7. Knox

CHAPTER SEVEN

KNOX

Maybe it was the years in prison. Maybe it was the fact that I’d lived my whole life on someone else’s leash, be it hunger, or the gang, or the state correctional facility, but being ordered around wasn’t new to me. It wasn’t all that uncomfortable.

Fuck, if anything, it was the opposite. If someone else was telling me just what to do, I knew I wasn’t doing the wrong thing.

There was just something wrong with this.

Not Emmanuel. Well, no, there was a lot wrong with him. But there was a lot wrong with me too, and I didn’t judge for that. The world was a fucked up place, and we were all built in its image. But there was something else about him, not just being a vampire or taking away my choices or any of the obvious stuff that was making my stomach squirm.

Something about how much he hated his mother, and now seemed to be taking her path. I’d disliked my father for a lot of my childhood because of the drinking, so I’d chosen not to drink. Why was he doing the opposite, when he’d clearly not even loved his mother enough to be sorry she was dead?

How could I convince him he was doing it wrong, when he had control of me? If all I had were my wits, we were both pretty fucked, and I’d already made him angry.

And dammit, I wasn’t sorry. Because I was fine following orders. Hell, the biggest part of me was even fine following his orders, this near stranger, even though I was still half convinced he’d almost killed me last night. He hadn’t killed me in the end, and he had given me what I’d needed to take care of Pidge. I’d been able to shove that money in Mutt’s face and drag her off to rehab in the next moment so he couldn’t get his hooks back into her. Then I’d packed up everything I cared about in the apartment, and left. Told the landlord neither Pidge or me were ever coming back.

Left Mutt staring after me in shock as I’d walked away.

Ass hadn’t even thought quick enough to insist that there had been some unpaid interest on Pidge’s debt that was also now my responsibility.

I’d have said he hadn’t expected me to walk away from my whole life, but who expected that? Not even me, the night before. And then I’d wandered the streets for hours, thinking about not going back to the Victorian, and feeling sick every time I tried to consider it.

More, I’d thought about Emmanuel. Beautiful, quick, sharp Emmanuel. Angry Emmanuel.

Sad Emmanuel.

I didn’t know him at all. Barely knew his name, let alone more, but there was something about him that wouldn’t let me go, and I didn’t think it was just the way he’d pressed me into service. I’d felt it before I fell asleep. Some connection. Shared misery and loneliness.

Loneliness, so awful I was thinking about just letting go and sinking into letting him order me around. It didn’t sound so bad, all things considered. He was pretty and strong and had changed my life. Had fixed a situation I couldn’t have hoped to. As much as I’d been determined to try, it hadn’t been likely I would have been able to steal enough to pay off eighteen grand without him and his money.

I tossed my clothes around the room as I did as he’d ordered. Jacket on the corner of the bed, one glove in front of the fireplace and the other on a small table, shirt on the floor in front of a chair. Just making it as clear as possible that I’d been an asshole because he’d left me the opening to be.

Then, frankly, I took the most luxurious bath I’d ever taken in my life. His bathtub was big enough to fit two whole people, side by side, and the water came out piping hot, filling the whole thing to the brim. Our apartment had always had about five minutes of warm-ish shower water, but we hadn’t even had a bathtub. I’d always thought of porcelain tubs as something only rich people on TV had.

The warm, wet heat seemed to suck the tension right out of me, leaving me floppy and loose-limbed, and I was just starting to worry that I was going to be useless when I got out, when Emmanuel marched into the bathroom.

He looked determined when he came in, but then paused and cocked his head. “Hot water,” he said, low and a little thoughtful.

Did he take cold baths because he was dead and didn’t need warmth? That sounded dumb. Warm was pleasant, no matter who you were, wasn’t it? It was just, like, human instinct. And whatever Emmanuel was, he’d been born as human as me, unless all the vampire myths were a lie.

Part of me, the part that was still angry about being cast as that little fly-eating dude in Dracula, wanted to tell him to get the fuck out while I was taking a bath, because I was still my own man and no one owned me. Another part remembered the night before, and how he’d returned the favor and sucked my cock, and how he’d been so... determined. So focused.

I wondered if he’d never sucked a cock before.

Somehow, that whole line of thinking made me want to hug him and feed him soup. Clearly, his mom had been fucking nuts, with her screeching about “unnatural urges.” Okay, maybe the screeching had mostly been the fire, but it wasn’t like she’d been rational before that.

“Hot water,” I agreed. “Want to try it out?”

He blinked at me, stunned. “You’re angry with me. Because... because of the thrall. You hate me.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m mad at you because you took away my choice. That doesn’t mean I hate you. It means you did something bad without my permission. Sometimes people do that, even people I like. I’m mad at my sister because she started doing drugs. Still love her. Still gonna take care of her. Doing something bad doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It means you didn’t know what else to do, so you did what you thought you needed to.”

That seemed to catch him off guard. He crossed his arms over his chest and bit his lip, glancing away from me, down at the floor. His voice was low and a little petulant when he mumbled, “I’m not like her.”

“When I was a teenager, I got drunk once. Fourteen years old, and no one on the block was surprised. They just sighed and rolled their eyes and told me to go sleep it off. Even though it’s illegal for a kid that age to drink and I’d never done it before, and they should have been outraged.” I leaned on the side of the tub, laying my arm on the porcelain and then my head on my own arm. “You know why they acted like it was no surprise?”

He looked up at me, met my eye for a second, then looked away, shaking his head.

“Because my father drank. He drank himself to death a few years ago. So when I did the thing I’d grown up watching him do, everyone thought ‘yup, that’s how Knox is gonna spend the rest of his life,’ and they never thought about it again.”

“I’m not?—”

“And then I never drank again,” I added, interrupting him and bringing him up short. “Because I saw it. I realized they were right. And I didn’t ever want to be like him, so I stopped. Sometimes we do things like that. We make mistakes, because it’s all we were taught to do. Like Pidge doing drugs to escape our shitty life. Like me getting drunk. Like you taking control of me. Doesn’t mean it’s who you have to be.”

I let myself settle better into the tub, motioning to the water. “Instead, you could come join me in here. We could talk. Maybe see how things fit together. See if we like hanging out without all this control shit. You’re hot. You saved my ass. I owe you. I’d like to get to know you better. Why don’t we give it a shot?”