Page 46 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER NINE

JOLIE

I stretched my aching muscles as I stood under the stream of scalding hot water, digging deep for the energy to drag myself out of my shower and get ready for bed.

It might not have seemed like it, but tonight was a success.

Would I have liked to have beaten Zach outright and been declared the reigning champion of Fight Night?

Sure, but I’d known Zach would be a formidable opponent, and my goal had always been to show that I was equally matched to him—an Heir and the most feared fighter at the Academy.

I accomplished that goal and then some. Zach and I met each other strike for strike, almost like we’d been training together for years, and I’d reveled in the rush of it all.

Only Max had ever given me a fight at that level, and he was going to be supremely irritated when I let him know I’d met his match and that it was Zach Ferrero.

I’d even been pleasantly surprised by the small crowd that had gathered to congratulate me on the fight as I’d exited the ring.

John Tyler Ashmore had given me a respectful head nod, and of course Raiford had been there to gush over my skills and invite me to some Tier One after-party I’d had no interest in attending.

Hannah and Devin had come down from the stands with Mari, and the three of them had walked me back to A Dorm, my small girl group apparently budding under Mari’s direction .

The cherry on top of the night had been the stunned, livid look on Lisa’s face as I’d passed her on my way out of the gym. She’d just watched me get rough and sweaty with Zach in a way she had only dreamed about, and that alone had been worth the price of admission.

I toweled off, throwing my hair into a loose braid and pulling on the silky tank top and little shorts I’d been sleeping in this week. After a quick text to Max and Dom to confirm all had gone well at the fight, I collapsed into my king-sized bed and prayed sleep took me quickly.

Because if it didn’t, I knew I’d be replaying Zach’s furious, impassioned words as he held a knife to my throat over and over again until it broke me.

The soft click of my bedroom door opening jolted me awake sometime later.

I surged upright, whipping the small handgun from under my pillow and pointing it at the shadowy figure in the doorway. The ambient light of the City’s nightlife that streamed through my window only just illuminated his hulking form.

“Woah, easy, Princess. It’s just me.”

“Zach?” I mumbled, squinting at him through my bleary vision. “How’d you get in here?”

He chuckled, creeping closer to my bed. “You’re not the only one with tricks.”

I lowered my gun, setting it on my nightstand with a soft thunk before attempting to rub the sleep from my eyes. It was too trusting, but I was tired, and I knew with a deep-seated certainty I should’ve questioned but didn’t that Zach wasn’t here to hurt me.

He approached the side of the bed where I sat with my covers in a disheveled heap around my hips, and I watched wordlessly as he shucked his sweatshirt. Under it, he wore a soft V-neck T-shirt that clung to his muscular chest, and he had on what looked like flannel pajama pants.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer, his dark gaze roving over me as he kicked his shoes off and reached for my covers.

He pulled them back before sliding right on into bed with me, scooting me toward the center with his big body and pulling the covers up over us.

Then he wrapped himself around me, pressed my face to his chest, and buried his nose in my hair.

I let him do all of this without protest because it felt so good .

“I know we’re supposed to be enemies out there, Princess,” he whispered, his warm hand rubbing circles on my back. “But I need to hold you. I missed you so fucking much, and it still doesn’t feel real that you’re here.”

I melted into him, digging my fingers into his soft shirt and breathing in the intoxicating citrus scent of his shampoo that still clung to his damp hair. “I missed you too,” I whispered back. “So much.”

“That’s good, baby girl,” he replied. “I know you hate the Families, and you have every right to. But I couldn’t bear it if you hated me too. Neither could the others.”

I sighed. “I don’t, Zach. I tried, but… I couldn’t.”

He hummed in satisfaction before he tipped my face up to study me with those fierce brown eyes. He cupped my cheek with his big hand, and he skimmed his thumb across the freckles that dotted the skin around my nose.

“Never hide these from me again, Princess,” he murmured, gazing down at me with a reverence that had heat pooling low in my belly.

He dipped his head, pressing his lips to the freckles on one side of my face in a soft kiss, then moving to do the same to the other side.

The cool metal of his lip ring was a delicious contrast to the warm heat of his lips against my skin, and I bit back a groan of protest as he pulled away to look at me again, that familiar cocky smirk telling me he knew exactly what he was doing to me.

“Why are you still calling me that?” I asked, breathless and at a loss for anything else to say.

“What?”

“You know I’m not really the Southside Princess.”

He frowned. “No, you’re not. As it turns out, you’re the Princess of this entire fucking City. I thought that was obvious.”

“Oh.”

He pressed one last kiss to my nose before tucking me back into his chest. Our bodies intertwined with ease, like we’d been doing this forever, and I let the steady thump of his heartbeat under my cheek lull me back down the path to sleep.

“You’re the most spectacular woman I’ve ever laid eyes on,” he said softly as I began to drift, his words sparking something within me that was dangerously close to igniting beyond my control. “Please don’t ever make me fight you again, baby girl.”

“Okay,” I mumbled. “Night, Zach.”

“Night, Jojo.”

Zach was gone before I woke in the morning. It was just as well because that way, Mari did not catch him sneaking out of my room, which meant I did not have to try to convince her that I, a red-blooded heterosexual American woman, slept next to that all night and did nothing but cuddle.

