Page 30 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

Chapter

Twenty-One

KNOX

The modulator buzzed against my throat when I ended the call.

I peeled it off, dropped it on the desk, and for a second I just sat there, staring through the glass wall of my penthouse office at Knox Cybersecurity.

Mobile Bay shimmered in the distance, but it didn’t hold me.

Nothing could, not after what she’d just said.

Because he’s mine.

The predator in me wanted to leave right then. Grab my keys, cross the Bayway, and go home to the girl who had just begged me not to tell her secrets and staked her claim without even realizing it.

But I couldn’t. Not yet.

One of our biggest clients had a Sunday deployment scheduled — a full system update that couldn’t afford to fail. Hospitals don’t wait until Monday to need their networks secure. So I stayed. I oversaw the rollout, fielded endless calls, watched my engineers chase bugs across screens.

On the outside, I was the CEO, calm and collected, the man who made million-dollar guarantees of safety and delivered on them.

On the inside? I was crawling out of my fucking skin.

Every line of code, every network ping, every progress bar crawling across my monitor was another second I wasn’t with her. Another second I wasn’t looking her in the eye after tearing her open over the phone.

Because he’s mine.

Those words had hit me like a drug. I replayed them on a loop all afternoon, strung out on the sound of her breaking. I’d hunted her through silence and questions, cornered her until she confessed the one thing I’d wanted for years. Not a slip. Not lust. A claim.

Mine .

And God help me, hearing it had nearly undone me. Predators weren’t supposed to get drunk on their prey’s surrender, but here I was.

I knew I was her type. I’d known it since we were eighteen, slouched on my couch with a massive popcorn bowl between us on Wednesday nights.

I’d watched the way her breath caught for the wrong kind of men on the screen — the ones in masks, the ones who smiled while they stalked, the ones who made obsession look like devotion.

The ones who blurred the line between romance and ruin.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew exactly what that did to her. I wasn’t just Knox, the boy next door. I was the fantasy she’d been wetting her lips over all along.

And now she’d admitted it. She saw me as hers just as much as I saw her as mine.

By the time the update was stable, and the last alert cleared, the sun had already dropped behind the skyline. My tie was loose, my patience long gone, my knuckles aching from gripping the edge of my desk too hard. I snatched my truck keys like they’d been burning a hole in the wood.

The garage swallowed me, headlights cutting a path to the Bayway.

The bridge was slick black under my tires, Mobile Bay churning dark beneath it.

Lights streaked past, my reflection in the glass of the dash warped and feral.

I drove too fast, knuckles white on the wheel, every mile closer to Stonewood making the coil inside me wind tighter.

Every mile east was a mile closer to the only thing I could think about.

Ros was waiting for me… in my house. Probably wearing one of my sweatshirts again, too, if I had to guess.

She loved stealing my clothes, and I loved nothing more than seeing her wearing them.

I was still riding the high of the fact that she’d begged me earlier — well, begged Nox Obscura — and admitted she didn’t want anyone else to have me.

By the time I reached Stonewood, I wasn’t Knox the cybersecurity CEO. No, I was the thing that had been pacing all goddamn day, trapped in my office like a caged animal. I was the predator who was starving for another taste of the truth.

I got back from Mobile just after dark, the dashboard clock ticking over to 7:14 p.m. as I killed the engine. My porch light was on. Ros’s silhouette flickered behind the front blinds. She was home.

Good.

She had no idea how close she’d come to being hunted again.

I slipped inside, careful not to make too much noise, loosened my tie, and made straight for my command center — the office off the den where I kept my most private work terminals. The moment the door shut behind me, I sank into my desk chair and pulled up the system logs from Stonewood Manor.

I didn’t have to search for long.

There she was… Ros, flickering across the screen in dim purple light, breathless and flushed. Pausing at the edge of my childhood bedroom, her fingertips ghosting across the frame of my senior portrait.

“I wish it was you who just made me come, Knox.”

I froze. Didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

I’d watched the footage three times already on my phone in Mobile. But watching it now, full screen, high-res, sound turned up just enough to catch the way her voice cracked? It did something to me.

She wasn’t just craving a masked stranger. She was craving me . She just had issues admitting it, even to herself.

My hands flexed against the armrests of my desk chair. The silence hummed with tension, and the only thing sharper than the need pounding behind my zipper was the knowledge that she was right here, now , in my house, probably twenty steps away, if that.

