“I’m sorry.” The apology tumbles out, useless. My hand lies limp in his lap. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” His gaze slices through me. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”
“Then why are you hurting me?”
That question softens him immediately. His grip on me loosens, his fingers curling instead of locking my wrist in his large hand.
His thumb strokes along my pulse point, cherishing me.
“Didn’t mean to.” His voice is nothing more than a hushed grunt. “But Christ, I can’t drive like this. With you here, smelling like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you want to fuck.” His eyes lower to my pussy, his teeth biting into his lip as he drives deeper into the middle of nowhere. Far from the road. “I’m trying to control myself. To breathe. But I have to taste you.” He shoves my hand to the bulge in his jeans. “Need you. Now.”
“Here?” Goosebumps prickle my skin. My nipples are pulled tight in anticipation. No one’s around for miles and miles, but still, this is a flat, open plain. “Really?”
The truck jerks to a stop, brakes screaming.
He gets out of the car and goes around the hood. In a matter of seconds, he’s here at the passenger door, wrenching at my seatbelt.
I gasp, my body tensing.
“Trouble, don’t you trust me?” He yanks me out of the cab like I don’t belong anywhere but in his arms. “I said I’d keep you safe. Promised you’d be mine. Mine alone. No one will see.”
“They will.”
Most of me trusts him. Every part of me wants him, right fucking now. Then again, other people have blindsided us. Hurt us.
“No. This truck, it’s enough to hide you.” He slams my back against it. My spine hits metal, the truck rattling. My bones too, as his lips trail a hot, sinister path along my throat. “Enough for me to be the only one to see you. To have you.”
Without a shred of teasing, with no build-up whatsoever, Knox toes my shoes off. My sweatpants are gone.
His ruthless touch should terrify me.
Instead, it reaches deep into my soul. Into a side of me that’s been sealed shut for years.
A hollow space that’s been waiting for him.
“When I lick you, when I take what’s mine”—he drops to his knees, still every bit the predator—“no one else will ever see you naked, fucked, owned. No one but me.”
His palms brand me, fingers digging into my hips as he buries his face between my thighs. His tongue flicks and flattens over my clit, then plunges lower.
One groan and he hooks my right leg over his shoulder.
Knox devours me.
Pleasures me.
But even through the haze of lust, a memory slams into me. Me panicked, crying. Him with his hand forcing me down on his cock.
He calmed me down by filling my mouth.
This has to be the same, right? What he’s doing here. It’s more than sex for him. More than power. It’s survival.
Every open-mouthed kiss he plants on my pussy is him taking his comfort from me. Clinging to me until the edge inside him blunts.
I’m dying to give him more. To feed him. To be the thing that quiets his demons.
