Page 24 of Ruin

I saw the echo of my thoughts passing across Knight’s face, though his features were touched with far more anger than I thought mine probably were.

He was...

Furious, I realized. Furious and deeply, deeply sad. Angrier than I’d ever seen him, and that included the day he found out what Devil had been doing to me and how much he’d hurt me.

Hell, if I was burning with sorrow and regret, he was absolutely flaming with pure anger at what had happened.

And I was kneeling at his feet, about to start sobbing like some little kid who needed to be taken care of. That was the last thing he needed right now.

I got to my feet and took his hand, pulling softly. “If it’s just a scratch, can you keep standing?”

“I think I can manage.” He tipped his head in question. “What did you have in mind?”

“Shower,” I answered. “You’re filthy, and you won’t be able to sleep until you’re at least clean. I want to see how bad that wound really is. Come.”

He came without argument, which told me I’d been right about getting clean. He was probably just as itchy with dirt and sweat as I was. And I didn’t think he was going to fight me when it came to trying to wash the night—and all it had brought—off his skin so he could get some sleep.

I ALREADY KNEW WHAT we’d find in this bathroom—nothing aside from the basics—but this time, we had more time to actually look around. Last time, we’d been looking for Brock dead on the ground.

This time we knew he was safely in his room. Digesting the news of his brother’s death, yes, and suffering. But alive.

Which left us to our own devices, such as they were.

I looked around the place, amazed again at how little Brock had done with this enormous house. The bathroom was gorgeous, with dark wood on the floors and lighter wood cabinets, but that was where the beauty ended. The shower and tub were combined, and the shower curtain was painfully plain. There were towels, at least, but they were so white I wondered if they’d ever even been used.

“Brock needs a woman to come decorate for him,” I muttered, moving to turn the shower on and shake the towels out.

“He doesn’t want the responsibility.”

The words came from right over my shoulder, and I turned to find Knight standing a whole lot closer than he had been before, his eyes still glowing with anger and his skin so hot it felt like it might burn me.

His proximity made me breathless... with need and something deeper. Something more possessive.

“The responsibility of having to keep someone else happy, you mean?”

A sharp shake of the head. “No. The responsibility of making sure they didn’t get killed.”

His gaze came to mine, burning and wounded and furious, and I bit my lip. I didn’t have an answer for that, and I wasn’t even sure there could be an answer for such a statement. I’d been a part of the MC world for long enough to know that men like Brock did exist. Men who could have had any woman they wanted—and frequently did, but only for a night. They stayed away from relationships like those relationships might actually kill them, and they did it for one reason, and one reason only.

They didn’t want to run the risk of falling for a woman and then watching her die in a war with another MC. They also, I suspected, didn’t want their woman to have to watch them die, prey to a bullet or a crash or some other backstabbing plot. This life was dangerous enough as it was.

Adding a person you cared about just made the whole thing even more complicated.

This entire night had been a microcosm of exactly that, hadn’t it? Knight had spent his whole life, as far as I knew, without anyone to take care of. He’d kept himself at a distance from relationships so he didn’t have to worry about keeping a woman safe, and within a day of meeting me, he’d been at war with Devil and losing some of his best friends because I was now in his life.

He’d had it all working smoothly until I showed up.

I should have just gone to Devil when he demanded that I do so. Had I done that, Tinker would still be alive, Gem would be safe, and Mandy would be at home rather than in jail.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. If I could trade my life for theirs—”

Knight slapped his hand down over my mouth and backed me up against the wall, his face so close to mine I could only focus on his eyes. The blood rushed right to the surface of my body, my skin lighting up like it was electrified, with the need to flee... and the need to stay right here and let Knight have his way with me.

After all, didn’t I owe him that?

“Stop saying you’re sorry,” he hissed. “How many times do I have to tell you it’s not your fault? You aren’t the one who did the wrong thing here.”

I grabbed his hand and dragged it off my mouth, though, unwilling to let him keep me from talking. I had things to say, and for shit’s sake, I was going to say them, no matter how much he didn’t want to hear them. “Devil might have thought he could get away with this, but that doesn’t change the fact that he wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been hanging out with you in the first place!”