7. Knox

7

KNOX

She sleeps the whole way to my house. When we pull off the highway, she starts to moan in her sleep, and the next thing I know, she’s wrapped one hand around my forearm, and her head is resting on my shoulder. I don’t breathe. I don’t make a sound or move at all for at least ten seconds. She settles back into her sleep but seems to grip on to me even tighter.

I do my best to avoid bumps in the road and even take the long way around to avoid the gravel back road. When I finally pull into my driveway, me unarming the alarm at the gate startles her awake.

She raises her head, but she doesn’t let go of my arm. I don’t move; all I can do is stare at her. There’s a connection between us. I can feel it all the way to my bones, and I know she feels it too. She’s so close, all I have to do is dip my head and I can taste her lips. The urge to do that is strong. “You okay?” I ask her softly.

She nods and lets go of my arm before retreating back to her side of the truck with an apology. I don’t have the time to examine the feeling of loss I have when she’s no longer plastered to my side.

I don’t trust my voice, so I don’t say anything. My body has reacted to having her pressed against me, and I take a few deep breaths before I pull into the opening garage doors. When the door closes behind us, I turn off the engine and climb out of the truck. I go to help her, but she’s already out and meets me in the front.

“Come on, I’ll take you for a tour.” I grab the tote bag from her hand, and surprisingly, she gives it to me.

I take her through the ranch-style house with the open floor plan, pointing out the living room, bedrooms, bathrooms. I take into account that we just met, and she may be freaking out at this point when she’s realizing that she’s going to be staying here with me... alone. “This will be where you sleep. My room is on the other side of the house.”

She sets her purse down, and I put the tote bag I carried in for her next to it. “C’mon, I’ll show you the rest.”

She follows behind me, and she’s quiet as we walk through the rooms. I try to look at it through fresh eyes, trying to see what she sees, but the way she doesn’t say anything, I can see there’s something on her mind. I point out all the security features, programming her own codes into the system so I know she’ll remember them.

“I won’t be here long enough for that.”

“Kali, I’d like you to stay until we know you’re safe.”

She looks like she may argue. She opens her mouth but then closes it again with a faint nod.

I put my hands in the front pockets of my jeans. “That’s about it,” I tell her as we’re standing back in the kitchen.

She nods with her hand to her head. “Can I step outside for a minute?”

It’s a weird request, but I nod instantly and open the back door. She steps out, and I watch as she takes deep breaths, filling her lungs. I should give her a second—no doubt she needs to process things—but the thought of leaving her right now just doesn’t sit well with me.

“Are you okay?”

She nods and looks in the back yard from one end of the house to the next. There’s a wooded area to the left and open field to the right. “You don’t have any neighbors?”

I take a step toward her. Her back is to me, and I want to reach out to her and pull her into my arms and reassure her it’s going to be okay, but I don’t. I fist my hands at my sides instead. “No neighbors. But I promise you’ll be safe here.”

I haven’t felt a physical sexual pull like this ever before. If it was under different circumstances, I would want to see where this goes. She’s attracted to me. I can see it with every look she gives me and the way her eyes follow me. It makes it that much harder because I can’t act on it. Not now, not while she’s so vulnerable. I won’t take advantage of her. I have to step away from her and put a little space between us. “I’m going to go in and call Nico. I know he and your sister are both worried.”

She’s shaking her head, following me inside. “You promised you wouldn’t tell him.”

I nod, understanding that she wants to keep her family safe. “I know, but I have to let him know you’re safe.”

“You won’t tell him what’s happening?”

I nod. “I won’t, but Kali, you have to know that Nico is going to find out. He works with some of the best intel in the country. He’s going to know. But I’m going to be the one to keep you safe. I’ll tell him.”

There are so many questions, I can see them forming on her face. I wait to see if she’s going to say anything, but when she doesn’t, I point to my room. “We’re going to have to get you some clothes. Until then, grab anything out of my closet or my drawers. I know you want to get out of those bloody clothes.”

She looks down at her shirt and oversized sweatshirt, and without another glance at me, she walks toward my room. I want to follow her in there. I want to make sure she’s okay, but I don’t. Instead, I lean against the kitchen counter and pull out my phone to call Nico.

“Is she okay?” he asks as soon as he answers. I can hear the worry in his voice.

“Yes, she’s fine. We, uh, checked out of the hotel. I have her at my house.”

“Great! I’m glad you talked some sense into her. I’m going to send Carter to come get her, take her to my house.”

I tense when he mentions the other man’s name. I remember him. He is a good guy but he lives somewhere up north. “Why would you send him?”

“Kali knows Carter. She trusts him.”

At that moment, Kali comes out of the bedroom. No doubt she heard the conversation. She’s shaking her head side to side. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. By doing that, you’re putting your family in danger.”

“Kali is my family!” he all but yells into the phone.

“I know, Nico. But I don’t want to get your wife and daughter mixed up in this. Do they have protection right now?” I haven’t talked to Kali about it, but I wonder if Miles’s twin has a way of getting to them. Even though my gut tells me they went for Kali because she was easy to find and hence the easy target.

“They’re always protected.” Nico’s voice is low and lethal, and right now, I know exactly how he feels.

“Kali is being followed. Someone is wanting to hurt her, and I don’t want to take that to your wife and daughter. You called me to protect your sister-in-law. That’s what I’m doing.”

