Knox wasn’t my first brush with this ranch.
That meeting was probably his father begging mine not to allow Rossi the power to destroy him, and he’d lost.
Let’s hope someone can be the change.
This whole thing has become more than just regaining the city, more than destroying my uncle and the treacherous followers that bend to his every whim. This is undoing wrongs that should never have been in the first place.
The weight on my shoulders triples.
Placing the frame back into the same position I found it in, I sag in the chair, lifting my hand to run my fingers up the bridge of my nose and then across my brows, hoping to release the tension that has tightened around my skull.
Ahead of me, the door opens, and Knox’s largeframe fills the threshold, dressed only in a pair of flannel pajama pants. “I looked everywhere for you.”
My whole body deflates. “I’m tired, Knox.”
The exhaustion I recognized in his own father is now my own burden.
“I know, baby,” He says softly, crossing the space between us. “I know.”
I watch him as he gets to his knees, taking hold of the chair to spin me to face him. His hands run up my thighs, but it’s not sexual, a comforting move that grounds me where I sit.
“I woke up.” He circles his thumbs into the tense muscle just below my hip bones, pressing in hard. “And you weren’t there. You’re not sleeping, are you?”
I shake my head.
A loud sigh leaves him. “You’re not alone, Elena, stop acting like you are.”
“It’s hard,” I admit.
“It was hard to admit you loved me too, but you did that.”
“That was an accident,” I grumble.
A chuckle leaves him. “Yet here we are.” His thumbs move up my body, the pressure turning light as he skims over my ribs then firms up as hetakes hold of my shoulders. “You need to sleep, Elena.”
“I will,” I lie. “Can I sit here a bit longer?”
He quirks a dark smudge of a brow, his hair mused from sleep. “Pretty little liar,” He shakes his head, “No, you can’t. You can get your gorgeous ass up, follow me up to bed and you can sleep.”
I glower at him, “I already told you I can’t.” My tone is biting, snappy and quick.
He takes it though, doesn’t even flinch, “We can do it civilized, or we can do it my way, take your pick.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“My way it is.”
He moves quickly, far quicker than he should be able to with his size, and hoists me out of the chair and to my feet, his strength allowing him to do it with ease. I lurch out of the chair with a quick scream, my feet barely able to stabilize before his shoulder meets my abdomen, and the world turns upside down.
“Seriously!?” I growl, “I’m not a damn sack of potatoes.”
“No, you’re a woman.My woman.And I’ll be fucking damned if I watch you become a shadow of yourself. So we’re going to bed, Elena, and you’re going to let me hold you and stroke your fuckinghair and for the next five hours, you’re going to forget the shitshow going on in our lives, and you’re going to fucking sleep! You got it!?”
My insides turn to jelly, and I may melt a little, but of course I don’t show him the power he has over me. I’m certain he knows it already, but that’s beside the point, so I remain silent as he carries me through the house and back up the stairs, to the rumpled, empty bed in the master suite.
He drops me unceremoniously onto it, my body bouncing a few times on the mattress.
“Get in,” He demands.
