Page 12 of Deviant Knight (Knight's Ridge Empire 4)

The entire left side of my body burns with his stare, but I refuse to look over, to acknowledge that he’s even here.

“You’re transparent as fuck, you know that?”

“Fuck you, X. You’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

The opportunist fuck leans forward and runs his nose up my cheek.

“What the—”

“You wanna drive him crazy, Princess Em?”

“You want my knee in your balls?”

He chuckles, his grip on my hips and wrists tightening to ensure I can’t fight back.

“You think I didn’t see him slip into the room Cruz hid you in the night your mate blew Joker’s brains out? Or,” he asks, just to add salt to the wound, “the way he looks at you?”

“Like he wants to kill me? Yeah, I get that a lot from him.”

He chuckles again, the deep rumble along with his manly scent starting to mess with my head.

I’ve had plenty of thoughts of being beneath Xander, sure. But in none of my fantasies were we were discussing Theo fucking Cirillo. Although I must admit, I’d quite happily let him watch.

Heat rushes through me at the thought.

Christ. What is wrong with me?

“I think you might have made your point,” I hiss at Xander, who seems more than happy pinning me to the mat.

“Oh yeah, do that again. His eyes almost popped out.”

“Jesus. Guys and their pissing contests,” I mutter, thrashing one more time, and thankfully this time, he rolls off me. “Thank you,” I breathe, pushing myself up to sit and wiping the sweat off my brow with the back of my hand.

I look up just in time to see Theo slip into the same room that I assume both Nico and Alex are in.

“You gonna tell me what went down with Joker yet?” he asks for what must be the millionth time since that night.

“Nope. Not my story to tell,” I say, although, to be fair, I don’t know enough of the details to be able to share the whole story even if I wanted to.

Things since that night have been weird.

I finally felt like I might have found my place in the world with Stella and Calli, and then I discover that the entire time, or for the past few weeks at least, they all had suspicions that I might have been involved in the hits on Stella.

She might have assured me that she never once suspected me, and that she adamantly told the guys—Theo—that he was barking up the wrong tree, but it still hurt. Hell, it still stings a little.

Add that to the guilt over the fact that Joker was using me to get to Stella, well… yeah, safe to say, things have been awkward.

I’ve never had what I’d consider real friends before. There were a few people I hung out with from my old school, but I never found my ride or die kind of friend there. I thought I had here, and now I’m almost back where I started, not fitting in again.

And if I’m honest, I miss them.

“Wanna talk about it?” Xander offers, dropping down beside me and leaning back against the ropes.

“I didn’t think you were interested in teenage girl drama,” I spit, repeating just a few of his words from one night when I got a little more than tipsy at the clubhouse and came on to him.

I cringe at my memory of that night. Although not as much as when I recall his words about not screwing teenagers.

Xander is twenty-one. It’s not like he’s old and was talking to a child. That rejection hurt more than it should. I swallow it down, attempting to forget about it, like I’m sure he has.