All Chained Up (Devil's Rock #1)(35)

She had seen him in action. Quick and deadly as a viper. Fighting to defend and protect her with a searing intensity that she had never seen before. Or felt. And she had felt it. Felt him. Just as she did now. His gaze felt like a physical stroke over her body. Heat rippled over her skin.

She couldn’t forget that day. It wasn’t the horror that stayed with her. It was the memory of him. His raw power. His brutal beauty. The way his entire body had been a weapon. She wanted that weapon. She wanted him to turn it on her. To unleash himself on her.

She didn’t even know if he thought about her that way. If desire for her even entered into this thing—whatever it was—between them.

Tugging her cardigan tighter over her T-shirt, she held out the carton like it was some kind of proof, evidence that she was merely asking for something safe and innocent. Like sex was the farthest thing from her mind. She clung to it like the excuse she desperately needed it to be. “You like Cherry Garcia?”





THIRTEEN


YOU LIKE CHERRY GARCIA?

She voiced the question so innocently, as though she was asking him over for ice cream on a Sunday afternoon. Like he was some loafer-wearing choirboy from her church youth group with nothing on his mind beyond first base. It had been years since he stepped inside a church. He would likely go up in flames if he even tried.

He stared at her in front of the open door of her car and read the mortification gleaming brightly in her big eyes. She shifted on her feet, waiting for his response. It took everything in her to ask the question. He knew that right away, but he still couldn’t bring himself to answer her immediately.

It was a game. The question was whether he would let her play it. Let her pretend asking him over for ice cream wasn’t any invitation to f*ck.

He didn’t do games.

Knox eyed her in her baggy T-shirt, her toes curling self-consciously in her flip-flops, wondering if maybe, in fact, she didn’t know what she was doing. Maybe she didn’t realize that he was the wolf and she the lamb. That inviting him over meant he was going to devour every inch of her.

He studied her wide eyes and shifting feet and decided, yeah. She didn’t know. Not fully. She couldn’t. She couldn’t fathom what she was inviting on herself. She probably thought they might kiss. Make out a little. As though that would be enough to satisfy the hungry beast prowling inside him, pawing at the gate, ready to be unleashed so that he could do all the dirty things burning through his mind.

“Yeah,” he heard himself answering, even though he had no idea what flavor Cherry Garcia was. “I like it.”

He couldn’t not go. He wasn’t that good or honorable. He wasn’t that strong. If she wanted to play with a wolf, then that’s what she would get.

The cold truth was that he had gone too long without a woman.

He had turned down other women since he got out. Working at Roscoe’s, he’d had plenty of opportunities. At the end of a work week, everyone was looking to blow off some steam with a quick, meaningless f*ck. But no one had tempted him. No one felt right. After living in a drought for almost a decade, he didn’t want to feast on a crummy P&B sandwich. He wanted steak.

And Briar Davis was that. She’d filled his thoughts since the first time he saw her. This unattainable gem, too bright, too expensive, too good for the likes of him. Even when he got out of prison he had thought about her. He still f*cked his hand like he was stuck in that concrete hole with visions of her running through his head.

Turning the corner and seeing her in that convenience store aisle had been like entering the seventh circle of hell. Seeing her. Confronting the one thing he had convinced himself he couldn’t have. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Even though he was a free man, he wasn’t free enough to have her. He’d never be that free.

She bit her bottom lip and something exploded in his gut. A deep, visceral reaction that made him want to leap across the distance and take that lip with his own teeth. Take her. He steeled himself with a hard breath, clenching his hands into fists at his sides.

“Would you like to come over for some?” She held out that damned ice cream again and nodded in direction of the town house complex he had passed before stopping for gas.

He nodded once. Before she changed her mind. Before he changed his. Good girls like her didn’t invite felons over for ice cream. Apparently she missed that memo.

“Great,” she said all breathy and with forced brightness. “Um. Just follow me.”

He watched her for a moment as she got into her car and reached for her seat buckle. Then he turned and made his way to his pickup, climbed inside and started the engine. It almost felt like a weird out-of-body experience. Like he was watching someone else follow this nice clean girl back to her apartment. Killers like him didn’t get invited over for ice cream.

But she knew what he was. A smart girl like her, she had to know. She knew his hands were dirty, his thoughts dirtier. Even if she only guessed at a fraction of his thoughts when it came to her, that was enough to send her running in the opposite direction.

But she was still inviting him over.

He flexed his hands on the steering wheel and waited a moment before shifting into drive. He followed her onto the road and turned left, then waited as an electric gate slid open for them. She must have a remote opener in her car. They passed through a brick entrance and around several buildings until she parked in front of a rock fence. This late, most of the parking spots directly in front of the town houses were occupied. People were snug on their couches, watching reruns. He had to park several spots down from her car. She waited on the sidewalk for him, holding her small pint of ice cream that had to be softening in the warm night.