Knox (Sexy Bastard #3) (13 page)

What the hell are we going to do?

T
he alarm
on my phone goes off and I reflexively reach over to check for texts. Nothing new from Knox. Time for a morning selfie.

I pull down my camisole and squeeze my elbows together for maximum cleavage. What can I say? It’s an oldie but goodie, and Knox is a man of simple pleasures. I can’t say I mind hearing exactly how turned on even a simple picture like this can get him. Who knew my tits had such magical powers?

I snap the picture, make sure the girls look good and hit send.

Good Morning, Stud. We miss you.

If only everything in life were this easy. As if missing Knox like an absent limb hasn’t been bad enough this week, the Dale Hunter situation has gone from probable time bomb to definitely ticking in the middle of our office about to explode.

In the last week, the owner of the arcade on Moreland, right across the street from where Dale crashed his sports car, mailed us a copy of his security camera footage. The crash is pretty obvious. Car flies into tree, and disoriented Dale climbs out of the driver’s seat to stagger around the parking lot by the arcade.

Of course, this arcade owner is generously willing to keep the footage quiet . . . for a price.

Dale can afford that price, but the problem with one-time blackmailers is that they have a way of becoming repeat offenders. Pay this guy off once, and you might be paying his kid’s college tuitions twenty years down the line.

I slowly and grumpily crawl out of bed and stumble to the coffeemaker. Last night at the Library, agreeing to a ten o’clock yoga class on a Saturday sounded like a great idea. A way to release the tension building up on all sides of my life. Somewhere I could relax, maybe work out some of this anxious energy in a productive way for once.

Now, on the morning side of Saturday, this class feels more like a punishment than a treat. But Ruby’s determined to show her little trainer friend that she’s got more discipline than he thinks she does, and last night she skillfully roped me into her plot. Lucky Shelby.

An hour later, a drop of sweat is trickling off the bridge of my nose and onto my mat as I stand in my seventy-second downward dog of the morning. The fact that the room was going to be heated to a scorching 105 degrees? Seems like a crucial detail to forget to mention. Thanks, Ruby.

I know I’m supposed to be emptying my mind. But as we run through the asanas and my body temperature continues to rise until I feel like I’ve entered the innermost circle of hell, thoughts pound away at my jittery consciousness. I should be thinking about Dale and ways to dig us out from under what’s sure to become a PR nightmare in no time.

Instead, I cannot stop thinking about Knox.

What are we doing, exactly? The night he left, I stayed over at his place one last time. Jackson was back in town already, but we decided to screw the consequences. Knox asked me if we could talk when I got there, something that always sends me into panic mode. I mean, no one likes to hear that from your hookup (or date? Are we dating?). But the moment I arrived at his house, our hands were all over each other. We got so caught up in savoring our last night together, we ran out of time for that talk.

Hell, I was still riding him in his bed when the alarm went off to remind him he needed to leave for the airport. Now he’s gone, and while we’ve had plenty of time for sexting and sultry Skype chats, I haven’t had the guts to bring up what it was he wanted to talk about.

What if he wants to end this?

What if he wants to take this further?

I can’t decide which option is scarier. I don’t want this to end, not at all. But I also keep thinking about the distance—two months apart. And even when he comes back, there will be all the training sessions, the away games. If anyone should know how hard it is to keep tabs on pro athletes’ schedules, it should be me.

And then there’s Jackson, and the enormity of the shit-fit he’ll throw if he finds out what’s been going on between us . . . 

Ugh
. I fall out of a headstand for the third time that class, and give up. I sit cross-legged on my mat and watch the other girls around me. None of them seem to be on the verge of a mental breakdown. Probably because they’re all in normal, sane relationships with guys they don’t have to keep secret from everyone in their life, friends and family included.

“Hey,” Ruby says, looking over at me with a worried expression as she gracefully eases out of her pose.

Not until she stares at me do I realize that there are tears leaking out the corners of my eyes.

“Don’t feel bad,” she says. “I couldn’t do a headstand for like the first year I was doing yoga.”

