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Hoping not to wake him, I traced the line of his jaw with the tips of my fingers and let my eyes follow the movement. I faintly brushed over his cheekbones then back down his jaw, and finally over his lips. When my fingers got there, I glanced up to find his dark eyes piercing mine.
Without a word, and without releasing me from his intense stare, he unwrapped one of his arms from my body and grabbed my hand in his. Before he pulled it away from his mouth, he pressed the tips of my fingers closer to kiss them and then intertwined our fingers.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” I whispered. My throat hurt worse than it had last night, but even so, lying like this with Knox, in his bed in the dark, anything above a whisper would have felt wrong.
His head shook once, the movement nearly unnoticeable. “I’ve been checking on you throughout the night. Every move and every noise had me worried something was happening.”
“I’m sorry.”
Knox smirked, and I watched as his eyes drifted to the door. “Your new mother hens woke me a lot more than you did.”
“Oh.” I didn’t understand. There had to be a hidden agenda . . . they had to be playing at something. That possibility had me more wary of them than I ever had been before.
When Knox saw the confusion on my face, his lips curved up in the faintest of smiles. “Let me worry about them. You don’t need that added on top of everything.” He sighed, and gave me a worried look as he said cautiously, “We need to talk about Collin.”
“I know. There’s no way he doesn’t know by now.” I let out a laugh, but there was no humor behind it. “I still don’t know how he didn’t know before . . .” I let the words trail off.
“How did you get away?”
“He must have gone to his parents’ anniversary party. It doesn’t make sense—none of it makes sense. I kept waiting for him to be there, watching me, but he was gone. Collin’s never been so careless in what he’s done. The only way I can make sense of it is that he snapped last night, he wasn’t himself at all; I told you, he wasn’t my monster. He had to have thought he’d actually killed me.” My voice dropped low on the last two words, and Knox’s eyes tightened in pain.
He nodded absentmindedly for a few seconds, then mumbled, “I don’t know who to go to. I don’t know who is on his side, I don’t know who will believe you—or even if they do, if he’s paying to keep them quiet. But I swear to you, we will find something.”
“I know,” I replied, and then softer, “I didn’t want you brought into this.”
“I didn’t exactly give you a choice, Low,” he reminded me, but that didn’t change anything. Knox was still in danger; he was already risking his life to save me. “Harlow,” he said, and waited until he had my attention again. “You told me yesterday that you couldn’t leave Collin, but you came here last night.”
I nodded. He hadn’t asked a question, but I didn’t need him to in order to answer. “Yesterday I was sure I was going to die soon. Last night I knew I was going to die then. When that knowledge hit me I realized how many mistakes I’d made by not letting you take me away. So when I woke up in the bathtub with somehow another chance in life, I left.”
“You left him?” he asked, trying to clarify what I was saying by putting the slightest emphasis on his last word.
I pulled myself up until I was on my knees, straddling his hips. Bringing my hands together, I grabbed my engagement ring and wedding band. “If I never see him again it will still be too soon.”
My eyes filled with tears as I slowly slid the rings off my finger. It wasn’t physically hard to remove them, they were too large for my bony finger, but emotionally, it was one of the hardest things I’ve done. I was letting go of a life filled with hate and fear. I was saying goodbye to a man who had ruined me. And I was leaving behind a part of myself I felt like I didn’t even know—a part I wish I’d never had to embrace.
With each centimeter my rings slid on my finger, I felt more weight lifting off my body. My shoulders, my chest, my back . . . my heart. “Yesterday wasn’t fair to you,” I mumbled when I was finally holding the rings in my palm. Glancing up at Knox’s intense eyes, I said, “I should’ve never given myself to you when he still had his sick hold on me—when I was so sure I would never be able to get away from him. I will never regret any time that is with you, Knox Alexander, but after how long we waited, you deserved all of me the way I got all of you.”
His dark eyes remained on my face, his features unreadable even when he asked in a low voice, “And now?”
Cupping my hand holding the rings, I tossed them over the side of the bed. “As much as your kisses healed me, after last night I feel like I’m still broken,” I confessed, and my cheeks heated from embarrassment.
“Cracked,” he corrected.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to find myself again,” I admitted, and hated that it was the truth.
But Knox’s lips twitched in amusement, like there was something I didn’t know. “I’ll find you.”
I smiled shakily and cradled his face in my hands. “Then if you want me, you can have me. All of me.”
Knox sat up and crushed his mouth to mine in a kiss unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. We’d shared a kiss that had been a deliberate claim on each other, but this . . . this kiss was his soul claiming my own.
He moved his legs so he could roll onto his knees, and slowly lowered me onto the bed without ever breaking the kiss. Once I was lying down, he moved his mouth down my throat and pressed the tips of his fingers to my hips, just underneath the shirt I was wearing. With a soft dragging motion, he lifted the shirt higher and higher up my body as his fingers trailed along my skin. Then he broke away from where he was kissing behind my ear to pull the shirt off me and toss it away.
My hands moved over the tightening muscles in his back when he covered my body again, and I shivered when his teeth grazed my throat. His hips rocked against mine, eliciting a moan from me. With one last searing kiss, he moved down my body, and pressed openmouthed kisses all the way down, causing me to tremble when he slowly—so slowly—pulled the boxers down my legs while his mouth followed the cloth.
I felt the faint brush of his lips as they raced back up my leg, and stoppe
d near my hip long enough for a soft kiss, then continued until his face was directly above mine again. His dark eyes captured mine and conveyed all of his need, all the words that he wasn’t saying, when his fingers began gently teasing me.