I leaned back, slow and deliberate.

The deck was stacked. She just didn’t realize I was the one who had rigged the entire fucking game.

Time to let her know I was home. I eased out of my office and padded toward the sounds of movement in the kitchen.

The scent hit me before I even made it across the threshold: roasted garlic, herbs, the rich tang of tomato simmering on the stove. A deep, savory heat that curled low in my gut and made something primal stir beneath my ribs.

She was making homemade minestrone. My favorite soup. I rounded the corner and stopped dead in the doorway.

She was barefoot, standing at the stove with her hair twisted up in that messy knot on top of her head that she always wore when she cooked.

One of my old sweatshirts was drowning her frame, worn soft and hanging off one bare shoulder.

A pot steamed on the stove, and she stirred it slowly, hips swaying just slightly to the low hum of whatever grunge track she had playing on my stereo.

My mouth went dry.

She didn’t hear me. Didn’t see me. Had no idea she was kneecapping my fucking self-control just by existing.

It was domestic as hell… dangerous as hell.

I wasn’t used to anyone being here when I got home. I sure as fuck wasn’t used to this : a girl in my sweatshirt, in my kitchen, cooking for me.

It did things to me. Sharp, dangerous things.

The same girl who’d come for me against the door of my childhood bedroom last night, who’d whispered that she wished it had been me , was here, barefoot in my kitchen, making my favorite fucking soup like she belonged.

I hadn’t even been home for five full minutes, and I already wanted to take her apart. I moved slow and silent — part predator, part man barely holding it together — as I stepped fully into the kitchen.

“That smells incredible.”

My voice was low, even. Rougher than I meant it to be.

Ros jumped slightly, her shoulders rising before she glanced over her shoulder. Her back tensed and she went still as she stared at me.

Good. She knew I was here now.

“Oh, hey.” Her smile wobbled. “I hope it’s okay. I figured since I’m invading your space and basically freeloading until I figure out how to fix my life, I’d at least cook for you. It’s nothing fancy. Just… minestrone.”

I let my silence hang for a beat longer than necessary. Her lips parted, eyes narrowing slightly. She wasn’t sure if she’d overstepped.

I stepped closer.

“You made my favorite,” I said, voice steady, deliberate. “You didn’t even ask. You just knew.”

She blinked, caught.

“I mean… I remembered you said something about liking it once, maybe back in college. I didn’t know it was your favorite.”

Liar.

Her cheeks flushed. She turned back to the stove, stirring like it gave her something to do with her hands.

I stepped up behind her, close but not touching.

“You didn’t have to do this,” I murmured. “You already cooked once this week.”

Ros kept her eyes on the pot.

“I wanted to.”

I smiled, slow and dark.

“Yeah?”

She nodded.

“It’s the least I could do. I’m living here rent-free. You’ve done so much for me?—”

I leaned down just enough to let my breath skate across her bare shoulder.

“That doesn’t mean I expect payment in soup.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. Her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat.

Good.

I was in her space, and she wasn’t moving away. If anything, she leaned closer.

Fuck.

She dipped a ladle into the pot with shaky hands, filled a bowl, and shoved it toward me like it was a peace offering.

“Here. You hungry?”

I took it, my fingers grazing hers just long enough to watch the breath catch in her throat.

“You nervous, Ros?”

She blinked up at me, playing it off with that soft snort she used when she was rattled.

“About soup?”

I grabbed a spoon, took a slow sip, and let the silence hang, watching the tension bleed into her shoulders as she waited for my verdict.

“Perfect,” I said, voice low. “Best I’ve ever had.”

Her lashes lifted sharply, those blue-green eyes going wide with suspicion.

“You’re full of shit.”

“Maybe.” I stepped closer, crowding her again. “But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

She rolled her eyes, but the flush on her cheeks was back, blooming deeper now.

I leaned against the counter, legs spread just enough to make her aware of the space between us.

“You know what’s not fair?”

Ros looked up, hesitant.

“What?”

“You, in my kitchen, smelling like garlic and rosemary and comfort, acting like you didn’t just ruin my entire sense of self-control.”

Her breath hitched.

“Knox—”

I didn’t move. Just held her gaze while I set the bowl down on the counter.

“You shouldn’t do things like this.”

“Like what?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

“Make me feel like I never want you to leave.”

She went utterly still, so I pressed on.