And then I crumble, suddenly unable to bear up any longer. The tears spill down my cheeks faster and I double over myself into child’s pose to try and hide them. As if sniffing heartily into my yoga mat is a good disguise.

“Come here.” Ruby grips both my arms and pulls me into a stand, waving at the teacher as she lugs me out of the class into the bathroom. I can hardly see where I’m going—once I’ve started to cry, the tears don’t want to stop coming. In the bathroom, I sit down hard on the closed toilet seat and sob into a pile of toilet paper until they finally relent.

When I peek up again, Ruby is watching me with a worried frown. “You want to tell me what’s actually been going on?” she asks as she hands me yet another stack of paper.

I sniff hard once more and let out a sigh that quickly turns into a groan.
Fuck it
. I can’t do this alone anymore. I need to tell
some
one. And if it can’t be my big brother, the one I normally go to with all of the huge dilemmas or problems in my life, the one who’s always been there to hug me and tell me it’ll all work out, then it might as well be one of my best friends on the planet.

I take a deep breath. Part of me wonders if the world will collapse around me when I finally let this secret out, and yet, I surprisingly just blurt out, “I’ve been sleeping with Knox.”

She waits for an explanation that I’m not quite sure how to muster. Then she offers me a hand up off the toilet. “Tell me about it over a smoothie?”

I nod, wipe my eyes one last time, and flush the tissues down the toilet.

We sit on a bench outside the smoothie place with our drinks and I finally tell Ruby the whole saga, from beginning to end. New Year’s to last week, when he left for training. The whole damn story, no holds barred, no details spared (well, okay, a few details spared, because Ruby is easily distracted by dirty details, but still).

When I finish, I hang my head in my lap, awaiting her judgment.

“Well first of all,” she says after a long hard sip on her smoothie. “I cannot
believe
you didn’t tell me about this. What the hell happened to girl code?”

I wince up at her, but she’s smiling, so I figure she can’t be that pissed. “I wasn’t sure you guys would approve?”

She rolls her eyes. “Shelbs, of anyone you know, I am the least likely to judge you for anything like this, okay? And besides, what’s there to approve or disprove of? It’s your life. You’ve got to go for what feels right to you.” She purses her lips around her straw for another sip. “And from what I’m hearing, it sounds like Knox has felt very right to you. Right enough that you were willing to go to all kinds of lengths to see if the chemistry between you was real, even though you had to hide it from everyone. That has to be more than some kinda hot connection.”

I half-laugh and half-grimace. “Trust me, it is.”

“So what’s the problem? Did he break things off before heading to spring training or something?”

“No. He didn’t. We’re . . . uh, we haven’t really talked about what we’re doing, actually.”

Ruby pauses, a thoughtful look on her face. She puts her arm around my shoulders and for the first time in weeks I feel a little less worried. “Shelby, I hate to say it, but I actually have a good feeling about this.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Knox isn’t some douche whose references we haven’t checked. He’s your brother’s best friend—or one of them, anyway. They’re partners in a business. And we all love the guy, obviously. I mean, I can’t predict whether this is happily ever after, and neither can you. But at least we know that he isn’t about to steal your credit cards and disappear into the night.”

Ruby’s had some really, really shady one-night stands.

“Maybe not for now. But when Jackson finds out, Knox
is
going to disappear into the night. Whether by his own choice, or because my brother will have buried his body in an unmarked grave,” I groan.

“Shelby.” She sucks down the rest of her smoothie. “You’re a grown woman. Knox is a grown-ass man. You need to face this stuff with your brother head-on. His reaction is going to be whatever it’s going to be, but if he finds out on his own . . . it’s going to be much, much worse.”

She’s right about that.

Ugh
. My stomach sinks as I contemplate how that conversation is going to go. Any relaxation I may have gotten out of that hotbox of a yoga class has definitely gone out the window.

“In the meantime.” Ruby stands, stretches, and dumps her smoothie into the nearest trash can. “A little retail therapy never hurt anyone.”

The sexy black club dress I find an hour later on sale at Saks does manage to lift my spirits, even though the tight top and short skirt make it a questionable choice. But I guess I’m all about questionable choices these days.

