Page 137 of Captive Souls

“Yes.”

I waited for more of an explanation, even though I knew Knox well enough to know he wasn’t one to offer more when he didn’t feel the need to.

“Yes?” I echoed. “That’s it?”

Knox shifted me so I was straddling him, the movement sending a gasp from my mouth as my tender, aching body ground against him where he was rapidly hardening against me.

His hand curled around the back of my neck, then he yanked me down so our foreheads pressed together.

“Yes, Petal. That is it. We, us, will survive whatever comes because there is no other option.”

The way he said this was so concrete, so certain, it had the power to wipe all of my doubts away.

For a time, at least.

For once, Knox fell asleep before me. I heard it in the cadence of his breath, the very slight loosening of his grip. He still held me as if he were convinced I’d melt from his fingers.

Though I was exhausted in a way I’d never been in my life, I was unable to sleep. I wasn’t haunted by taking another life—a subject Knox hadn’t broached, interestingly. Sure, my actions rattled in my brain, promising to make a mark at some point, but as of yet, it failed to land.

Instead of lifeless eyes and spurting blood, I thought of Knox.

I thought about the choices I’d made that led me there.

In love. With a dangerous man. The one kind I’d sworn I’d stay away from ever since I was old enough to comprehend my father’s role in our destruction.

But if there was anything I’d learned from the past month, from what I’d observed with Lukyan and Elizabeth, it was that there were two kinds of dangerous men. There were the ones who ensured women didn’t walk home alone in the dark, who we were cautious with when rejecting them, who believed women were just objects to be owned. Then there were the dangerous men who considered us their treasure. Not theirs to own but theirs to protect. The dangerous men who would never hurt us but would protect us from a world designed to break us. The men who would commit the most heinous crimes, cover themselves with blood and gore, to keep us clean. And who would teach us to become weapons in our own right when we wanted to fight too. Men who weren’t afraid of strength in their women. Who fed it like kindling to flame.

As these thoughts raced through my mind, I understood how my mother had fallen for my father. Stayed with him. Because she was looking for the latter type of man. All that violent energy… She’d hoped that he’d expend it outward to keep her safe, not inward to keep her tortured, captive.

Despite Knox’s hold on my body, I felt anything but captive. I was freer than I’d ever been in my life.

And on that thought, I fell into a deep sleep.

Epilogue

“It’s your birthday.”

Knox handed me a coffee that he’d taken to making in the espresso machine, the one new addition to the apartment since he’d moved in. That and the easel in the sunroom—the jewel of the apartment. Such a rare find in a city of studio apartments with barely any windows, let alone a whole room of them, bathing in morning sunlight.

We’d created a ritual of sorts. He started the morning by fucking me. Always. Unless I was sick or overly tired or not in the mood, which was incredibly rare. On those occasions, though, he did not sulk or punish me for rejecting him; he didn’t change an iota of his behavior. He respected my boundaries, which I had few of with him. That made him all the more sexy and more emotionally mature than 99 percent of the male population. Respect for boundaries. Hotter than any six pack. Though he had one of those too.

He cooked for me—another thing that he always did. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. That was unless I was in the mood to cook too, which again was rare since he was incredibly good at it, and I liked being taken care of in that way by him. Herepeatedly said he was bad and wrong and would destroy me, yet he did small, everyday things that a run-of-the-mill, suburban husband with a ‘normal’ upbringing failed to do to his wife daily.

Henurturedme.

After fucking, food and coffee, I ran.

He’d trail behind me, unseen if he sensed I needed the alone time, other times running with me. We’d had a small argument about whether the shadowing was necessary.

“I ran alone in the woods in the middle of nowhere,” I reminded him that first morning, my body yearning for the crunch of detritus underneath my shoes, the smell of pine and even the scent of the cabin. Old, musty.

Brackets of lines framed his eyes with the deepness of his frown, his mouth pulled into a thin line. “Yes, and the worst you could encounter there was bears,” he replied in a clipped tone. “Which you had spray for. The worst you can encounter here is a man. There’s no spray for that. There’s me for that.”

And that was his argument. Which I couldn’t counter, beyond him being over the top protective and possessive. Which he was. He was obsessed with my safety, nearly ripped the face off any man who looked at me too long. Life in the city was unravelling him a little. He was used to living in the shadows, killing people, only interacting with criminals in the underworld. Now that I’d brought him into the light, into Whole Foods, out to dinners with friends— he was struggling with his new identity.

Not that he’d ever admit to that.

But there were growing pains.