Kali is leaning up against the opposite counter right in front of me. She has one of my T-shirts in her hands, and she’s clenching it so tightly her knuckles are turning white.

Nico takes a deep breath, and it’s loud through the speakers of the phone. “Fine. Who’s after her? Is this one of the many assholes she’s dating?”

Kali flushes, and her face turns red. Her eyes won’t meet mine. She didn’t appear to me like someone that dated a lot. As a matter of fact, she’s seemed almost shy and innocent around me. Especially when I’ve caught her staring at me. She turns away, embarrassed.

“My guy is digging into it right now.” Dylan is the best at what he does. I’m sure he’s already tracked the twin and knows exactly where he’s at.

“Fine. I’ll have my guy do the same. I’m in Belize for a few more days. I’ll be in Tennessee to pick her up as soon as I get back into the States.”

I want to argue with him. I want to tell him that a few days is not enough time for me to get to know her better, but of course I’m not going to say it. “Fine.”

Nico starts going over the safety detail I have at my house, and I don’t blame him. He wants to know his sister-in-law is safe. When we get into the discussion, Kali walks off toward her bedroom, and I try not to watch her hips sway back and forth as she goes.

“Knox, you still there?”

I clear my throat. “Yeah, I’m still here.”

Kali

I take way longer in the shower than I should. I kept replaying the day in my head, over and over. I should probably be more worried about the man that’s after me, but what I can’t stop thinking about is Knox. He’s unlike any man I’ve ever known. Well, that’s not quite true. He’s protective like Nico and Carter and the rest of the Haven Team, but there’s never been a man make me feel the way he does.

When I’m finally dried off, I pull Knox’s shirt over my head. He had a pair of shorts that are big in the waist, but it seems my hips are going to at least keep them up.

I stand in the doorway of the room I’m staying in and watch Knox in the kitchen. He’s cooking now, moving around like he does this all the time. I wouldn’t have taken him for a man that cooked.

As if feeling my gaze on him, he lifts his head, and his eyes round as he looks at me. “Hey, I hope you’re hungry.”

I nod and walk into the kitchen. “What can I do to help?”

He shakes his head. “Have a seat. It’s ready. I hope you like spaghetti. I had some frozen sauce, so it was the easiest.”

I nod my head, still trying to wrap my head around this alpha, no doubt lethal man cooking dinner. I sit down at the table as he brings the last items to the table. I inhale deeply. “It smells good.”

He smiles and serves me up a big platter of food. I laugh. “That’s way too much.”

He shrugs. “Humor me. I bet you haven’t eaten in a while.”

I try to remember when I ate last, and I think it was on the bus to Tennessee that I ate a pack of crackers I’d found in the bottom of my tote bag.

I twirl the spaghetti on my fork and take a bite. I moan instantly as the taste hits my tongue. “Yum, that’s good.”

Knox’s eyebrows raise, and his eyes darken as he stares back at me. He nods and takes a bite. For a while, neither of us says a thing.

I’m in the middle of eating when I realize he’s not moving, he’s only staring at me. But he’s not staring at me; he’s staring at my shoulder. I look down, and the oversized shirt is hanging off it.

“He did that to you?” he asks. He doesn’t even sound like himself. He’s staring intently at me. He saw the bruising earlier, but in this bright light it looks even worse.

I pull the shirt up to cover it. “He did.”

He drops the fork, and it clatters on his almost empty plate. He pushes himself back from the table. “I’ll be right back.”

He strides from the dining room, and I watch as he walks through the front of the house and out the door. My appetite is lost now, and I start to clean up. I’m almost done when I can feel a change in the room, and I know he’s behind me.

I turn to look at him. “I’m sorry for....”

He walks over to me and stops when he can reach out and put his finger over my lips. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

I nod my head and pull my head back so I can talk. “Yes, I do. I shouldn’t have come here. It’s not fair that I didn’t want to endanger my family, and now, here I am doing the exact same thing to you. If I can just get some sleep, I’ll leave in the morning.”

He shakes his head. “You’re not leaving, Kali.” He flinches when he says it, so before I can argue with him, he explains himself. “I mean, I’m not holding you captive. That didn’t sound right, but Kali, I can’t let you go. I need to know you’re safe.”

“But...”

“Let me put something on these.” He reaches up and touches my bare shoulder. The bruising is sore, and there’s a few scratches that I know I should tend to.

“I can...”

He grabs on to my hand. “Let me.”

When all I can do is nod, he pulls me through the house toward his bedroom. His hand is large, rough, and wrapped tightly around mine. I try to commit the feeling to memory because in his hold, I feel safe. Safer than I have in a long time.

He stops in his bedroom and points to a chair. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”

He walks into the bathroom, and within seconds he’s right back, pulling up a chair in front of me.

He’s caring for my scratches and my bruises. It shouldn’t be intimate, but I can’t understand why my heart is racing in my chest. Or the way my body comes to life under his touch. My nipples are pebbled under his shirt, and I’m hoping he doesn’t notice, but I don’t know how he couldn’t.

It’s so confusing, and I can’t help wanting to explore the way he makes me feel. It’s the first time since I dated in high school that I’ve even wanted to explore any sort of romantic or sexual relationship with anyone.

But maybe it’s the fear that has me confused. It’s been a long and trying few days. I’ve definitely had a huge shock. Can I trust the way I’m feeling about Knox?