She gave him a soft, uncertain smile. “Hasn’t anyone ever shown you kindness before?”
“Yes.” He forced the word off his tongue, biting the syllable hard. “And she’s dead now.”
Leni let her hand drift slowly down to her side. “I’m not Abbie. I’m not going to break. I don’t need your protection, Knox. And I don’t want to be the recipient of your stoic sense of honor, no matter what you think my Breedmate mark obligates you to do.”
A low growl built deep in his chest. “Maybe that small scrap of honor is all I’ve got left.”
She scoffed quietly. “Maybe we’re both trying to hold on to something so desperately because we know if we let go, we’ll see how alone we truly are.”
She walked past him as formidable as any warrior, leaving him standing mute and vanquished in the middle of her kitchen while her footsteps carried her up to the little boy waiting for his promised bath and a bedtime story.
CHAPTER 11
A rapid banging thundered through the house.
Leni jolted upright in the thin light of morning, yanked out of a deep sleep she didn’t even realize she’d been in until every cell in her body was suddenly wide awake. She must have nodded off reading to Riley last night. The well-worn book about a mischievous boy in a wolf suit and an imaginary forest full of wild things slid off her chest onto the twin bed next to her sleeping nephew as she sat up, trying to get her bearings.
The urgent knocking came again, echoing up from the front door like machine-gun fire.
Her heart seized in her breast.Oh, shit. What day was it?
It couldn’t be Travis home already, could it? He wasn’t due for release until tomorrow.
She scrambled out of Riley’s bed, still wearing her long-sleeved henley, faded jeans, and cushy socks from the night before. Not the way she wanted to go into battle, if that’s what this early morning house call was about, but it didn’t seem she’d have much choice.
Extricating herself from Riley’s unconscious sprawl, she hurried down the stairs to see who was on her stoop.
Knox was already in the foyer, about two seconds from yanking open the door as Leni bounded down the steps.
God, he looked like malice personified. Huge and muscular, yet fluid as a cat in motion. He met her uncertain gaze, dark brows clashed together over grim eyes and a deadly expression. His dark, lethal presence ate up all the oxygen in the room.
It didn’t help her breathe any easier that he also looked hot as hell, barefoot and dressed only in his jeans. He must have been fresh out of the shower. His dark hair was damp and glossy, his smooth,glyph-covered skin bared from the waist up and glistening with droplets of water.
Leni tried not to stare, but damn, it wasn’t easy. She had guessed at the size of him when he’d been fully dressed, but her imagination had been no match for reality. Thick muscle bulked at his broad shoulders. Corded sinew wrapped his large biceps and strong forearms. His chest and torso looked as if they’d been sculpted from warm, lightly bronzed marble.
Although she didn’t want to let her gaze travel any lower, it was impossible to keep from appreciating the hard ridges that defined his abdomen. That eight-pack and the tapered cut of his hips above the waistband of his jeans made her tongue tingle with the urge to lick every honed contour and beautifulglyph.
Another hard rap sounded on the front door. Then a woman’s muffled voice. “Leni, are you in there?”
She mentally shook herself back to attention. Thankfully, it wasn’t Travis Parrish waiting outside.
“My friend, Carla,” she whispered to Knox, exhaling a relieved sigh. “It’s okay.”
His scowl eased only slightly. That air of danger vibrating around him took a bit longer to fade. He stayed where he was, as if he needed to see for himself that the person on the other side of the door posed no threat.
Part of her warmed to his protectiveness, however unnecessary it was at the moment.
Another part of her was annoyed to realize he had no intention of fading into the woodwork to let her speak to her friend in private, at least not until he was good and ready to.
Leni stepped in front of him and carefully opened a small wedge of space between her and the door.
“Finally, there you are,” Carla said, exasperation written all over her face as she peered through the narrow crack. She made a quick visual assessment of Leni’s appearance before she shook her head, her shoulder-length brown curls swinging. “I’ve been blowing up your phone since around eight o’clock this morning. Why didn’t you answer?”
Leni leaned her elbow against the doorjamb and feigned a yawn. “I, um . . . I fell asleep reading a bedtime story to Riley. I just woke up. I didn’t hear my phone. I must’ve left it in my purse or something. Is everything okay?”
Carla tried to look past her, into the house. “Do you know you’ve got a huge dent the front end of the Bronco? And there are pine branches sticking out of the grille. What the heck happened?”
“Ah . . . it was just a fender-bender in the storm the other night. It looks worse than it is.”