The remainder of the first week of the semester passed without further incident, and I was grateful. The student body as a whole was now pretty wary of me, save the usual core group of Tier One ass-lickers that hated my guts and were desperate for Family approval and/or Heir dick.

Harper flashed her engagement ring in my vicinity as often as possible, and while it irritated me a lot more than it should have, I got some semblance of satisfaction out of the fact that Bennett seemed to pay no more attention to her than he did before their engagement.

He refrained from running his mouth at me in our shared classes or at crew practice, which meant I did not end up having to introduce his nuts to my boot.

He still watched me, and I watched him back, and it was all starting to feel like dangerous foreplay before he either tried to fuck me or kill me.

I was pretty sure he didn’t know which one of those things he wanted at any given moment either.

Noah was both sweet and sulky with me during our classroom interactions, and I found myself trying to drag that beautiful smile out of him whenever I could, like I was suddenly an addict jonesing for my next hit.

And if he didn’t also stop giving that smile to Annie in my presence, I was going to scratch her eyes out like a feral cat in heat.

I wasn’t proud of it .

I didn’t know if I was just becoming that possessive of my old best friend or if it was because Annie was a sneaky, nasty little cunt who tried to have me assaulted and didn’t deserve an ounce of Noah’s sunshine.

Either way, that bitch was on borrowed time, and Noah was going to be introduced to my boot, too, if he didn’t cut it out. Then he’d really be mad at me.

When I saw Zach around, he was his usual flirtatious self and made no bones about giving me that kind of attention in front of everyone.

To the untrained eye, this probably seemed like his normal MO, but I knew better.

I could feel the… gravity of it, like there was a thread of sincerity woven into every flirty word.

It didn’t help that he made his way into my bed every night for the rest of the week.

He’d usually appear well after I’d fallen asleep, and by the third night, I didn’t even wake up at the intrusion.

I hoped my reflexes—which normally operated on a hair trigger—had just somehow adjusted only to him.

We didn’t talk much, but I’d feel him press a kiss to my shoulder or the back of my neck before wrapping himself around me and drifting off to sleep.

I slept so deeply with him, feeling as safe and secure as was possible for me, and I dreamed of our childhood without having those happy memories perverted by nightmares.

He was always gone in the morning, and we hadn’t talked about what this was, but I found that I didn’t exactly care.

I just didn’t want it to stop, whatever it was.

But it would, at least for a few days, because I was leaving the Academy on Saturday morning to return home for the long holiday weekend.

“Look at you, slumming it with the working class,” Max teased as our sleek commuter train rolled over the bridge from the City to Olde Town. “I told you I’d happily be your chauffeur if you’d just order that Bugatti I sent to your email.”

I scoffed. “Can you imagine us driving that around the Southside? Parking it in the lot at Dom’s gym? How much more obnoxious could we be?”

He pouted at me. “Fine, continue to not use your exorbitant wealth for anything cool . ”

“I like the train,” I insisted with a huff. “We agreed it was plenty safe to take public transit as long as you were with me.”

He grinned at me before casting a threatening glance around the train car, pulling one of the three knives he was wearing from his coat and giving it a lazy twirl through his fingers.

Most of the half-full car ignored him, but he received more than one wary glance from the few passengers who’d realized they were sharing an enclosed space with a tall, muscular guy with a man bun, a sharp blade, and a menacing smile.

I was armed as well, but we knew the odds of the Families attacking me in broad daylight on public transportation were low.

Honestly, it probably would’ve been easier for them to run my hypothetical Bugatti off the road and pretend I’d perished in a car accident, so I would continue to take the train when I could.

Max could deal with it.

We exited the train in Olde Town at the Main Street station, two blocks north of Main in the heart of the business district of the Northside.

The winter sky was gray and overcast, and the chilly wind whipped against my exposed face as we hiked the half mile south to Laura’s cheery bookstore and our second-floor apartment.

The cold hadn’t kept the usual Saturday crowd from descending on Main Street’s quaint shops and restaurants, and I hoped some of that traffic would flow down to Laura’s before the day was out.

“You’re coming with me to the gym later, right?

” Max asked as we ambled down the sidewalk, braced against the wind with our hands shoved in our coat pockets.

“Mari sent me video of your badassery at Holywell Fight Night, and I’m pretty sure Dad’s been running choice clips on the gym TVs all week. You’re now a legend.”

“Please, I was already a legend.”

He barked out a laugh as we approached the front of Laura’s store.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a nondescript black SUV idling on the curb across the narrow street.

My hackles went up two seconds before its doors flew open, and two large men wearing the black tactical uniform of the Family Enforcers exited the vehicle.

I whirled, tearing the two handguns I wore from the shoulder holsters under my long wool coat and raising them high, one hand aimed at each of the men and ready to put a bullet in their heads if they so much as flexed an arm in our direction.

Max was just as fast, his gun now aimed at the thin suited man who’d climbed out of the car right after the Enforcers. That man promptly let out a shriek of alarm, throwing his hands up in an immediate surrender.

“Don’t shoot! It’s just me, Jolie!” he shouted in a shaky voice.

I squinted, taking in his expensive gray suit, thinning light blond hair, and vaguely familiar gaunt face.

“Uncle Anders?”