “I’ll be the judge of that.” Her voice tickled his spine and he tried to drown out her fresh rain scent with the steam from his cup. “After what I saw tonight, I know there’s a decent man in there.”
“I don’t put up with lowlifes, I was just…” He stopped before he felt the flush in his ears. Damn, how he hated that dead giveaway of his embarrassment. In school, kids taunted him for it, and as a result, Knox learned how to fight.
“Well, you can come to my rescue anytime.” Sunny drifted over to her seat.
An impulse surged through every muscle in his body. Maybe it was pride talking, but women never spoke that way about him.
“I’m beginning to think I really should carry that pepper spray I’m always threatening to use,” she smiled. “I usually don’t have to deal with that kind of thing.”
Her fingers cupped the mug as she took baby sips. A fluff of steam obscured her face and made the tip of her nose glisten. He took a big mental eraser and tried to work on that emotion swelling inside of him.
“What do you do to earn a respectable dollar?”
Women loved this part. You merely had to suggest you worked in the military and all the visions of uniforms danced in their heads like sugarplums. Of course, the only uniform he wore was all black.
“Military. Top secret shit,” he said, with a double arch of the brow.
“Sounds riveting,” she mocked with a sly smile that had the hairs on the back of his neck standing erect. “Do you work with Adam, is that what he does?”
“No. His kind employs their own and keeps separate from us humans. I don’t know what they do precisely.”
“So you’re human?” she asked warily.
“Born and bred. Your friend—she’s been through some rough shit,” he said, derailing the subject.
She rested her elbow on the table and it tilted, so Knox planted his boot on one of the legs to steady it. He grimaced at the burnt flavor of the coffee and set his cup down.
Sunny cleared her throat. “I was seeing this guy who kept asking about her, but I didn’t think much about it because I thought he was just trying to show an interest in my life. The night Zoë disappeared, I went to his place, and… he said he was finished with me. He deceived me,” she said angrily. “Led me to believe there was something more between us. I was an idiot. I can’t believe I actually fell for his lies. That’s karma coming back to sink its teeth in my rear, and I probably deserve it.”
“He was the fucking idiot.” Knox placed his arms flat on the table.
“I’ve never led a guy on, Knox, but he did with me. I was so upset by the things he said that we started arguing, and I got even more upset when I couldn’t understand half of what he was saying because it was in Italian. When he called me a name—that much I understood. I threw a bookend at him and…”
Her delicate brows pinched together forming a worry line, and he didn’t like where this story was going. Knox had zero tolerance for a man who raised a hand to a woman.
“What did he do?”
“He moved so fast. I guess that’s something that they can do, right? Well, I was just flabbergasted.” Sunny smiled sweetly and it melted him. “Sorry, sometimes I sound a little old fashioned.”
He liked the way this woman spoke; it was confident and not muddied up with profanities that came as natural to him as breath. Her voice was clear and bright, like church bells.
“Marco grabbed my arm and threw me out the front door like Monday’s trash.”
Knox wanted to find the prick and throw him off a cliff.
“I always suspected that Marco had something to do with her disappearance. That’s why I moved; I was afraid of him. Now that I know what Silver is, everything makes sense. He used me just to get to her; he was probably conspiring with that monster that made her.”
She got up and sat on the edge of the bed, dropping her head in her hands. “She’s never going to forgive me when I tell her everything.”
Knox lowered his eyes to the floor. “You’d be surprised what people can get over.”
It was time to make an exit before he started to sound like a greeting card. As he brushed past her, he stopped dead in his tracks as her fingers reached out and curled around his.
“Stay with me tonight.” Her voice was quiet, and his heart raced.
“You don’t want that.” But god, he did.
“How do you know what I want?”
“You want to talk about your feelings over a cup of coffee,” he said, staring down at her eyes, “but I’m not that guy.” Knox bit his tongue. He needed to be crude; it was the only way to smother any idea she held that he was a decent man. Taking a woman whenever she offered was something of a religion to him, but it didn’t seem appropriate to do this with her, not just because she was a friend to Silver, but he didn’t see her like the other women. “Unless you want to be with someone who will make you feel like a cheap whore, then let go of my hand.”
She let go, and hooked her fingers in his jeans. He sucked in a sharp breath, feeling the cold tips against his warm stomach. It triggered a reaction—a need to warm her—and he thr
eaded his fingers through the soft waves of her damp hair. It was silky, just like he imagined.
She rolled up the end of his shirt, spreading slow kisses across the flat of his stomach.
Possession crashed through him like a tsunami. He lifted her by the arms and her body rubbed against his, every curvy inch of it.
“You don’t make me feel cheap,” she said in a breath touching his neck. “I want to know who you are, and I’m asking you to stay with me tonight,” she said, rising to her tiptoes to meet his lips.
The kiss, her lips, and the firm way that she gripped his arms were more than he could process. He didn’t lean in or offer. She took what she wanted. Knox had always been the aggressor—the pursuer—and he wasn’t prepared for a woman to take charge of him this way.
He liked it.
That first feathery brush made his knees lock up. She was insatiable. Her tongue found his and she gripped the back of his neck, pulling him to her even more. Rain and flowers filled his senses, and she deepened the kiss, coaxing him to respond with more passion than he was giving her. She tasted like butterscotch, and their tongues twirled.
“This isn’t right,” he said, breaking away. She needed someone—anyone—and Knox was nothing more than a convenience of proximity. He refused to be her regret.
“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” she said.
Those words slammed into him like a brick wall, and it scared the shit out of him. Following her home was a mistake, so Knox moved away and walked out the door.
Chapter 5
“What are you and Knox up to?” I asked.
Adam rapped his fingers on the dining table with confidentiality etched all over his face.
“I can’t say.”
“The same reason you can’t say why he was at my apartment that night?”
Adam rubbed his eyelids with the tips of his fingers and yawned. God, the man was impossible.