I
’m home starting
on a Food Network marathon when the phone rings suddenly. Facetime. Knox.

“Hey, you.”

With that familiar greeting, this morning’s anguish suddenly seems like a distant memory. Maybe everything
is
going to be okay.

“How are you?” I ask, muting the TV and cozying up under a blanket.

“Much better after that good-morning selfie I woke up to.” He flashes me a wink. “Though I’ve got to admit, this regime is kicking my ass. I don’t know if I’d be able to show you my appreciation thoroughly if you were down here.”

“Maybe we should put that theory to the test.” I bat my eyelashes. “It’s only, what, an hour-long flight?”

He groans. “Don’t tease me like that, slugger. I’d kill to wake up to a live-action view of that pic.”

“We could make that happen.” I tilt my head, letting my hair fall over the end of the couch as I rest my head on it.

“No pressure,” he says. “But I’d definitely not object.”

There’s a long silence, as we both digest what we’re maybe talking about. I open and close my mouth a couple of times, trying to frame the best way to ask this question, when suddenly he sighs hard into the phone.

“Look, Shelby, I don’t want to see anyone else right now.”

I blink a few times, then sit up. “What brought this up, were you getting followed by some scantily clad superfans again?” I try to joke. It falls flat.

“I’ve just been thinking about it a lot, and . . . I don’t know what we’re doing, Shelbs, but I know that I don’t want it to end.”

I swallow hard around a sudden lump in my throat. “Neither do I.”

“And I keep thinking about the guys you’ll be running into while I’m gone, and—”

“I don’t want any of those guys,” I interrupt. “I don’t want a stupid doctor or some football player or whoever. I want you.”

“And I want you,” he answers without missing a beat. Who knew? Cooper Knox has a sentimental side. Of course, he follows this up with, “I want you in all kinds of ways, Shelby.”

I stifle a grin and slide further under the blanket I’ve pulled over myself. “Oh really? What kinds of ways, exactly? I’ll need you to be very explicit.”

I can practically hear his smirk on the other end. “Well I’d start by relieving you of that tank top. And toying with those hot, perky little nipples of yours, the girls as you call them, pinching them between my fingers while I lick my way down your neck.”

“Mmm, and I’m running my hands down your back toward the waistband of your pesky jeans, always in the way of what I want.” My cheeks burn bright red, but it’s so hot hearing him tell me what he wants to do to me. He keeps going in detail, as my hand dips between my own legs, and before I know it, we’re both lost in our shared fantasy.

By the time we finally hang up, it’s past midnight. I linger on the couch, my head lolling off the side of it, my body still tingling from the last orgasm, and yet on fire still, the need not quenched. Nothing but the feel of Knox inside me, his thick cock filling me completely, will sate this need.

The flight to Orlando is only an hour and twenty minutes long.

Tomorrow is Sunday.

I have enough days left to call in sick on Monday.

It would be one last fling away from home and from Jackson’s prying eyes. A chance to reconnect, to talk about what we’re going to do. To talk in person about what we just admitted to one another over the phone, that we don’t want to see other people, a confession that feels huge, considering we’ve been a totally clandestine couple until now.

Plus, I’m never going to be able to think straight until I touch him one more time.

What’s the worst that could happen?

Before I know it I’m cracking open my laptop and booking a flight for 8 a.m. the following morning.

Mickey Mouse, here I come.

Luckily, Knox texted me plenty of photos from his arrival in the hotel, along with detailed descriptions of how nice the minibar was, so I know exactly where he’s staying. I toy with the idea of warning him, then decide it will be better to show up unannounced. No point in waking him up now, at half past one, just to leave him anticipating me all night.

B
y 10 a.m. on Sunday
, only slightly jetlagged from my late night, I’m pulling up outside the hotel complex in a cab.

I hope I haven’t misjudged his desires. What if he was just saying all that to make me feel better? What if he doesn’t actually want to see me as much as I want to see him? Nerves puddle in my stomach as I climb the flights to his room on the second floor. It’s out on a balcony, with a nice view of the hotel pool below it. Outside his door, I take a few deep breaths before I lift my fist and knock.