Page 129 of Twisted Knight

It’s a total lie.

A complete taunt.

A challenge to get him to react.

And react he does.

He puts his hand on the small of my back and yanks my body against his. It’s impossible not to feel every hard, sculpted line of him as he slants his mouth over mine and takes.

It’s a commanding kiss. One that dominates and demands and possesses.

“He’s not allowed to touch you,” he says as he uses the fist he has in my hair to pull my head back so I’m forced to look at him. So there is no mistaking his words. “No one is.”

My only response is to grin. A jealous Holden Knight is a wickedly sexy thing to behold. The darkening of his eyes. The clenching of his jaw. The desperation in his touch.

“Open the front door, Rowan.”

“Why? So you can tell me what I can and can’t do?” It’s hard to be sarcastic when my body is begging for more of his touch. “I don’t think so.”

“Open your door or your neighbors are going to get to watch me fuck his touch right off your skin.”

FORTY-ONE

Holden

I needed a break. Away from the office. Away from the mind games. Something to remind me why I’m doing what I’m doing—as if Mason not being here isn’t enough.

So I sit in my SUV, hand on the wheel, eyes slowly taking in everything around me, my elbow resting on the rolled-down window. I let the memories come.

The good.

The bad.

The ones scarred into my memory.

The ones I wish never happened.

I haven’t been able to stay away from Fairmont since I’ve been back. It doesn’t matter how busy I am, I find myself driving these streets. To work things out in my mind. To occupy myself when I can’t sleep—which is often. To pull me back and force me to remember the why for all of this.

I’ve spent years trying to forget this fucking place, and now I’m letting it consume me.

The cemetery. The one I’ve driven to at least a dozen times only to pull into the parking lot and never get out. I tell myself I need to visit him. That it’s about time I see the elaborate headstone I had made to replace the basic marker on Mase’s grave.

But every time I think of Mason, I see my mother, lying on top of the freshly piled dirt in her finest clothes. I hear her sobbing and saying she had to sleep there with him. That she couldn’t let her baby be alone on his first night in this strange, scary place.

The diner. It makes me think of the late nights my mom worked. Her aching feet and mustered smile. The sacrifices she made so that I could be where I am today.

The apartment. The one about a hundred feet from where I’m parked with its broken wrought iron gate, its sagging sidewalk, and its faded brick exterior stained with years of graffiti and despair.

The spot. That place over near the telephone pole with its crumbling asphalt and cracked surface. The strip of street that has been driven over countless times, drivers oblivious to what happened at that corner. To my brother’s life lost and the lives irrevocably changed forever.

This street. The one that holds more memories than I can bear. More moments that I wish I could forget. And the one that’s coincidentally a block down from the Sanctuary.

My two fucking worlds colliding.

Colliding when I don’t believe in coincidence at all.

“Hey, man. You lost?”