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“I’m fine,” she says, but there’s this quake to her voice that I’ve never heard before. She’s not fine. She was scared shitless on that wall, and truth be told, the castle isn’t what she finds scary. It’s my family. My family scares her. I think maybe hers does aswell. I think she might have reason for both fears, and that’s a problem my gut says is dangerous beyond my brother.
We arrive at the archway framing my door, and I can almost feel Emma’s relief as we step into the warm glow of artificial lighting. “The power works here,” she says, as I guide her to the dungeon-style door, where I begin punching in a security code.
“I had a battery-operated power source installed two weeks ago,” I say, as the door buzzes open. “I have a contractor coming in to rewire the entire exterior of the castle.” I reach inside and flip on the lights. I resist the urge to pull her inside my doorway, press her against the wall, strip her naked, and remove every damn barrier this night has tried to erect between us. I want this woman, and if it was only physical, I’d do just that, but it’s not. Lord help me, she’s a damn Knight, and I’m not even thinking about walking away from her. And I damn sure don’t plan to make her walking away from me easy, which means I need her trust.
And so, I don’t pull her inside and take her against the wall. I motion her forward and step back, giving her room to enter first, and by choice. I want her to be here by choice. “Welcome to my home, Emma.”
Her green eyes meet mine, the artificial lighting catching amber flecks in their depths. “This is your home?”
It’s an odd question, considering our prior conversations, but I answer without hesitation. “It is.”
“And whose home was it before you?”
And there it is, the question inside the question that I read and answer. I catch her hand and walk her to me, and she doesn’t pull away. Her reservations are not about me. They’re about my brothers. Both of them. “Hunter never lived here, Emma. Savage is staying in his tower. My parents lived here in this tower. I sold my place after Hunter died, and I couldn’t live in his space. I didn’t have it in me. That’s how I ended up here.”
“And Brody?”
“I inherited the castle because I’m the controlling partner in the main whiskey operation. Brody doesn’t own or live in the castle. I do.” I stroke hair from her face and tilt her gaze up to mine. “I want you, Emma. So fucking much that I don’t even know what to do next but keep you close. And that doesn’t have to mean here. We can go to a hotel.”
“No.” Her hand catches my tie. “No, I don’t want to go to a hotel. I want to be here. I want to see where you live and know who you are. And your brother doesn’t get to run me off.” She presses to her toes and touches her lips to mine, and just that easily, I’m hot and hard for this woman. But it’s more than that. I am so fucking into this woman that I don’t want to know the moment she walks away. And if my brother has his way, she will. I cup her head, and my tongue licks into her mouth, sweeping deep, the taste of her, all sweet passion and demand, but there’s more this time. There’s a tentativeness that wasn’t there on that dock, a little piece of her she’s holding back when I want all of her. A tentativeness I plan to wash away. “Let’s go inside, baby,” I murmur, ready to do just what I’d fantasized about minutes ago. Strip her naked. Remove the barriers. Get back to the two of us and keep it that way.
“Yes,” she says. “Let’s go inside.” She pushes away from me, and as if defying that wall I’ve sensed present, she doesn’t hesitate. She walks right inside.
I follow her, shut us inside, and arm the security system, all while I watch her take in the small basement foyer, with an elevator in front of her and a set of stairs to her right. “The elevator doesn’t work,” I say, once we’re safely sealed inside.
She whirls around to face me. “I thought you said the power was only an issue outside?”
“The elevator isn’t a power issue. My mother had it dismantled. She was claustrophobic and hated it.”
“Oh. Do you know why?”
“She fell in a hole on the lower end of the property when she was a kid and almost died.”
Her eyes go wide, her voice grave. “I see. That had to have been horrible. This castle is magnificent and—” Her voice trails away.
I step to her, my hands settling on her waist. “Scary?”
“Full of your family history,” she amends.
“And scary.”
“Tragic.”
“Indeed,” I say, and she’s hit about ten fucking nerves. She has no idea just how tragic. My eyes shut as memories try to beat their way in, but I don’t let them have their way with me. My brother’s words, his warnings about the Knight family, also trying to beat their way in.
“Jax?”
At Emma’s voice and the touch of her hand on my chest, I open my eyes, a punch of awareness between us with that connection. Suddenly, it’s me who wants out of my head, the way I’d sensed Emma had on the dock. It’s me that is cupping her head and lowering my mouth to claim hers. It’s me who’s drinking her in with a demand that refuses to be ignored. I want her. I want her now. And I want all of her, no limits. No inhibitions.
That’s the escape she’d asked me for on the dock.
That’s the escape that I’m going to give her right here, in this castle tonight.
Chapter forty-eight
Jax
Still kissing Emma, I walk her backward and press her to the wall just beside the elevator, and somehow, her back ends up on the call buzzer for the car. Of course, it works, when the car itself doesn’t, just to be a pain in my ass right now. It starts to screech, and Emma gasps, jolting with the poorly timed, ridiculously loud sound. I move her over two inches, punch the damn thing and lower my mouth to hers again. “It’s the elevator alarm,” I tell her and already my mouth is back on her mouth, my fingers walking her skirt up her legs until I’m cupping her backside.
