OCTAVIA
Knight’s warm, open expression starts to fade the moment his dick slips from inside of me, and with each second that passes, I watch as he shudders, his muscles tensing, his soft smile slipping into a familiar apathetic expression.
This man is haunted, but it’s not by his past. It’s by his life. I neither know nor care what drives his need for structure, but I’m starting to understand how my life has become tied into his routine.
He gets up and works out at five in the freaking morning. He eats breakfast at seven a.m., lunch at one p.m., then dinner at seven p.m. We’ve been fucking like rabbits since we got married, and yet despite how carefree and relaxed he is during sex, I can see and feel how tense and taut he gets as the clock ticks down toward one of the items on his nonnegotiable agenda for each day.
I married this man without having a clue about who he was or what drives him, and I’m starting to realize that the only demons he has are of his own making. He’s complex and confusing, and yet what he’s asked of me so far has been so simple. He wants to be near me. He wants to take care of me. He wants me to need him.
Knight Taylor is a red flag waving a green flag, and I have no idea what to do with that.
When his eyes glance at the clock on the wall for the sixth time, I twist to look at it too. Six fifty-two a.m. I could be a brat and roll over and go to sleep. I could refuse to eat and take a half-hour shower, but I’m starting to realize that even though it might cause him pain and discomfort, he’d stay here with me instead of sticking to a routine that I’m confident he’s spent a lifetime perfecting.
Moving my eyes back to his face, my soul softens as I see the anxiety burning back in his usually impenetrable gaze.
“I’m hungry,” I tell him.
The change in him is so obvious, I can’t believe I’ve never noticed it before. I’ve been pushing back at his rigid need for order since we got to the house, but I was so consumed with myself and my own overwhelming feelings that I hadn’t taken any notice of him.
“Why don’t you take a quick shower? Then you can make breakfast,” I tell him.
Leaning forward until our lips are only a hair’s breadth apart, he whispers, “I love you” so quietly I almost don’t hear it.
I don’t protest when he lifts me from the bed and carries me into the bathroom, sitting me on the counter while he takes an exactly three-minute shower. Once he’s done, he carries me into the closet and dresses me in one of his white shirts before he pulls on shorts, takes my hand, and leads me downstairs.
“We still need furniture,” he reminds me, handing me his iPad while he busies himself in the kitchen, making omelets in an impressively short time.
We eat side by side at the counter in oddly comfortable silence, and I’m reminded of how much I hated the lack of sound before he forced his way into my life. A week ago, silence felt likea punishment, but here, now, with Knight, it’s not suffocating. Silence with him by my side feels…comforting.
I’m full before I’ve even managed half of the huge omelet he made me, but when I try to take my plate into the kitchen, he places his huge palm on my thigh and keeps me in place, his fingers toying between my legs, not really touching, just teasing.
Once he’s finished, he cleans the silverware, both of our plates, the spatula and pan, then wipes down the kitchen until it looks as sparkling clean as usual.
“We should inform our friends that we’re married,” he says calmly, like he’s telling me we need dish soap, not that we should tell our friends we did something incredibly rash and crazy.
“I need to go to the tattoo studio and see what I need to buy. I didn’t bring any of my kit back with me. It was all in one of the packing boxes, but now that I’m here, Betty will expect me to start building a client base. My regulars are pretty loyal, but I’ve been MIA for months, so it’s going to take me a while to fill my appointment book again.”
“All of your belongings are in the garage,” Knight says, scooping me off my feet and into his arms.
“When did they get here? Why didn’t I know?” I question, trying to stay focused on talking despite the way his hand is squeezing my ass.
“They arrived the day after I brought you home. You were asleep at the time. We can unpack them once we’ve visited our friends,” Knight states, striding quickly to the stairs and climbing them with me in his arms like I’m weightless.
Ignoring the bed that looks invitingly rumpled and cozy, he carries me into the bathroom and places me on the counter before he starts our newly established ritual of filling the tub, then helping me bathe. I wish I could say I didn’t enjoy the way he fusses over me, but honestly, I love it. His brand of affectionis so different from the way Abel treated me, and I can already feel how addicted I could become to being taken care of like this.
When he’s finished washing all the conditioner from my hair, he pulls the drain, then lifts me from the tub, placing me on my feet while he grabs me a towel. I know I should, but I don’t try to take the towel from him. First, I very much doubt he’d let me, and second, I don’t want to. Instead, I let him carefully blot all the water from my skin until I’m dry and warm from the inside out, from the level of pampering he’s giving me.
Once I’m dry, he wraps the towel around my hair, then leads me into the closet. The last time I wore anything more than his shirt was the day he chose a wedding dress for me, and I had no idea. Looking back, I should have known, and maybe deep down I did. Maybe I knew exactly what he had planned for us that day, and I let him do it, because secretly I wanted to drink the Kool-Aid and lose myself in him and his certainty.
“Do you want me to pick, or would you rather choose yourself?” Knight asks.
The big, bad, girlboss part of me bristles at the idea of him picking my clothes for me, but the ooey, gooey part of me that loves how he babies me kind of just wants to let him take over. Is it weirder to let him dress me than it is to let him bathe me and carry me around?
“I’ll pick,” I say, hating the decision the moment I say it, but unwilling to contradict myself now I’ve spoken the words out loud.
Nodding, Knight takes a step back and crosses his arms over his chest. His face is its usual neutral, but I can see the muscles in his jaw twitching.
Opening the dresser, I pick out a black satin bra and matching panties. After I’ve put them on, I realize just how used to being naked, or mostly naked, I’ve got. The only time we’ve gotten out of bed is when Knight has cooked, and even then,we’ve worn the absolute bare minimum, knowing that we’d be naked again the moment the meal was over.
