A mirthless laugh escaped. “Too late.”
“We all have enough on our plates already. Don’t add more to yours because of this. It’s not a big deal—”
“Not a big deal?” I asked, propping up on an elbow so I could scold him properly with my incredulous expression. “Knox, I’m pretty sure we’ve had discussions about this very matter that spoke to the contrary.”
“I was being dramatic.”
“You’re never dramatic.”
He locked his hands behind his head in an attempt to charm me out of my opinion, and the way his bare chest looked with the lamplight hitting it, I was afraid for a second it might just work. But then I remembered the conversation we’d had only days ago in the kitchen—how stressed he’d looked over the topic of his old life here in New York—and I snapped back to reality.
“Why are you trying to downplay this?”
The playfulness in his eyes dimmed. “Because playing it up changes nothing. It’s done. There’s no turning back now.” I opened my mouth to respond, but he cut me off. “I know what you’re about to say, Piper, and I don’t want to hear it because this isn’t your fault. Not everything shitty that happens around you is because of you.”
Funny…it kinda felt like the opposite.
“You’re not in the city because of me?”
He frowned and scooched out from under me to lean against the headboard, putting a little distance between us. It might as well have been miles, given how cold it made me feel.
“I made the choice to come here. We’ve been over this before. And I made the choice to kill Mack—”
“Because we were kinda fucked if someone didn’t—”
“And I chose for that someone to be me,” he said, his tone sharper than I’d heard it in some time—and never aimed at me. I recoiled slightly, and he realized how his frustration had affected me. His features softened, and he reached for me. Tentative hands wrapped around my waist, as if asking permission to pull me into his lap, to close the gap widening between us. “It’s hardly the outcome I wanted, but if you think I didn’t go into that club knowing that it was a possibility, then I’m dragging you down to the infirmary and having Doc check your head.”
I choked on a laugh. “I think she’d be a little too enthusiastic about that for my liking. She’s been wanting to see what makes me tick since the night Merc carried me in there, half-dead and immune to any medication she had to use on me.”
Knox drew me closer and tucked me into his side. “I’m glad he was there to help you,” he said softly, stroking my hair. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather it had been me, but…” I looked up to find him smiling down at me, a portrait of the Knox I’d met in Alaska; the confident, playful, fearsome alpha that had saved my hide when I’d needed it most.
“But what?”
He exhaled hard. “But I’m glad it was him because he handled things. That’s what Merc does best.”
I feigned shock. “Trevor Knoxville, are you…complimenting the vampire king?”
He chuckled lightly and wrapped his arms around me as he whispered in my ear. “Do me a favor: don’t tell him.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied with a laugh.
“I’ll deny it if you do. And he doesn’t have a fancy lie detector like I do.”
“Oh, don’t worry. There’s no way he’d believe me if I did.”
The two of us laughed as he nestled back down into the bed, arms dragging me along for the ride. And it was in that embrace that I realized how at ease he was now. How different he felt from when I’d first entered his room.
And that made me wonder…
“So,” he said, pulling me from my musings, “how long do you think it’ll be before Kat kills Brunton?”
My lips flapped with my exhale. “I mean…I’m not sure what the over/under is on that, but I’m guessing it won’t be long. And I’m not sure she’ll kill him…”
Knox pulled away to pin his curious expression on me. “Oh really?”
I shrugged and cozied up closer to him. “Only time will tell.”
I left the ‘if we have it’ off that statement. It seemed pointless to mention the obvious, especially right after Knox’s mood had improved.
“Well, that would be an interesting combo for sure. Volatile, but interesting…”
“Yeah. You never had the privilege of hearing her and Jensen go at it,” I said, remembering the times Jase, Dean, and I had tried to find a refuge from their sexcapades in the mansion, which should have been much easier in a building that size.
“That bad?”
I shuddered. “Let’s just say that no horizontal surface was safe from them—vertical, either, for that matter.”
Knox’s laughter reverberated into me, and I nestled into the feel. I wanted to absorb that sensation forever.
“I’ll warn the boys if and when the time comes.”
Silence settled around us, and my musings returned; thoughts about my calming effect on him and the torment he’d faced in the past as the alpha of New York. I’d told Merc it would be different this time because he had me now. At the time, they’d just been words to convince myself that he’d be all right, but maybe they’d been more than that.
Maybe they’d been right.
“Knox?” I said with hesitation.
His lips grazed my forehead. “What?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it. It seemed cruel to dangle that carrot until I knew I could deliver. Better to try it first without him knowing.
I nuzzled my nose against his neck. “I love you…”
A rumble of approval echoed through his body. “I love you too, Piper. Always.”
“Well, that’s good, because you’re stuck with me, even after all this shit is over.”
“Deal.”
More silence. “Knox?”
A light giggle shook his body. “Yes?”
“What are we going to do once the royals are dead?”
“Well,” he said as he exhaled, “I’d love to go back to Alaska—with you, of course—and rebuild what we had there, but that can’t happen. That life is gone.”
“So you’ll stay here? In the mansion?”
“I don’t know, Piper. I’m not sure I can. Not with the pack situation.”
“Oh—”
“But I’m sure there’s a solution to that somewhere. Hell, maybe we’ll find one in Faerie. That place is full of surprises.”
That was one way to put it.
“And in the meantime?”
“I’ll deal. Like I said before, it’ll be fine.”
The edge of tension that crept into his body at the mere mention of it said otherwise.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“You can get naked and sit on top of me…that certainly wouldn’t hurt.”
Before he could blink, I climbed on top of him, grinning. But when I looked down, I could see that his comment had been an attempt to distract his mind that was clearly somewhere else. Instead of stripping my shirt off, I closed my eyes and reached down deep to find the thread that bound us. The call rooted in my elemental magic. Once I found it, I pulled it tighter.